Does Thinking Stimulate Appetite?
Color me skeptical, but I have a hard time believing this:
Angelo Tremblay noticed something odd every time he worked up a grant application for his research program in a Quebec university. He had a craving for chocolate chip cookies.
Now, thanks to research in his lab at the Universite Laval, he has a better understanding of why. It turns out that performing mental tasks, like trying to solve problems while working at a computer, stimulates the appetite so much that people tend to eat significantly more calories than they burned while performing the “knowledge-based” tasks.
In a study published in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers found a physiological basis for the spike in appetite. Mental work “destabilizes” the levels of insulin and glucose, two critical components in the body’s regulatory and energy machinery, thus stimulating the appetite, said Jean-Philippe Chaput, lead author of the study.
…At this point, however, the study indicates that a rapidly changing lifestyle toward “knowledge-based work,” like time spent at the computer or trying to solve mental challenges, may be a significant factor in the current obesity epidemic, Chaput said.
“There are a lot of people doing this kind of work now, compared to physical work in the past, so we postulate that it can explain in part” why so many people in so many countries are getting fat, he said.
Why is this hard for me to believe? Because it’s exactly 180 degrees from my own experience. When I’m completely dialed in and focused on my writing or design tasks, I can barely eat at all. I hate having to stop and eat…and when I do, more often than not, it’s the minimum that I can get away with, like a packet of tuna and a piece of fruit – and then I’m back in my own little world again.
Even when I’m not that absorbed, such as when I’m scanning journal articles, responding to e-mails or posting on the forums, I don’t get cravings for food. The occasional cup of tea, yeah…food, no.
I dunno…maybe it’s just me. Anybody else have a problem w/overeating in response to “mental challenges?”
September 11, 2008
I’m with you – unless I don’t want to be doing the task providing the challenge – then I’d rather eat or do anything else to avoid it, but if I’m into something I enjoy and it’s challenging me, it’s the only thing on my mind.