Some symptoms of hypoglycemia include headaches, weakness, nervousness, trembling and unclear thinking. Another thing you might notice is when you are hypoglycemic, it’s not a good time to talk with you spouse about finances.

A recent article, published (ahead of print) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences by Brad Bushman, et al used voodoo dolls and loud noise blasts to measure the aggression spouses felt at one another.

[E]ach evening participants stuck between 0 and 51 pins into a voodoo doll that represented their spouse, depending how angry they were with their spouse. To measure aggression, participants competed against their spouse on a 25-trial task in which the winner blasted the loser with loud noise through headphones. As expected, the lower the level of glucose in the blood, the greater number of pins participants stuck into the voodoo doll, and the higher intensity and longer duration of noise participants set for their spouse.

I’m relating to the feelings of aggression thing a bit lately. No against my wife – or against anyone in particular, but just a low level sense of irritability most likely attributable to the diet I recently adopted. I’ve been trying to exercise more lately, but the more I exercised, the more I found myself ‘grazing’ in the kitchen, looking for just anything.

As I continued exercising and eating more to compensate, I was getting more and more frustrated by any return on my exercise investment, so I finally gave in and admitted that I needed to do something about the other end of the calorie equation. I considered a couple of methods, but finally settled on the ‘Lose It’ app for my iPhone. Basically, this app serves as a food and exercise journal with a little goal-oriented motivation thrown in for good measure. one of the things I liked best about the app was its use of graphs to follow weight loss and project how long, if trends continue, it will take to achieve a weight loss goal.

Really, there’s nothing like a food diary to limit what you eat.

But it’s not just hypoglycemia. Other work suggests that just engaging in self-limiting behavior – exerting self-control – leads to increased aggression. “In one study people who choose an apple instead of a chocolate bar were more likely to choose movies with anger and revenge themes than milder movies.”

Well, according to the app, I only have to keep things under control for another 100 days. Another 100 days of movies to line up.