It is soon 13h and you have no patience. More than really annoyed by your office colleagues, your children, your half, would you not rather hungry (e)?

Hunger is an impulse orchestrated by an archaic region of the brain, the hypothalamus. When the body lacks nutrients, it sends out emergency signals to whet the appetite. These induce unpleasant sensations (contraction of the stomach, acid reflux ...) which are necessarily reflected on the mood.

The drop in the level of glucose in the blood, which can threaten the proper functioning of the brain, also generates a state of stress that increases aggression. This survival mechanism, recently deciphered by researchers at Texas A & M University, explains in part why one is grumpy when the belly screams famine. But other phenomena intervene.

When emotions disrupt our relationship to food

All hungers do not result from a nutritional need. Many are related to an overflow of emotions. "The urge to eat also appears when we are anxious, anxious, stressed or destabilized," says Dr. Marie Thirion, pediatrician and author of "Why I'm hungry?" (Albin Michel ed.) This is a compensation phenomenon that takes place very early in life.

A bottle is given to a baby to silence his tears and a candy to a child to make him forget a scratch in the knee. As a result, foods become sedatives. In their absence, we fail to manage our negative emotions and become irritable.

Sugar, a tranquilizer that can turn into addiction

Sweet compulsions can, however, make us insatiable. By dint of swallowing high-dose sugar, some of us develop an addiction that causes true feelings of lack. Philadelphia researchers have shown that they activate the same areas of the brain as drugs.

These repeated cravings can only be soothed by the absorption of sweet food, which triggers a secretion of dopamine and endorphin, the hormones of reward and pleasure. Otherwise the frustration is watching. For lack of nibbling, it is nervousness assured.