from Hacker News

Blood sugar level follows perceived time rather than actual time in diabetics

by ve55 on 11/23/21, 1:01 AM with 82 comments

• by hirundo on 11/23/21, 2:15 AM

  Suggestion works on taste buds too. In the nineties I had a thing for salsa and ate it most days at the office over things I steamed in the microwave. But I ate the mild salsas and couldn't tolerate the hot stuff. Still can't.

  So my boss decides to spice it up a bit, and mixes in some hot salsa. I didn't notice. Each day he gradually added more until it was all the hot stuff. I didn't notice. He went out and bought hotter stuff. For some reason the whole office was watching me when I made some quiet comment about the mild salsa being hotter than it used to be. They thought that was pretty funny.

  But I really didn't notice. If you can lie to the tongue, why not the liver?

• by jonmc12 on 11/23/21, 2:06 AM

  Paper is from 2016. Huberman Labs has a great roundup (Nov '21) of the research on time perception - and several other related series on dopamine. The title of OP was not surprising after listening. https://hubermanlab.com/time-perception-and-entrainment-by-d...

• by Glench on 11/23/21, 12:33 PM

  It gets much crazier. Here's a study in Nature showing "Glucose metabolism responds to perceived sugar intake more than actual sugar intake":

  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72501-w?mc_cid=2b...

• by jrootabega on 11/23/21, 1:04 PM

  I think people like to think of the brain/mind as a black hole/sink of the bodily processes and organs, but it has profound influence over them. Most obviously, there is fight or flight. But it's more subtle than that. The brain can influence inflammation in other parts of the body, which I can't back up right now, since it's just something I read in a science magazine a few years ago. Although here's something related about how the vagus nerve interacts with inflammation and metabolism:

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4082307/

  Emotionally relevent hormones, the most obvious of which is cortisol, influence all kinds of bodily processes like hunger, metabolism, energy, etc. And one interesting one I can think of in my own life is bladder activity - ever notice how, if you're on a long trip, you can hold in your pee without even thinking about it, but as soon as you get home and head towards the bathroom, it's like your bladder is about to explode? Or how you can still get up and pee even if it doesn't feel like you need to?

  And I think many of us have probably had the experience where we got so wrapped up in an interesting and challenging task that we forgot to become hungry, and maybe even missed our opportunity to be hungry until the next day.

• by yosito on 11/23/21, 5:15 AM

  What if perceived time is actually following blood sugar levels, and not the other way around?

• by monocasa on 11/23/21, 4:11 AM

  I guess I always figured that your 'clock rate' was linearly correlated with your overall metabolism usage up to a point.

• by jablongo on 11/23/21, 6:54 AM

  This makes sense. To be clear, perceived time is not directly affecting blood glucose, it is affecting speeds of digestive breakdown and/or insulin secretion rates (most type-2s still secrete insulin). Interesting that this study was even run on diabetics at all (as opposed to euglycemic people) - not sure what the utility is there besides them being familiar with continuous glucose monitors.

• by FeepingCreature on 11/23/21, 9:40 AM

  Important note!

  > Another potential confounding factor concerns the imbalanced number of times each group switched video games. Participants switched games every 15 min, according to the clocks they were given, so participants in the fast clock group switched more frequently than participants in other groups. One might propose that the increased switching in the fast clock group might have led to greater activity and exertion, causing blood glucose to decline more rapidly. The switching process entailed loading up a different video game on a computer, which is not a particularly demanding task. Even so, we controlled for this, to a degree, by instructing participants to alert the experimenters when it was time to change games, at which point the experimenters performed the actual switching. No actual effort was required of participants to make the change, aside from alerting the experimenter. It seems implausible that the effort required to signal the experimenter at switching times could have played a significant role in the intergroup differences observed.

  They did not switch every 15 minutes! They switched every 15 fake minutes, ie. every 7 minutes in the fast group and every 30 minutes in the slow group. The paper waves this away, but I suspect that getting used to a new game takes more energy than they realize.

  A way to test this would be by varying the time that the last game is played, in order to measure blood sugar change during beginning or end of a play phase. If this is correct, consumption should be bigger at the start and lesser at the end of each phase, regardless of how long it actually is.

• by mjevans on 11/23/21, 1:54 AM

  This seems to indicate that studies should be designed to investigate the effectiveness of diets with respect to expectations and future plans; since the system is complex and literally based on the subject's memories and expectations of future events.

• by lettergram on 11/23/21, 1:55 AM

  I’m inclined to believe this is an inaccurate study. I’d really like to see it replicated.

  That said, assuming it’s accurate — that’s kind of an amazing physiological response to perceived time. I wonder if other systems can be impacted or what would cause this particular system to be impacted? I could see people’s metabolism changing based on perception(s).

  So many questions, but an exciting and interesting area.

• by cromka on 11/23/21, 12:14 PM

  2023 hottest career path: "Insulin mindfulness coach".

• by dSebastien on 11/23/21, 3:41 AM

  So people with type 2 diabetes should be advised to get bored more often to lower their glucose levels? :p

• by lngnmn2 on 11/23/21, 3:23 AM

  There is no such thing as time in this context.

  It is an abstraction superimposed and assumed by an external observer.

  Molecular biology does not have notion of time, only phases of other cyclical processes which is a completely different "mechanical" notion.

• by monkeybutton on 11/23/21, 3:36 AM

  What happens if someone with diabetes takes LSD?

• by banana_giraffe on 11/23/21, 2:04 AM

  Assuming this can be replicated, it'd be interesting to know if knowing the clock is running fast is enough to offset whatever's going on here.

  I'd also be curious to know what impact the speed of the clock had on game play, did it impact their ability to play in any measurable way?

• by Xen0byte on 11/23/21, 9:51 AM

  OP follows Andrew Huberman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IWDAqodDas :)

• by d--b on 11/23/21, 6:38 AM

  Ah they should have asked the different groups to change game at varying intervals. Now they can’t rule out that switching games faster is the cause for more sugar burning.

• by brador on 11/23/21, 4:17 AM

  This could just be a simple stress response to the task ending.

• by stared on 11/23/21, 4:31 PM

  So, it is sugar consumption per turn, rather than per time.

• by swayvil on 11/23/21, 4:10 AM

  Suggestion-induced physiological phenomena like this are impressive and noteworthy, for sure.

  But consider the effects of suggestion upon the more malleable parts of a person. Your mind and opinion.

  Consider the powers of authority, conformity, marketing, indoctrination.

  Black is white. Up is down.

• by Lhiw on 11/23/21, 1:43 AM

  The brain seems to have control over more of the body than we thought.

  Is there potential treatments that could result from this?

  I wonder if type one also exhibits this trait?