Eat your way to a happy married life

16 April 2014 - 02:02 By Katharine Child
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Before you start a fight with your spouse, have a bite to eat.

A new study published in the Public Academy of Sciences journal shows the lower a person's blood sugar is, the more likely they will stick lots of needles into a voodoo doll representing their spouse.

Psychology researchers at the University of Ohio took 107 couples who had been married for an average of 12 years and measured how aggressive they felt towards each other in the evening, when their blood sugar was low.

For three weeks, each person was asked "to stick between 0 and 51 pins in the doll each evening, depending how angry they were with their spouse".

Three people poked their voodoo doll with the maximum 51 pins.

The researchers linked low blood sugar caused by insufficient food levels to a higher degree of aggression.

They took into account the level of marital bliss in relationships by asking couples to individually complete surveys on how satisfied they were with their relationships.

Regardless of whether the marriage was happy or not, the university's Brad Bushman felt the researchers could link higher aggression to low blood sugar.

"When they had lower blood glucose, they felt angrier and took it out on the dolls representing their spouse," Bushman said . "We found a clear link between aggressive impulses as seen with the dolls and actual aggressive behaviour ."

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