Dear Humpasaur: Does Hunger Make You a Smarter Human?
Posted Sep 18, 2007 27 comments
The Question
Question: do you know about ghrelin, it is a hormone produced by the cells lining the acer of the human stomach. It is what stimulates hunger but also it enhances thought processes and helps learning and more is present when you are hungry. I was wondering if it is released when one gets the munchies from smoking marijuana. That being true wouldn’t you be able to learn better on an empty stomach or when hungry?
The Answer
It’s exceedingly weird that you’d bring this up, since I’ve been experimenting with that lately. Ghrelin is remarkable stuff. In addition to triggering hunger and increasing mental performance, it’s also an integral part of the immune system. Nature is smart like that. I agree with your interpretation of the facts completely—that there’s a good chance the elevated creativity I experience when I smoke marijuana might be at least partially caused by the fact it makes me hungry.
Young stoners of earth: the best way to avoid getting stupid on weed is: drink a glass of water. Seriously. No food whatsoever—hunger goes away. I am seriously convinced this ritual enables me to access subconscious material, if not some larger informational matrix that pervades the Universe as a whole. So when I read about Ghrelin—which was only about a week ago, methinks—my first thought was that the water was dispersing this stuff from my stomach into my bloodstream, and then through the brain-blood barrier and straight to my pineal gland, where Eris sucked it out and backwashed Divine Truth.
Perhaps there are some gaps in my theory.
I am reminded of the experience of the Biosphere 2 crew, who had a large portion of their crops get destroyed. To compensate, they greatly reduced their diet. The results were remarkable: everyone felt better than ever.
Roy Walford: The advantages of being on the diet are that you need less sleep, you’re generally more alert and those items. You are pretty resistant to colds or infections and stuff like that, because your immune system seems to be up regulated. Those are the advantages and hopefully you age less rapidly.
The disadvantage is that you have to deal with some degree of hunger, and that depends on the person….
Of course, let’s not take things to Gnostic extremes...the flesh is not evil, and roast beef sandwiches are pretty damn good. Life is to be enjoyed, and perhaps this is the beginning of a lifelong problem, but in the past week of experimentation I found out I really enjoy being hungry. My focus is remarkably increased, although I have noticed my libido is non-existent, which is pretty unusual. If this science experiment takes me anywhere sexy, I’ll probably write about it...until then, thanks very much for the question. I’m not sure if I actually provided an answer, but I had a great time babbling just the same.
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Comments
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1. cptmarginal on Sep 18, 2007 at 10:55 AM permalink
This is a very interesting topic. I have just noticed that at times of extremely focused mind activity, when carried away for hours on something, I will usually eat nothing. Now, obviously it can be said that I am too involved to stop and take a piss let alone eat a sandwich; yet I find that specifically eating food is practically a repellent idea to me. Conversely, during times when I’m absolutely wasting time and stuck in one hollow game or another, food is one of my biggest focuses.
The process of eating is so fucking weird anyway. It really hammers home that human bodies are piles of stuff other than what we consider “us”. Sometimes I’m eating something and I hit one of those surreal moments where it just freaks me out. Brushing my teeth is also known to trigger this.
By the way, cheers to the cool articles on this site lately.
2. Ekstasis23 on Sep 18, 2007 at 2:26 PM permalink
I wonder if this is why the idea of fasting comes up repeatedly in various religious traditions as a method of attaining enlightenment.
Muslims fast for a month during Ramadan, there is the Baha’i Nineteen Day Fast, Buddhism has fasting rituals, Christ fasted for 40 days in the desert before being tempted by Satan, Moses fasted for days while he was on the mountain with God, and various Native American Vision Quests involve fasting.
Did all of these various spiritual traditions incorporate fasting so that their members could tweak out on some sweet, sweet Ghrelin?
3. MantricSpork on Sep 18, 2007 at 2:42 PM permalink
Yeah, I remember that really got me thinking when you briefly mentioned that article over on brainsturbator. I’ve been experimenting with reducing my food intake also, after I attending a three-hour lecture and realized I had forgotten to eat anything beforehand. It was a little distracting for about half an hour, then I just felt good. I was thinking of swearing off food for a week or something, but that would probably be a little extreme.
4. Chris Dizzy on Sep 18, 2007 at 3:15 PM permalink
The Weed and coffee morning ritual makes more sense than ever.
5. Humpasaur Jones on Sep 18, 2007 at 3:42 PM permalink
HELL YEAH, DIZZY KNOWS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. Gotta fire that three-pound engine right the fuck up in the AM.
Anyways, further experimentation has continued to demonstrate a lack of libido, and it’s also a lot harder to adjust to changes. When I’m working on an article or reading, I am utterly within the project, but if anything else comes up, I’m irritable and slow to react.
Overall, this definitely needs some tweaking and I will continue to explore.
6. tron on Sep 18, 2007 at 4:03 PM permalink
So why do teachers tell students make sure they eat something before test.
I used to hear that all through elementary school especially before we’d take SAT’s.
7. Humpasaur Jones on Sep 18, 2007 at 4:11 PM permalink
Yeah, considering that teachers have your best interests in mind and want to see all their students achieve their full potential as free, curious human beings, I don’t get it either. Given the fact that no teacher would ever just repeat something to their students without investigating it and verifying it themselves, I don’t get it either.
You’d almost think that education is some sort of crude social control system, instead of a fountain of knowledge being poured into the future rulers of our informed democracy.
8. TC on Sep 18, 2007 at 5:09 PM permalink
There is an insightful book available on the subject of fasting titled “Fasting and Eating for Health: A medical Doctors Program for Conquering Disease” By Joel Fuhrman, MD
9. mehbbed on Sep 18, 2007 at 6:44 PM permalink
Everyone has their own personal ritual I suppose before taking a mentally challenging task, whether it is eat carbohydrates, proteins, or run or something . But, although it has been scientifically proven that ghrelin and food deprivation is effective, I imagine that psychologically, if you believe some ritual will have a given impact it most likely will. Use the placebo effect to your advantage.
Eating food if not a considerable time ahead does make some sense considering (depending on ones views) all thought and learning is an electro-chemical reaction, in which you need a constant supply of reactants or else the rate of reaction will slow.
I’m not sure of the seriousness of your teacher comment, but it does seem somewhat ridiculous to consider it a giant conspiracy. While the education system definitely involves some degree of social control (whether inadvertently or intentionally created) I’m relatively sure the carbohydrate thing is just one of those untested pieces of knowledge someone thinks is useful enough to pass on, and if you believe in it enough, it most likely will be.
10. mehbbed on Sep 18, 2007 at 6:47 PM permalink
But then again, its hard to argue with the biosphere 2 results. Think it’s time I mess around with this myself.
11. Fuckin A Yes on Sep 18, 2007 at 7:10 PM permalink
http://www.skilluminati.com/research/entry/four_essential_articles_on_the_us_education_system/
12. cptmarginal on Sep 18, 2007 at 10:41 PM permalink
"I’m not sure of the seriousness of your teacher comment, but it does seem somewhat ridiculous to consider it a giant conspiracy.”
Conspiracy is a pretty basic thing. I conspire regularly. I think that a system like our public schools is pretty obviously a conspiracy; nay, a GIANT conspiracy.
William Torrey Harris, architect of standardized testing:
”Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom.” This is not all accident, Harris explains, but the “result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
Woodrow Wilson:
“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
Edward A Ross, author of Social Control (1901), highly influential on the development of sociology and beyond:
“Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media....the State shakes loose from Church, reaches out to School.... People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.”
Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College (who helped lay the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology) said that school would establish conditions for “selective breeding before the masses take things into their own hands.”
H.H. Goddard (another architect of standardized testing, and member of the US army psychological team), said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about “the perfect organization of the hive. Standardized testing will cause the lower classes to face their biological inferiority, which will discourage their reproduction.... Perhaps it would be wiser to emulate the bee’s social organization more and his supposed industry less.” Also: “It is not so much a question of the absolute numbers of persons of high and low intelligence as it is whether each grade of intelligence is assigned a part, in the whole organization, that is within its capacity.”
The head of the US Army psychological team after World War I, Robert Yerkes:
“Great will be our good fortune if the lesson in human engineering which the war has taught is carried over directly and effectively into our civil institutions and activities… Before the war mental engineering was a dream; today it exists and its effective development is amply assured.”
Sorry, this is my favorite topic.
13. Humpasaur on Sep 18, 2007 at 10:43 PM permalink
^^Nah, I’m glad you posted that, now I don’t have to...that sums it up pretty perfectly. It’s not like “education as conspiracy” means that your 2nd grade teacher was IN ON IT. Of course they weren’t. That why it’s so eeeeeevil.
14. Themikenesedude on Sep 18, 2007 at 11:03 PM permalink
I’ve noticed after I eat a bitchin meal that I smoke a cigarette and posture myself like I do after sex- A great friend of mine made some awesome brunch for me and his girlfriend and afterwards if you didn’t see people eating first, you would’ve just thought you had witnessed what happenned after a menage a trois (except we were dressed like some people who just came from the park)… I think I saw some stuff like that in a commercial once. Food and Sex- Yep they are totally interrelated. And that is why either a blowjob or a steak will please a man equally…
Peace
15. Bling Finger on Sep 18, 2007 at 11:28 PM permalink
Amen Brotha, the almighty tantricisms of the elusive steak blowjob…
16. mehbbed on Sep 18, 2007 at 11:30 PM permalink
No no no don’t apologize, this is pretty interesting stuff actually, especially because I can see the patterns. The freaky thing is how well I fit some of models described. I’ve seen some stuff on this before, like the whole superstructure protecting substructure thing, in a classroom interestingly enough, but the degree of human orchestration is disconcerting. Guess its working… Totally did not grasp the context in which you were speaking. I got to get up on some reading. Much appreciation.
17. Captain Randall on Sep 19, 2007 at 1:38 AM permalink
Damn dude,
Let’s find out if this works. I’m sparking up my pipe and drinking a glass of water right after this comment.
I’ve always found it best to eat a while before I smoke. I seem to have more intellectual trips if I don’t munch out afterwards.
I also don’t wake up the next day feeling like a stretched out fat ass for eating too many mint milanos and strawberries before crashing out from a weed induced coma.
18. MantricSpork on Sep 19, 2007 at 5:15 PM permalink
It occurs to me that the results of this kind of experiment could be very influenced by what food IS eaten, and that could affect how much ghrelin is produced or how well your body is able to compensate in other ways for the lack of fuel.
19. InternetWeasel on Sep 19, 2007 at 5:49 PM permalink
Well this just makes sense to me, in an evolutionary biological programming kind of way. I mean, imagine you are stuck surviving in some harsh environment where food is scarce. The hungrier you get, the more ghrelin is produced and absorbed by your system, the more creative you get about ways to feed yourself. Hunger naturally makes you a better hunter/gatherer by boosting your ability to solve the problem of finding food.
20. Humpasaur Jones on Sep 19, 2007 at 6:52 PM permalink
^^Yeah, it reminds me of a C-Rayz Walz interview where he said the best way to make an album is by going without eating for a week and being broke until you can finish it.
Of course, he hasn’t made very many good albums, so then again…
21. Humpasaur on Sep 20, 2007 at 7:58 PM permalink
http://www.physorg.com/news109514592.html
How about that! “Researchers Find Connection between Calorie Restriction and Longevity.”
Opens with a memorable line: “For nearly 70 years scientists have known that caloric restriction prolongs life. In everything from yeast to primates, a significant decrease in calories can extend lifespan by as much as one-third. But getting under the hood of the molecular machinery that drives this longevity has remained elusive.”
22. Bling Finger on Sep 21, 2007 at 5:52 PM permalink
I don’t know about smarter, but it definitely will make your dick look bigger if you’re hungry for long enough.
23. shiftleft on Sep 22, 2007 at 12:37 PM permalink
this stuff deserves scientific research along with DMT in my opinion.
24. Soltron on Sep 22, 2007 at 6:54 PM permalink
Sooooo people who can’t afford food should be geniuses
25. Soltron on Sep 26, 2007 at 7:16 PM permalink
guess not
26. John Doe on Oct 05, 2007 at 3:55 AM permalink
7a1b4a755573a3b949b716c009b22f21
27. Rizzo on Oct 10, 2007 at 6:12 AM permalink
I experimented with fasting and smoking copious amounts of marijuana. There are also some drugs I will only do if I have fasted for 24 hours and am well hydrated, like Salvia.