Why Do I Get Hangry (Angry When Hungry)?

Niklas Hellerstedt (Flickr)

Why do we get hangry?  One lovely fall day a few years ago, my now-husband (I'm not sure why he married me after this) almost left me on the side of the road. We had just left a Penn State football game, and I was H-U-N-G-R-Y.

My resulting behavior was far from what you might consider "ladylike," much less "civilized." I won't even re-type the words that were spoken. Eventually, a pit stop for a burger and fries managed to tame my inner beast.

What causes the sensation of "hanger" – the phenomenon of feeling angry and short-tempered when hungry? Coincidentally, fellow The Conversation writer and obesity/nutrition researcher Dr. Amanda Salis recently covered this topic here. Do check out her article for details, as I'll be mostly summarizing below.

Basically, three major factors are thought to contribute to our bad tempers when we're famished:

Glucose metabolism. Mikael Häggström (Wikimedia Commons)

1. When we eat, carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars, one of which is glucose. Right after a meal, the levels of glucose in our blood are high. Over time, though, blood-glucose levels drop. Eventually, if these levels fall far enough, your brain will perceive it as life-threatening. Unlike other organs, which have an energy back-up, your brain relies solely on glucose as a fuel source and requires a continuous supply. In fact, despite accounting for only 2% of your body's mass, your brain is estimated to use up 20-23% of your body's energy intake throughout the day, even at rest. Low blood glucose, obviously, signals, "imminent death! Act now!"

2. To our other organs, low glucose ramps up hormones that act to increase glucose in the body. Among these are epinephrine and cortisol, which are synthesized in the adrenal glands. These are both stress hormones, released when our body perceives threat, like a lion chasing us or an organic chemistry exam being handed out in class. That's enough to change someone's mood for the worse, right?

3. As it turns out, anger and hunger don't only share many of the same letters, but they're also controlled by similar genes. One of these genes produces a protein called neuropeptide Y, which not only stimulates eating behavior, but also regulates anger and aggression. Long story short, I probably had pretty high levels of neuropeptide Y after that football game.

What about you?
Do you get hangry, too?
Let us know
In this anonymous poll!

Orange is the New Bleak: What the SHU Can Do to Your Brain

The inmates of Litchfield Penitentiary, the fictional setting for the Netflix TV series Orange is the New Black, are not shy women. 

They’ve landed in prison for murder, fraud, stalking, drug-smuggling, theft, and political activism. They do illegal activities behind the officers’ backs. They make their opinions known loud and clear to one another. And they’re not opposed to throwing a few punches, if duty calls.

But all will cease if you threaten to send them to the SHU. Why?

Netflix

The SHU (pronounced “shoe”), or “security housing unit,” is a separate prison facility designed to isolate inmates from any human contact. While sometimes used to protect the prisoner from harm by others or to themselves (to implement suicide watch, for example), it’s often used as punishment for violating prison regulations. At last count, it’s been estimated that over 80,000 prisoners in the U.S. are housed in the SHU – more than any other democratic country. And while inmates in minimum security may be held in the SHU for a few days at most, those in maximum security prisons can be in solitary for as long as five years.

LEGO Faces are Getting Angrier; So What?

Transport yourselves back to sprawling across the living room floor—colored blocks scattered like confetti about the carpet—building the highest towers and fattest spaceships (without directions, of course), all the while ignoring your parents' yelps as they step on a rogue piece.

There's nothing quite like LEGO.

And certainly there's nothing quite like those ubiquitious yellow, blocky LEGO faces.

But a piece in The Daily Mail last week cites that "LEGO faces are getting angrier," and that this may, in turn, "be harming children's development."

Christopher Bartneck, of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, will be presenting his findings at the First International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction in Japan this August. The central theme of the conference will explore how humans interact with objects that represent different personalities.

Whoa whoa whoa...let's slow down a bit. Perhaps LEGO faces have indeed become angrier—and more disdainful, more fearful, more smug—since their 1975 debut. But is it actually affecting the emotional and mental well-being and learning of a developing child?

Misophonia: enraged by everyday sounds

Very soon, I'll be joining forces with Scitable, a network developed by Nature Publishing Group.

(Don't worry—you won't miss any of my writing if you follow Gaines, on Brains!)

In preparation, I've got a piece on the Scitable Student Voices blog today about misophonia, or hatred of certain sounds.

Check it out here!