**Episode Title: "EP242: Hangry!"**
**Dr. Oreck Bishop:**
I believe we can prevent heart attack. We can put in place strategies to reduce risk. We can literally plan to change your future. Welcome. My name is Dr. Oreck Bishop. I'm a cardiologist, an author, and a keynote speaker. Together with that, I'm the CEO of the Healthy Heart Network, and I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible for as long as possible.
You probably know that heart disease is huge in Australia. Every 20 minutes, someone suffers a heart attack, and we know that over 20 people per day die from heart disease. This is on the backdrop of over 9 million people globally being impacted by this condition. Truthfully, most of these could probably have been avoided if only we knew what to do.
This podcast is all about helping you understand better where blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, and all the other bits and pieces around there can help, together with general health literacy for better overall health. I am on a mission to impact not just heart health but general health on a global scale. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured for a five-star review, and you can share it with your family and friends. Who knows? It may well save someone you love.
Hi, my name's Dr. Rick Bishop. Welcome to my podcast and videocast station, and thank you for joining me. I wanted to talk about being hangry today. We've all heard of the term, and maybe there might be some people who've never heard of the term, but "hangry" is a term that combines hungry and angry. It's something that most mothers would know all about. In fact, the word has made it to the Oxford English Dictionary as a descriptor of a child becoming angry and irritable when they're hungry.
However, although the term has existed in folklore for a good period of time, there's been no scientific support that the phenomena actually exists until recently. A group of researchers decided to take a bunch of patients, relatively young adults—about 64 of them—over a 21-day period. They provided them with a smartphone app that they had to interact with five times a day. They had a scale of, I think it was one to five, on each of the following parameters: hunger, anger, irritability, pleasure, and arousal.
They went through their 21-day study period, entering their data duly five times a day through their smartphone app. And lo and behold, at the end of the collection, when the researchers got to analyze the data, they found a very clear 35% association between hunger, anger, and irritability. So, people were 30% more likely to be angry and irritable if hungry. The researchers concluded that hangry is a real thing.
Well, of course, I have to say I found this really quite fascinating. Part of the reason I found it quite fascinating is that I wonder if there's been any consideration of the food that the participants were consuming, and I couldn't see that in the document that I went through. The reason why I think that's interesting is that I would suspect there may be a difference based on my own experience. I've been doing some restricted eating recently, and I can go 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 hours almost without any significant food and would generally be considered hungry but not angry.
Whether that's me or whether it's because I've mainly adhered to a reduced carbohydrate consumption, which means my sugar levels don't fluctuate too much, is something I wonder about. I have a very clear patient example from a number of years ago of a gentleman who was carrying a little bit too much weight. I had recommended to him that he might benefit from a reduction of carbohydrates. I gave him some resources and sent him on his way.
Well, this gentleman came back several months later and said, "I did what you said, Doc, and I've lost a bit of weight, but the amazing thing is, I think you've cured my road rage." I said, "I'm sorry, what do you mean?" He replied, "No, Doc, I think you've cured my road rage." I said, "What are you talking about?" He explained, "Well, for the last couple of years, I've been seeing a psychologist to deal with my issues of road rage."
Now, obviously, road rage is occurring, you know, four, five, six o'clock in the evening as he's heading home. It turned out that by simply changing his diet, removing the carbohydrates from the middle of the day, and almost certainly smoothing out his insulin response and therefore smoothing out his sugar levels, his road rage dissipated, which I thought was absolutely fascinating.
So, although hangry is a true story, I wonder if it is impacted by the foods we eat. I myself have a butter coffee in the morning that gets me through—a black butter coffee, so a black coffee with a teaspoon of butter in it, blended up. Maybe I have a second decaf or third decaf coffee. The first coffee's caffeinated; the next two are decaf. I only have one caffeinated coffee in the mornings normally.
But I get to lunchtime, and I'll have a piece of cheese, and that will be all—25 to 50 grams of cheese. And that gets me through till about 6:30 in the evening. Now, I have to confess, I probably do get a bit edgy if I'm not eating by that stage, but right up until then, I'm not hangry at all. In fact, I feel remarkably focused and clear. I'd be interested to know what you think. Have you experimented with either or all of the above? And what's been your observation?
Well, I'm going to leave hangry with you for now. I'm going to wish you the very best. Again, I'd like to thank you for joining me. I really do appreciate that. I'd love you to share this podcast with others so that they may benefit if they find the information useful as well. If you do get the chance to rate this podcast, please do, because I put a lot of work in, and I'd love people to check it out.
Till next time, I'm going to wish you the very best. I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.
**Dr. Oreck Bishop:**
Hi. Ever wondered what your risk of heart attack is? You should. It's the single biggest killer in the Western world. We're talking one death less than every 30 minutes in Australia. One death less than every 60 seconds in the United States, and 9 million deaths globally per annum.
Well, how do you check your risk? You can go to www.virtualheartcheck.com.au. You'll find out about your risk and what can be done beyond that to be even more precise.
