When we have to think hard, do we burn more calories?

Have you noticed that when you spend your day busy with some activity that requires a lot of attention or reasoning, you feel physically exhausted, as if you have spent hours exercising? But are you not only burning calories, but also calories? According to the folks at Scientific American, not necessarily.

According to the publication, the weight of our brain corresponds on average to only 2% of our body weight. However, every activity he commands requires 20% of all the energy our entire body needs to keep all organs functioning, not to mention any physical activity.

Although this amount of energy - called the basal metabolic rate - varies from person to person (it depends on age, gender, weight, etc.), if we consider, for example, that our body burns an average of 1, 300 calories. just to keep the organs working, that means 260 of them are only used by our brain.

And when we have to think hard, do we spend more calories?

According to the article, answering this question is a bit complicated. Unfortunately, despite numerous studies on this topic, none of them have been able to offer a definitive conclusion. It may be that the brain even burns more calories, but ...

In evaluating various surveys, it seems clear that when we perform an intellectually challenging task for pleasure, this activity makes us mentally stimulated. On the other hand, when we are forced to perform them, especially when we know that these are difficult and tiring tasks, we feel stressed and fatigued. Tiredness actually begins in our minds.

What's more, one study found that when we work hard mentally, we often end up eating more calories, not necessarily because we have spent more energy thinking, but because eating makes us feel comforted, especially because of the emotional stress we have been subjected to. .

Sources: Scientific American, Gizmodo, and PublMed