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Empty-Stomach Intelligence

94 pointsby lbrover 11 years ago

27 comments

gpczover 11 years ago
This reminds me of a passage from Ben Franklin&#x27;s &quot;Autobiography&quot; about vegetarianism, but could be reinterpreted as a statement on the benefits of being hungry:<p>&quot;When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon&#x27;s manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook&#x27;s, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.&quot;<p>Perhaps Steve Jobs&#x27;s &quot;stay hungry, stay foolish&quot; quote was literal as well.
jackschultzover 11 years ago
&gt; The finding was startling, but “it makes sense,” Horvath says. “When you are hungry, you need to focus your entire system on finding food in the environment.”<p>I never liked these types of rationalization. If the result was opposite, you can easily say that it would make sense because when full, you can concentrate fully on the task at hand, rather than on finding food.
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fcholletover 11 years ago
Even assuming that the human brain somehow &quot;works better&quot; in a state of hunger (which this study does not prove), I would still do better work in a state of satiation.<p>The number one factor for doing good work is to sit down, get in the zone, and stay concentrated on your work. I find that being hungry is very distracting --hunger constantly nagging you out of your task with the urge of getting up and grabbing a snack. So independently of how well hunger makes the brain work, for me hunger is detrimental to the only thing that matters.
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crazygringoover 11 years ago
I don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;m different, or what -- but I simply <i>cannot</i> concentrate on an empty stomach. When I find myself just staring at the computer screen, unable to write code -- it&#x27;s usually because it&#x27;s 11am and I didn&#x27;t eat enough breakfast, or 11pm and I didn&#x27;t eat enough dinner. It&#x27;s not the distraction of hunger, it&#x27;s just that my brain isn&#x27;t getting the energy it needs to think properly. I <i>have</i> to go snack on something (usually substantial) to get enough energy going back to my brain -- and then I&#x27;m fine.<p>In fact, I&#x27;ve often been mystified by people trying to lose weight who barely eat anything all day, yet still manage to get work done effectively, participate in meetings intelligently, etc. I wish I could, but I swear, when I&#x27;m hungry it&#x27;s like my IQ is cut in half.<p>Still, just from talking with friends about it, it seems like I&#x27;m the outlier here.
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kgartenover 11 years ago
I wonder why it&#x27;s so difficult for news reporter and journalists to link to the actual paper. &quot;According to researchers at Yale Medical School ...&quot; great start (irony ;) ). Here&#x27;s the paper link (unfortunately behind a paywall): <a href="http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n8/full/nn.3147.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;neuro&#x2F;journal&#x2F;v15&#x2F;n8&#x2F;full&#x2F;nn.3147.html</a><p>Given the paper I find these sentences highly speculative: &quot;... causes mice to take in information more quickly, and to retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to be true for humans as well.&quot;<p>To broad and too vague, ... there are too many influences on knowledge acquisition (information intake)
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beagle3over 11 years ago
Hunger and appetite are not the same thing, although they are often conflated. I doubt anyone posting here has actually felt hunger.<p>That feeling of &quot;I should eat something now&quot; is either appetite, or ritual (and&#x2F;or carb addiction). If you are not malnourished, it often takes 20 days of fasting for hunger to appear (as many as 40), and when it arrives, you&#x27;ll realize it is there: It&#x27;s not a feeling that goes away if you&#x27;re immersed in a book, work project or video game. It&#x27;s a feeling that you&#x27;ll be willing to fight for food now, if needs be. (Addiction can also cause that feeling, but addiction will go away if your mind is taken with other things. They just feel different in a way that I don&#x27;t know how to describe).<p>Despite living in a western society, I have experienced it several times. The first, involuntarily (was a vegetarian in the army, and despite rules to the contrary, there was only sufficient amounts of food if you ate meat), and not fasting - I just wasn&#x27;t eating enough for over a month, and then it came with a sudden force.<p>The other times, I lost my appetite, so I didn&#x27;t eat until it came back (as I often do). Usually, appetite comes back within a day or two. A few times, it took over 10 and over 20 days.<p>Food consumption, hunger and appetite have no simple linear relationship. After two days of fasting (voluntary or forced), the appetite disappears. I know that seems very unlikely to anyone who hasn&#x27;t tried it, because it seems like the appetite (or a feeling you call hunger) just keeps getting stronger when you don&#x27;t eat - to the point that it would be impossible to sustain if it continued linearly. But it doesn&#x27;t - it just goes away after a couple of days, your body switches to some kind of maintenance mode (characterized by ketosis) that actually feels good.
kveeover 11 years ago
How do we reconcile this with hunger causing ego depletion and choice fatigue? (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;21&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;do-you-suffer-fro...</a>)
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alabutover 11 years ago
There&#x27;s similar findings that a hungry stomach can make you more awake and even cure jet lag. It goes back to the 80&#x27;s - Ronald Reagan used the technique to look fresh when landing across the globe.<p><a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.hbr.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;05&#x2F;a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag&#x2F;</a><p>When I learned about it last year, I figured it might also work as a technique to pull off all-nighters and tried it out whenever we had a press embargo for some feature we hadn&#x27;t even created yet. It seemed to help a lot, especially for someone like me that usually needs an absurd amount of sleep to function.
capexover 11 years ago
There is a difference between being actually hungry, and beginning to feel the need to eat. Other commenters are comparing hungry kids not being able to focus on learning, which is absolutely true. Its not just the hunger for them, its about food insecurity. They don&#x27;t know if they&#x27;ll get food tomorrow, so the idea of staying fed is primordial there.<p>That said, for me, a state of feeling light-headed with the need to eat in the background works best. Satiation is a never ending pit, you&#x27;ll need to fill in 15 minutes after you last felt satiated. But if you can ignore that little sugar-triggered signal, focus becomes both easier and intense.
chensterover 11 years ago
Since I started working from home, I found that I&#x27;m super focus and productive in the morning after consuming a cup of coffee. My productivity is at its lowest after lunch, even a light one, feeling my glucose is running low.<p>I found it helps to take a small break and do 15 min walk and come back to work re-boost my attention again. Another thing that helps is to maintain a low in-door temperature definitely adds more O2 to my brain. Maybe that&#x27;s why my last workplace is always so cold with AC blasts at its max.
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DanBCover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m having trouble calibrating what people mean by &quot;hungry&quot; in this thread.<p>Obviously they&#x27;re nowhere near the eating disordered end of &quot;hungry&quot;. (Where people use a lot of cognition on counting calories and working out how to burn more calories or evade monitoring, to the point that physical movements slow down, because they&#x27;re concentrating so hard on other stuff.)<p>But is this just missing one meal? or missing a day of food?
klt0825over 11 years ago
This is actually one of the reasons I do what is now called &quot;Intermittent Fasting&quot;. I found in my teens that I was much, much more focused and alert on an empty stomach. I&#x27;ve always assumed it had to do my insulin response to meals as low-carb diets had a similar effect but not eating during the day was just easier.
tallesover 11 years ago
For me, almost everything feels better with an empty stomach. Studying, working or just having a good time. I do some small water fasts during my month (1-2 days fasts) and these days are definitely the best ones: I feel lighter with a clearer mind.<p>But there is on thing in the article that I think is BS: “When you are hungry, you need to focus your entire system on finding food in the environment”. I&#x27;m not an expert in this area but I always believed that this benefits were due the shutdown and cleanse of your digestive system.
julesover 11 years ago
I see a major flaw in the generalization from hungry mice solve a maze faster to hungry mice are more intelligent (let alone humans). Supposedly you train the mice to solve a maze by giving them a food reward. It stands to reason that the hungry mice are simply more motivated to get the food reward. If you had given the mice some other kind of reward when they solved the maze (e.g. sex) then the hungry mice may not solve it faster, but sex deprived mice may.
bernatfpover 11 years ago
That&#x27;s exactly what I&#x27;ve been noticing with myself. As time passes from my last meal, I start becoming more productive, I can read faster, remember many more things... I feel like my brain weights less. On the other side, just after having had lunch I need to have a short nap, otherwise it takes me like 1h to be fully operative again.
sfrechtlingover 11 years ago
I also find that I perform best when I fast for the morning, and then have a rather large lunch. Its a little hard around 11am, but I don&#x27;t crash as easily - and I&#x27;m able to push through problems easier afterwards.<p>The only thing I find is that it sometimes impacts on my creativity; I&#x27;m not able to think of alternate solutions.
rlwolfcastleover 11 years ago
<i>The stimulation of hunger, the researchers announced in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience, causes mice to take in information more quickly, and to retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to be true for humans as well.</i><p>I am a little sceptical of the claim in the last sentence.
amjaegerover 11 years ago
When the lab rats are in the maze, is the prize for successfully exiting the maze a piece of cheese or other food? If so I wonder if this test effective. If I&#x27;m hungry I can probably find the fastest route to a store or restaurant, but I&#x27;m not sure about improved calculus skills.
lbrover 11 years ago
I notice this all the time - focus better hungry. Just did some research and dug up the article.
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jamesromover 11 years ago
Hunger works for me. I&#x27;m less likely to procrastinate if I&#x27;m hungry. I can concentrate better. I can more easily tune out everything else.<p>Music : Ears :: Hunger : Brain, at least when concentrating.
robmcmover 11 years ago
So should we be giving kids state sponsored school breakfasts or not?
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terranstylerover 11 years ago
This study basically says that Ghrelin makes you smarter. It may well be that this is to counter the effect of lower blood sugar due to hunger.<p>Being hungry could still make you &quot;dumber&quot;.
cpercivaover 11 years ago
So much for the &quot;kids can&#x27;t learn if they&#x27;re hungry&quot; argument for subsidized or free school breakfast and lunch programs...
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thejoshover 11 years ago
I&#x27;ve heard the same thing somewhere, where if you need to go to the toilet that&#x27;s the best time to make a decision.
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md224over 11 years ago
(2006)
islonover 11 years ago
tl;dr: hunger makes mice smarter, likely to be true for humans as well.
contextualover 11 years ago
<i>The stimulation of hunger... causes mice to take in information more quickly, and to retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to be true for humans as well.</i><p>So based on a so-called scientific study of mice, we have this great insight on how humans think. This study and ergo this article are either wrong, or mice are so close to humans in the way they behave that it&#x27;s ethically and scientifically indefensible to conduct harmful and lethal experiments on them.<p>In other words, if mice are such a reliable proxy for human beings, we shouldn&#x27;t experiment on them because they are people too. If they are not reliable proxies, then we need to stop using them as such.<p>That fundamental question is largely being ignored in the scientific community, but until it&#x27;s answered, these studies are bad science.