Richard Davidson is a prominent psychologist who studied Buddhist monks and their ability to focus their attention. With a single study, he provided evidence that people can improve their attention through a great deal of work and through self-control. It was previously believed that attention was the root of all things in psychology, but with this single study, he suggested that it lies in self-control. While self-control may or may not be the foundation of psychology, the fact that a prominent psychologist used their research to suggest that it is, shows that self-control is incredibly important.  All humans use self-control on a daily basis to go about their lives, yet we do not know much about it.

Richard Davidson

Being able to control yourself is incredibly important to everyone, as Davidson suggested. What is interesting is that self-control has been suggested to have some kind of limited energy source. Many studies have shown that self-control is limited and that the more you exercise it, the less you have. In 2007, several researchers found a significant link between blood glucose and self-control.

So is Blood Glucose level the smoking gun? We don’t really know yet. The idea is that the lower your blood glucose is, the lower your self-control is, and you can replenish it by eating or drinking. The issue is that the current research decreases your self-control by performing in self-control tasks. While this does decrease your self-control, it does nothing to test if blood glucose has something to do with it. The best way to do that is to perform a task that lowers your blood glucose without lowering your self-control.

Exercise is the answer. By performing physical activity, our bodies naturally burn blood glucose. By performing light physical activity, you do not need self-control. This means that you can decrease blood glucose by something other than self-control tasks, and by doing this, you can determine if blood glucose is having an effect on self-control.

If you are interested in learning more about this research, please read the introduction in the final manuscript.