The key to a great work ethic? Glucose | Hacker News Reader

The key to a great work ethic? Glucose

theglobeandmail.com

20 pointsherbertlui11 comments

Hmm... so the body somehow 'uses' this mysterious 'glucose' to produce 'energy'? This sounds like a major breakthrough in biological studies! </sarcasm>

"I think it’s important to build up routines, habits, and things you repeat on a daily or weekly basis so that you’re not wasting glucose or decision-making bandwidth..."

Seriously? This person clearly has no idea what 'glucose' is, or how the body metabolizes, stores, and uses sugars.

I didn't know that... Can you expand then on what glucose is and how it metabolizes, stores and uses sugars?

Glucose is 'simple' sugar, like Fructose or Galactose (as opposed to 'complex' sugars which are just chains of simple sugars).

Glucose is what your cells oxidize ('burn') to make energy. Assuming you are reasonably healthy (namely, your liver and pancreas are functioning properly) your body will keep the amount of glucose in your blood around 80 to 110 mg/dL (4.4 to 6.1 mmol/L for those of you not in the US). It does this in a variety of ways... You body can produce more insulin to shift the glucose into the cells, and some cells (mostly in the liver) can chain lots of glucose molecules together into a big 'storage' molecule called glycogen. If your blood sugar drops too low, your body will cut back on insulin production and start releasing glucose from your glycogen stores.

Another side effect of your blood sugar getting a little low is that you get hungry, and being hungry is distracting. It not that your body is _actually_ low on glucose... A normal healthy adult has plenty of glycogen stores, and long before those are depleted your body will start breaking down stored lipids into their component fatty acids, which your cells can metabolize just as effectively as glucose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sugar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis

> around 80 to 110 mg/dL (4.4 to 6.1 mmol/L for those of you not in the US)

uhm, aren't both metric? mg/dL looks like "milligrams per deciliter" to me

Yeah, they're both metric (you have the units right), but for some reason the US tends to use the mg/dL convention, where the rest of the world (or at least Canada and Europe) use the mmol/L convention.

Every byte of bandwidth wasted on this article is a byte to much. Act now! Together we can stop bs (byte slips)

So ... they tested whether the participants have more energy on sugar rush or hungry. And the ones having fuel had more mental endurance. Surprise.

To actually test the glucose hypothesis you have to compare fast with same calorie intake of sugar/starch/fat/protein/ and see the results.

Currently it just means you make better decisions while not hungry.

"Building routines means you eventually require less glucose consumption to perform the same tasks. They become automatic habits" - this is genius!

My colleagues just pointed out that the study of substituting diet sweetener for sugar in participants is flawed.

It doesn't prove that the sweeteners are also having an effect. There should be a control of drink without sweetener or glucose.

I find it comical that The Globe and Mail, an apparently reputable newspaper, linked to a Livestrong content-farmed post in one of their articles.

Also, an alternative to StickK is Beeminder, which is, in my opinion, a superior service.

Revisit your assumption

Globe and Mail is Canada's NYPost.

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