Do you lash out at your spouse or others? Then you may be suffering from low blood sugar. Researchers have found that being "hangry" is actually a real phenomenon and that spouses are more likely to lash out aggressively when they're hungry.
In order to examine how low blood sugar might affect mood-and how spouses interact with one another-the researchers looked at the blood glucose levels in married couples for 21 days. The scientists measured the levels each night.
So what did they find? It turned out that people who had generally lower levels of glucose were more likely to get in fights with their spouses. Not only that, but they were also likely to be louder in their confrontations and also prone to fight longer.
"People can relate to this idea that when they get hungry, they get cranky," said Brad Bushman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We found that being hangry can affect our behavior in a bad way, even in our most intimate relationships."
In fact, the scientists found that even those who reported good relationships with their spouses were more likely to express anger if their blood glucose levels were lower. The researchers gave participants a voodoo doll that they were told represented their spouse along with 51 pins. The participants were then told to insert between 0 and 51 pins into the doll at the end of each day. The ones that had lower glucose levels were the ones that inserted more pins.
"We found a clear link between aggressive impulses as seen with the dolls and actual aggressive behavior," said Bushman in a news release.
So why do we get "hangry" in the first place? Glucose is essentially fuel for the brain, and the self-control needed to deal with anger and aggression takes energy. Although the brain is only 2 percent of our body weight, it consumes about 20 percent of our calories. So before you get into a difficult conversation, don't go hungry; instead, eat something in order to improve your mood and make sure that you're not going into a fight "hangry."
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
