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Short Stuff: Hangry? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short Stuff, and we finally
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: tackle one of the most important concepts of our time. Hungry.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It's real. It's a thing, Yeah, definitely is. It's not
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: just something people say in their marriage to poke fun
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: at their spouse or their partnership. It is something that
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is real and it all has to do with physiological things,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the the makeup of your human body and the fuel
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that it runs on, and the fact that when you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: don't have it, things change. Yeah. They so we're not
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: exactly sure what, like how the mechanism, the physical mechanism
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of being hungry translates into anger or hostility. There's some
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: really good theories, but there is like a physiological basis
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: for that, and that when you have me of glucose
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: blood sugar um, your your body uses that is energy
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: to power all sorts of stuff. But when that's low, uh,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: systems start to get kind of shut down. On the periphyry.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And sometimes one of those systems, they think is um
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: self control, because self control can often require a tremendous
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: amount of energy, and when you don't have self control
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's difficult to be polite to some people. Absolutely. Uh.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: The other thing that can happen is the hypothalamus, which
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is the part of the brain, uh that you know
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: involves hormone production as well as a lot of other stuff. Uh,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it gets sort of out of whack and throws hormones
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: out of whack and can suppress serotonin, which is everyone
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: knows is the field good neurotransmitter. And if you're all
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of a sudden not processing serotonin, then you're probably gonna
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: get the very least moody and maybe even angry. Yes, Supposedly,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: for your serotonin um like production to really take a hit,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: your blood sugar has to drop really quickly from like
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a hundred milligrams a desci leader to fifty five milligrams
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a desci leader, which that seems like a precipitous drop. Yes,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and by the way, quick In show correction, we said
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: grams of caffeine instead of milligrams in which one was
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: that the Energy Drinks Energy Drinks episode, So yeah, we
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: were saying people were drinking a hundred and sixty grams
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of caffeine. Somebody wrote in and said, I'm just trying
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to imagine what I would feel like before my heart exploded.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway back to this, Um, Cortisol is another
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  Speaker 1: thing that can be a culprit if you have too
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: much cortisol going on, which can happen when you have
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: low blood sugar. That's a stress hormone. So you know,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you've got one thing being depleted,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: which is serotonin. You've got the other thing in the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: opposite direction, the cortisol being increased. And it's pretty obvious
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: where that's obvious, where that's gonna lead a big fight.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You know where it's gonna lead. Chuck, It's gonna lead
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: us right into a commercial break, all right, change to Chuck,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: just like the stars the sky so much so, Chuck,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: we should shout out our former friends and colleagues, well,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: former colleagues, still friends. I'd like to think how stuff works,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: UM for helping us out with this episode. There are
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: multiple articles on how stuff works about hanger or being angry,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and they basically created a study bonanza that just it's
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a buffet of studies trying to figure out how to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: prove that hunger turns into hanger UM, and some of
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: them are pretty lame actually, even though they've been published
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: in some pretty legitimate journals. Agreed, Um, I think what
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: they all do those a show that hanger is real.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: But yeah, some of them are great, but let's let's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: talk about them. Yeah, they're just trying to get the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: design down and no one's really cracked the code yet. Like,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: for example, there was one from two fourteen that appeared
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: in the p N A. Y S. The journal UM
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that studied a hundred and seven couples. They measured their
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: gluecoast levels twice a day, okay, and then to measure
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: how aggressive they were, they said, hey, here's a voodoo doll.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Do what you will with it, right, Well, a voodoo
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  Speaker 1: doll of your partner or spouse. I think they use
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: married couples, but I'm sure it's the same for for
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: non married couples. But uh yeah, they said, here's foodoo dolls,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: here's a bunch of pins. Um, yeah, do what you want.
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  Speaker 1: And what they found was, uh, when the person was
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: super angry, they were jam and pins all over the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: face and body of their partner's doll. Right. And then
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: they also did a supplementary thing where they put the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: part there's in separate rooms and gave them each the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: ability to crank the volume up on some music in
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  Speaker 1: the other partners chamber, and um, the ones who are
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  Speaker 1: hungry or used more pins in the voodoo doll and
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  Speaker 1: turned the decibels up higher than people who weren't hungry. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And of course they made it so that the person
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: just thought they were turning the volume up, they weren't
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: actually affecting the volume, which is hilarious but man alive. Yeah,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: like take this, Emily, right, like jamming pins in a doll,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: like cranking a bad music. Yeah, here's some nickel Back
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: for you. Are we all still making fun of Nickelback? Yeah? Sure,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I think that's okay. Okay. I didn't know if there
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was like a rehabilitation that I had not not noticed. Oh,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Now they're still They're still terrible, Okay.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I feel bad for those guys at the same time. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I think they're like multi multi, multi millionaires though, and
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I get the impression they don't really care. Yeah, because
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: you can't feel sorry for anyone that has a lot
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of money, right, No. Um. There were some other studies here.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: One was UM from O how State that basically UM
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of this is correlation, of course, and
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  Speaker 1: not causation. But uh, they found that UM self control
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  Speaker 1: was linked to glucose levels in the brain, so people
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  Speaker 1: who drank a beverage high in glucose was less aggressive
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: than people who didn't. UM. I don't know if that's
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: like any sort of suggestion, like to drink a sugary
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: drink to keep you sort of chilled out. I'm not sure.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure about this one. I'm with you. There
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was also one that UM I think linked diabetes to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: glucose metabolism obviously UM, but that it's they tied it
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to aggressiveness and decreased self control as well, so that
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that kind of supports the previous study. But it's kind
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of surprising, actually, I guess I wonder if people who
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: have type two diabetes are more prone to hungry nous
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: than other people. Yeah. Maybe. Uh. This two thousand eighteen
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: study was published by the American Psychological Association in the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: journal Emotion. This one I think I understand, but I'm
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: not positive. Uh. Here's what they did, and maybe you
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: can explain the kicker for me. Uh. There were a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: couple of experiments, and these were online experiments, so it's
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: always a little bit jankie. But they showed four hundred
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: participants in image that was supposed to kind of clearly
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: be either positive, negative or neutral. Uh, and then an
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: ambiguous image in this case they use Chinese pictographs and
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: then said rate that according to like how pleasant it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: is to you on a scale of one to seven,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and then tell us how hungry you are. Uh. And
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: this is where I just don't quite get what it
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  Speaker 1: was as far as being primed. It wasn't very well explained.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Can you explain it? I can't actually, So so what
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  Speaker 1: they did was they found that the hungry year the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: people were, um, the more likely they were to give
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: that ambiguous image like a terrible rating right like they were.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: They interpreted it as like negative or something like that
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  Speaker 1: rather than neutral or positive. But only they really only
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: saw this effect when the people who were hungry had
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: seen that negative image first. So, so what the what
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  Speaker 1: the researchers are saying is that when you're angry, um,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you feel like, um, you're you're mean to somebody. But
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: it doesn't just come out of the blue, like if
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: your spouse comes up to you and tells you how
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: much they love you and gives you a hug, you're
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: probably not going to react with hostility. But if you're
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: hungry and your spouse comes up and criticizes you, there's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a good chance you're going to overreact and like be
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  Speaker 1: a jerk in response, and that is angry. So that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: was kind of the the upshot of what they were saying. Okay,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: so there's like a context basically, that's to it. Yeah,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: exactly that there there needs to be a primer for
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: angry nous to come about. But yes, still, if you're hungry,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: you're more likely to be hostile if you're primed with
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: something negative. First, all right, well that makes sense. Um.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: There was one in Europe that is to me, these
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: speak to me a little bit more because they're just very,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: very rudimentary, and that they asked people to track their
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: emotions very simply track your emotions five times a day
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: for three weeks on this app and let us know,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: like you're eating habits at the same time. And they
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: basically said that like fifty six of your sort of
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: negative feelings or irritability is due to the fact that
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you your blood sugar was probably low. Inn't that nuts?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Fifty of your jerky nous over that week or month
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Three weeks um can be attributed to just
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: being hungry at the time. Yeah, I find I'm most
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: critical with myself as a father and like when I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: just don't do the right thing as a dad, as
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: when I'm busy doing something else and I'm like being interrupted.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Like if I'm like just trying to get this work
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: email out or something, I can like be a jerk. Um.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But I'm curious to see if food is also playing
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a part there, yeah, because I mean it could be
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: stress or being under a deadline. But yeah, I wonder too.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have to create your own study with the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: app and pretend you're from Central Europe too. But it's
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: weird though, because I'm also Emily has more of an app,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: is more apt to be angry than me. Uh, food
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  Speaker 1: is more um, not important, but it has that effect
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  Speaker 1: on her more than it does for me, and that
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: for an overweight guy. I can skip meals all day long.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I can even do a fast and I don't feel
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: like it really affects my emotions that much. I mean
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that sounds to me like Emily is just more sensitive
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: to blood sugar. Probably you are, you know, yeah, yeah,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: or maybe HER's just drops more precipitously than yours does.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Who knows. Yeah, there may be like a literal physiological difference.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: But the upshot of all of these buddies seems to
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: be that, um, we lose self control when we're hungry,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and that's that's a big trigger for angry nous. But
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: at the same time, they've kind of shown that you
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: can defuse being angry by just being self aware. Studies
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: have kind of investigated if you show somebody that they're
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: mad and hungry, are they going to like, are they
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: more likely to lash out? And they found no, Like,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: if you know, I'm being a jerk right now because
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I'm hungry, then you're probably less prone to actually follow
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: through on your jerky behavior. Yeah, and I think that's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: probably true for most reasons, Like if Emily was like, hey,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: you're trying to get something done and you're being very
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: impatient with ruby, has nothing to do with hunger. I
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: think just about self awareness, which is always a good
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: thing to try and model. Definitely, just ask yourself, why
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: do I feel this way? Be curious about yourself. There's
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: all sorts of neat stuff you can learn. Yeah, or
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: stick your head in the sand and never grow. That's right. Uh,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Chuck just laughed charmingly, and I've got nothing else, so
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: that means it's the end of short stuff. Stuff you
• 12:10
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• 12:13
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• 12:22
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