It’s 3 p.m. and you realize you just snapped at your coworker for asking a simple question.
Or you are driving and get ridiculously angry at someone trying to simply change lanes in front of you.
Suddenly, you remember you skipped lunch today and maybe breakfast too.
You are now “hangry,” a state of anger and rage fueled solely by hunger.
It’s like a possessed child suddenly shows up at my house.
That demon is hunger, which quickly escalates into “hanger” in a toddler with limited verbal skills.
Here’s what happens when you get “hangry.”
This is when you feel irritated.
This signal is usually accompanied by a feeling of emptiness and maybe some gurgling in the stomach.
These hormones are calledglucagon and growth hormone.
These two hormones areepinephrine and cortisol.
There is another hormone that is triggered when the stomach is empty called ghrelin.
Ghrelinis a hormonethat comes from the stomach and is a signal to the brain to tell us to eat.
When ghrelin is high in the absence of food, dopamine levels plummet.
Dopamine levels also affect mental function, concentration, and the ability to keep our emotions under control.
One more reason hunger quickly evolves into hanger.
Old granola bar at the bottom of your purse?
Someone’s lunch out of the work fridge?
Dieting via starvation will likely just backfirecausing you to binge eatwhen you finally do get some food.
to make it do that, it needs food.
Those who were willing to get aggressive so you can eat were most likely to eat.
Astudy published in 2014measured the blood glucose of married couples nightly over a 21-day period.
Researchers found that people with the lowest blood sugar levels were angrier.
They put more pins in the voodoo doll and were more aggressive blasting their partner with loud sounds.
