BY: JODI FURR COLTON, Esq.
Boca Raton Divorce Attorney
Don’t call the Divorce Lawyer just yet.
If your spouse has been on your last nerve lately, or if you feel yourself getting really, really mad more and more often, it turns out you may just be hungry. A recent study reported in PsychologyToday found that low blood sugar correlates with heightened aggression between spouses. In other words, if you are hungry you are probably also angry. And cranky. And irritable. It turns out that the lower your blood sugar, the more aggressive and hostile you are, both in thought and action. So, as one’s grandmother might say: You should eat something!
The study, in which researchers followed 107 married couples for a 21-day couples’ “retreat” to test their aggression, sounds more like the premise of a Jennifer Aniston comedy than the basis for a scientific research.
To test aggressive impulse (thinking that you want to poke your spouse’s eyes out but not actually doing it) the researchers gave participants a voodoo doll and pins, with instructions to place as many pins in the doll every night as needed to show how angry they were with their spouse.
To test aggressive behavior, the researchers had the spouses wear headphones while they competed against each other in 25-part tasks. After each task, the winner decided how loudly and for how long to blast the loser with a noise through the headphones. All the while, their blood glucose levels were being measured.
What the study authors learned is that it’s bad to fight when you are hungry. Also: living in a constant sate of fluctuating blood sugar may both make you both more irritating to others and make others more irritating to you.
That will definitely affect your home life.
So, before you start yelling, take a deep breath, count to ten, and go eat something. Make your grandmother happy for once. If that doesn’t work, maybe go ahead and schedule a consultation with the divorce lawyer. It can’t hurt.
Jodi Furr Colton is a Boca Raton attorney with the law firm of Brinkley Morgan. She focuses her practice on divorce, alimony, equitable distribution, parental responsibility and timesharing. Jodi is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Swarthmore College and Pine Crest. She is happily married and the mother of two. Telephone Boca Raton Divorce Attorney Jodi Colton at 561-241-3113.
