A growling stomach provokes anger and irritation. This phenomenon of feeling hangry has now been scientifically established.
You probably know it: you are so busy that you forget to eat for a while. The result is a growling stomach and a very bad mood. Everyone in your immediate environment will have to pay for it. The English also call this hangrya combination of hunger (hunger) and angry (anger). Now researchers from Anglia Ruskin University (GB) and Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences (Austria), led by Viren Swami, have discovers that feeling hangry really exists.
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low blood sugar
Studies on this phenomenon have been conducted in the lab before. It showed that hunger is a sign of a low blood sugar level† And that in turn is the reason that your control over your (especially negative) feelings decreases. In other words: due to a sugar deficiency, you take out your anger more quickly on someone. But there are plenty of criticisms of these findings. For example, there would be too little attention for the context; For example, what role do the lab environment or the researchers play on the participants’ feelings?
Swami’s team decided to take a different approach. The researchers asked 64 people (an average of 30 years old, mostly women) to answer questions via an app five times a day for three weeks. The questions were about hunger (on a scale of 1 to 5, how hungry are you?) and feelings such as anger, irritation, pleasure and excitement (including statements such as: how much trouble do you have in controlling your anger?).
Not enjoyable
The results were clear: a feeling of hunger often leads to anger and irritation. Even when the researchers took into account age, gender, BMI, dietary behavior and character traits. In the latter case, it concerns, for example, your eating motivation (do you eat for pleasure, health or bitter necessity?).
The feeling of hunger was responsible for 37 percent of the change in the measured irritability and 34 percent of the anger. The degree of pleasure also decreases; a rumbling stomach doesn’t feel good. When aroused, the researchers found no link with the feeling of hunger.
Health psychologist Ad Vingerhoets (Tilburg University) thinks the research has been carried out “very elegantly”. “But the result is not surprising. We already know that babies cry when they are hungry. Hunger is an important and powerful signal that should not be ignored. Anger and irritation are then logical consequences. They activate you and let you know unequivocally: you have to eat now!”
Just something to eat
There are still some caveats to be made about the study, the researchers write in the publication† For example, they did not look at the reason for the anger and irritation. Also, feelings such as satisfaction and boredom were not measured, while hunger can also influence this. Finally, the study worked with questionnaires, not with physical measurements, such as blood sugar levels and the blood concentration of the hunger hormone ghrelin† These are all options that the Swami and colleagues would like to include in future research.
But what can we do with the knowledge that being hungry often also makes you moody? The researchers have an idea about that. Now that you know where your anger and irritation comes from, you may be better able to control yourself. But the best treatment for your feeling of hangry† Just eat something.
Sources: PLoS ONE, Anglia Ruskin University
Beeld: Dennis Skley, (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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