Can We Weaken by Thinking too Much?

Does the extra brain power we use to solve a problem make you spend more energy? “The basic answer is yes,” says Ewan McNay, assistant professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Albany. Unlike other parts of the body, the brain works only on glucose sugar. Examining how the brain uses energy in doing work, McNay says strenuous mental activity requires more glucose than simple ones. For example, when you engage in a difficult recall activity, the regions of your brain associated with memory formation start to consume more energy, but the other brain regions do not increase as much.

“You actually burn more energy in an intense thought activity than when watching TV or doing anything else,” he says. But looking at the overall energy consumed by the average person, the energy differences between mental activities are small.

To look at the calories burned in the head from a different perspective, it may be helpful to understand how your body burns energy. Unless you are an expert athlete, most of the energy your body uses isn’t much about movement or exercise. A significant portion of the energy expended (about 8-15%) goes to digesting the food you eat. Much more is used to power your organs and keep you alive and functioning. Also, no part of your body wants as much energy as your brain wants.

USA’s St. “The brain, as an energy-consuming structure, is the most expensive organ we carry with us,” says Marcus Raichle, a professor of ordinary medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in the city of St. Louis. As Raichle found in his research; Although the brain accounts for only 2% of the total body weight, it is responsible for 20% of the body’s energy use.

So on an ordinary day, a person spends about 320 calories just for thinking.

Different mental situations and activities slightly affect the way the brain consumes energy. “If we put you in a scanner and looked at what was happening [in your brain] in front of the TV or while solving puzzles; “When you are given a demanding task, your brain’s activity changes and your brain would spend more energy,” he says.

But if you want to lose weight by thinking, Raichle says that is not possible. Although the brain burns a lot of energy; The changes in brain activity and energy use during a tough mental activity are minor: “Maybe 5% of all brain activity in the background change,” he says.

Even if you keep your brain busy all day long, that 5% change won’t make much of a difference. “It would be very modest in terms of calories,” says Raichle, and says you’ll spend more energy while pacing.

Much of the energy consumed in your brain goes to keeping you alert, watching your surroundings against important information, and managing other “sedentary” activities. In terms of energy demand, “thoughts alone are cheap, but the processes that make them cheap are very expensive,” adds Raichle.

McNay agrees that our brains don’t expend a lot of energy during tough activities than simple activities. He estimates that someone doing a perceptually difficult activity for eight hours will spend about 100 more calories than someone watching TV or daydreaming for the same amount of time. “If you’re doing a really demanding job that uses multiple senses (like learning to use a musical instrument) then you can burn as much as 200 calories,” he says. “But we’re talking about learning a new instrument for eight hours.”

Even in this hypothetical musical instrument learning session; As the amount of glucose decreases, the brain’s ability to stay on task weakens. “Because of the effect of exhaustion, you cannot maintain the same level of perceptual performance,” he says. By eating sugary things, you can replenish your glucose stores and help your brain return to full power. But the calories in these foods easily surpass the number of calories you will burn.

But still, people who spend their days doing mentally demanding activities may end up wasting calories. Even if you burn an extra small amount of calories each day, this could theoretically translate into a meaningful amount over a period of 50 or 60 years. So it is worth thinking through.