Thinking Brain hogs more Energy

Though human brain accounts for less than 2% by weight, it is a energy hog. About 20% of all the energy used by our body is consumed by our brain. This is because brain cells are always at work. Even while you sleep, much of your brain is busy managing your body’s physiological and biochemical operations. Brain uses neurotransmitters for sending and receiving the commands and messages to the organs of the body. Like the head honcho of a company, it is always thinking to run the body trouble free and thus constantly consumes more energy. Not only that, the energy requirements of different parts of the brain may differ depending on the nature of work they do.

So it logical to assume that the activities which require more thinking may require the brain to consume more energy. Researcher Tim Forrester, from Cannyminds website, explained: “‘Our brains require 0.1 calories every minute simply to survive. ‘When we do something challenging such as a puzzle or a quiz we can burn through 1.5 calories every minute”.  The brain extracts sugar three-quarters of sugar glucose, available calories and a fifth of oxygen from the blood to create neurotransmitters.So doing difficult crosswords or challenging Sudokus means your brain will crave more glucose and more calories too, added Mr Forrester. This means that if you spent two hours doing puzzles, you would have used 180 calories – which is more than are contained in a creme egg (173) or a bag of Hula Hoops (175), and only slightly less than in a pint of beer (182). Brain extracts energy from glucose only because it is easy to burn unlike the fats which take much longer to breakdown and provide the energy. So although doing puzzles and solving Soduko can burn carbohydrate energy but still you require exercise and work to melt away the extra fat.