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Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source (2007)

164 点作者 Goosee超过 7 年前

22 条评论

wastra超过 7 年前
I&#x27;m a physician. There are a lot of problems with the original article.<p>The body is excellent at maintaining glucose concentration in the blood with food or with days of fasting. Glucose is the primary short-term energy source for most cells. The brain&#x27;s energy requirements vary very little with &quot;thinking&quot; despite the assertions to the contrary in the introduction of this article. PET works by noting the slight transient increases in some brain regions with active thought, but moments later (as that 20% of blood flow goes swishing through the brain) more glucose is available. Meanwhile you are digesting sugars and carbohydrates, and your liver is supplying most of your fresh glucose if you are a fasting adult.<p>Already, before reading the article, I have a low pre-test probability of their hypothesis being true, so they need extraordinarily strong evidence to make their point. Instead, there is a very weak chain of experiments, poorly reported, with borderline statistical significance. Poor charts, no tabulated results, just terrible.<p>The primary problem is that they assert that glucose fluctuations occur due to the exercise of willpower. They try and fail to show this with their first experiment. However, their &quot;results and discussion&quot; combined section shows that their control group before and after glucose were very close to their post-intervention group glucose. p327 para 1.<p>This shows how weak their statistics and data are, and from this point, you can throw the whole study in the trash.
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hyperpape超过 7 年前
Important to note that there&#x27;s a lot of literature surrounding ego depletion, but it&#x27;s been called into question for whether it can be replicated:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slate.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;health_and_science&#x2F;cover_story&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slate.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;health_and_science&#x2F;cover_story...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_controversy_and_conflicting_meta_analyses" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...</a>
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Goosee超过 7 年前
One of the reasons I posted this is because I wanted more discussion on the topic of this paper. On the website, I didn&#x27;t see much of a discussion happening. As in the comments here, it seems that the term coined for this is &quot;ego depletion&quot;.<p>Recently I&#x27;ve noticed many articles on HN how sugar, carbohydrates, dieting, etc. affects the brain, gut, and overall human body. Ego depletion is now on my list of topics to research further because I want to know more about the human body. I always thought of my Kinesiology class in university to be important because it taught about the relationship between the health of the human body and its environment. I hope there will be more findings in the future so we can, in a sense, optimize ourselves. For example, based on this paper it seems that eating a snack when studying can lead to better processing information and staying focused.
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goodroot超过 7 年前
An HN recommended book The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine comes to mind when reading this. Here&#x27;s a neat quote:<p><i>We should use our reasoning ability to overcome negative emotions. We should also use our reasoning ability to master our desires, to the extent that it is possible to do so. In particular, we should use reason to convince ourselves that things such as fame and fortune aren’t worth having—not, at any rate, if what we seek is tranquility—and therefore aren’t worth pursuing. Likewise, we should use our reasoning ability to convince ourselves that even though certain activities are pleasurable, engaging in those activities will disrupt our tranquility, and the tranquility lost will outweigh the pleasure gained.</i><p>The idea of practicing will-power, learning to decline known-pleasurable outcomes as a form of practice, is a well tested idea in stoic philosophy. The practice seems to suggest that there is an energetic ebb and flow of indulgence that can be countered by refining one&#x27;s ability to reason.
kazinator超过 7 年前
Can someone point out where in the paper they address the objection that a declining level of glucose doesn&#x27;t necessarily indicate glucose was &quot;used up&quot;? Maybe some endocrinological mechanism (like insulin) simply triggered the uptake of glucose into various cells somewhere in the body.<p>People cannot be in an excited state, like suppressed arousal of various kinds, without the <i>body</i> being involved.
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bayesian_horse超过 7 年前
This would mean meditation should lower glucose levels, which it doesn&#x27;t. Meditation (or other self-control disciplines) doesn&#x27;t help with hyperglycemia in diabetes, either.<p>It would also mean that during a week-long fast self control should be almost impossible. Which it isn&#x27;t, or it wouldn&#x27;t last for a week or two.<p>I&#x27;m sceptical.
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lotyrin超过 7 年前
Glucose depending on performance of a task seems pretty obvious as does performance of a task being dependent on glucose levels; is there any reason to believe that the tasks being rooted in self-control has any bearing on the results here? I would expect to see similar results with any mental tasks, and these self-control related tasks are seemingly chosen only to make for an attractive headline (taking advantage of controversy around ego depletion and the layperson&#x27;s interest in matters of ego in general).
mtw超过 7 年前
This is simplistic. When I am on a low carb diet but for whatever reason decide to eat a doughnut or anything loaded with simple sugars, then I begin to be irritable, have cravings and generally less focused on work. The findings applies only for people who are stuck on high-carb diet
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digitalmaster超过 7 年前
I kinda wish that there was a simple way to quickly see if a paper has been peer reviewed. Findings like these are interesting observations at best until they&#x27;ve been replicated and controlled by independent parties... Still an interesting study. :)
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kbutler超过 7 年前
This is why, when I eat a piece of chocolate, I then have so much more willpower to avoid eating the next piece of chocolate.<p>Oh, wait. That isn&#x27;t how it works at all...
munificent超过 7 年前
Have there been follow-up studies on this? An interesting experiment to conduct would be to give participants a shot of either glucose or saline and then test their self-control to see if increasing blood glucose increases performance.
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efitz超过 7 年前
The article should have been titled “low blood sugar puts one in a bad mood”.
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surfmike超过 7 年前
“initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, butconsuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments.”<p>So, having a soda will replenish your ability for self control?
leovonl超过 7 年前
The study doesn&#x27;t mention this anywhere, but one can assume it considers only a state of glycolysis. This makes the the title&#x2F;conclusion a bit misleading.<p>In case of ketosis [1], the brain mainly relies on ketone bodies for fuel.. I&#x27;m curious about how one&#x27;s brain would perform in such state - judging by personal experience, the results would be very different.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ketosis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ketosis</a>
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jonnycomputer超过 7 年前
I&#x27;m pretty skeptical of the ego-depletion model; it doesn&#x27;t seem to explain anything that a &quot;self-control is aversive&quot; model wouldn&#x27;t.
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titzer超过 7 年前
I don&#x27;t care what your p values are; put some error bars on your graphs. I wanna see the distribution.
throwawaylalala超过 7 年前
What if you are in nutritional ketosis?
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capisce超过 7 年前
How does this interact with intermittent fasting or low-carb diets?
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analogmind超过 7 年前
&quot;Moreover, despite our manipulations, we do not intend to advocate consuming large quantities of sugar as an ideal strategy for improving self-control&quot;
purplezooey超过 7 年前
I wish some people at my workplace would get a healthy dose of ego depletion. ;)
mrfusion超过 7 年前
Wouldn’t this mean dieting would be impossible?
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pishpash超过 7 年前
This is some joke paper right? Look at Figure 1.
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