Chemical Feelings

[andrewducker]

I don't know how many of you have ever been under the influence of narcotics, but I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of you would be willing to admit that what we eat affects our mood. Aside from the medical phenomena associated with various anti-psychotic drugs, the positively psychedelic effects of LSD, a simple experiment can be carried out utilising any random small child and 40-odd grams of sugar (I suggest using someone else's child for this, otherwise you'll be responsible for the screaming agent of satan for the rest of the day).

An old friend of mine could tell how recently his girlfriend had eaten by her mood within 20 seconds of picking up the phone. An ex-flatmate was a nightmare to live with for 3 months after they changed her contraceptive pill (and then they changed it out for a different one and she returned to her usual semi-sane behaviour).

I've seen thousands of instances of simple chemical changes causing seemingly complex changes in people's personality. The complex changes generally turn out to have a single underlying change behind them all, but the complexities of human behaviour can easily take a single underlying cause and express it in a million different ways depending on everything from the various other chemicals floating around the brain to the genetic sensitivity to those chemicals to the vast amounts of upbringing and culturalisation that tell you how you can express yourself.

It's amazing to me how much people's minds can be changed by such simple things as sugar molecules, and how a simple temperament change can express itself in so many complex ways because of our upbringings.

It's also amazing to me how much being tired affects my whole outlook on life. So, due to the lack of sleep I've had in the last 48 hours, I think I'm off to bed!

Comments

[birdofparadox.livejournal.com]

*small voice*

this body chemistry thing sucks. i demand a tune up.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

My other half and his blood relatives all suffer from short tempers when hungry. Xmas with his family can be a bit stressful as Mother-in-law (who doesn't suffer from Pre-Meal Tension) spends hours refusing to let anyone assist her in the epic task of preparation of turkey and more trimmings than is entirely reasonable, while Father-in-law, Sister-in-law and Husband all get progressively more snappy with each other and with innocent bystanders over the course of the morning.

And my kids are maniacs on sugar, although not as bad as they are on artificial sweeteners.

heh

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

I'm grumpy too. When I got pissed off for seemingly no reason, my ex-gf (this was years ago, back in college) told me to eat something. It worked.

I can imagine there's biological underpinnings to the tendency to get aggressive when your blood sugar drops.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

It's even weirder that different people have such varying responses to the same stimuli. Like I get grumpy and anxious when I get hungry, whereas my husband notes he's hungry in a clinical sense and then goes on his merry way. He doesn't really understand it when I get so insistant on eating at eating times.

I think it also has to do with the way you are raised, as well as purely chemical reactions, but there are a whole range of other examples, like the different reactions various people have to various drugs.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

I feel hungry when I have no food.

Heh heh, get the pills, Sam.

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was, in some ways, a nicer person to deal with when she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia. It helped her figure some things out and manage her mood swings.

But,...

It also gave her a crutch *and* an excuse for ill manners and bad behaviour.

Like much of life, chemistry is a double edged sword.

Katja, who often ended chem lab with a watchglass full of beautiful crystallizing blue stuff,... when it should have been smokey orange. Sigh. Damn drawer partner!

[andrewducker]

My response tends to vary depending on blood sugar levels. If I'm hungry, but my blood sugar is fine, I can happily put off eating for an hour or two. If my blood sugar levels are low then I become irritable and edgy.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

All true. You can't worry too much about it though, or pop mars bars every time you get grumpy.

I totally empathise with the 'tetchy hungry' thing, and the Xmas story is hilarious.

Relatedly, I am pretty much convinced that the reason that alcohol is especially problematic amongst drugs is that it is the only drug that is also a food (packing 7kcal per gram of pure alcohol). [OK technically hash leaves or coca leaves are food too, but think how much salad you need to eat to get any calories!]

It's not classically 'addictive' and this could explain the complexites of peoples reaction to it.