Skipping meals isn't good for your health. It also appears that the effects of hunger go beyond physical health as it apparently also has implication on marital relationships.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) April 14, researchers from the department of communications and psychology of the Ohio State University involved 107 couples who have been married for an average of 12 years to test their hypothesis about self-control.
The researchers monitored the subject's blood glucose levels twice a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, for 21 days. The subjects were also told that by night time, they had to stick a certain number of needles into voodoo dolls depending on how angry they were with their spouses beginning with zero which means they were not angry at all to as many as 51 needles.
The researchers found that spouses regardless of gender tend to stick more pins into the dolls when their glucose levels were at the lowest. They also observed that the subjects with the lowest blood sugar levels tend to stick twice many as pins into their voodoo dolls as the subjects with the highest blood sugar levels suggesting an association between hostility and low blood sugar levels.
Study researcher Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at the Ohio State University, said that a person's ability to control aggression is hampered by lower sugar level as evidenced by the results of the study that showed a person's ability to fight off negative emotions is affected when his blood sugar is lower than its normal level.
Study researcher Nathan DeWall, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, also noted that their study showed self-control requires energy. Energy, however, is in scarce supply when a person is hungry.
Scott Weltzer, vice chairman of the department of psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center said that hunger plays a role in frustration and temperament and this is all the more evident in close relationships such as those between husband and wife.
"Marital tension is analogous to a taught rubber band, and hunger can be the force that causes it to snap," Weltzer said. "We are all less inhibited around our loved ones and more likely to lash out at home than we are in the workplace."
