victorian221b | Hunger makes you sharper?

My friend had no breakfast himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition. “At present I cannot spare energy and nerve force for digestion,” he would say in answer to my medical remonstrances. (NORW)

Holmes’s propensity to starve himself while on a case is well-known. What surprised me, though, that it might be scientifically justified.

I watched a BBC documentary called Eat, Fast, Live Longer (2012) by Michael Mosley, a journalist with a medical background. There he consulted a number of experts on nutrition and aging. Among those was Professor Mark P. Mattson from National Institute on Aging, Baltimore.

Here’s a transcript of the documentary fragment:

When they examined the brains of the fasting mice, they found something extraordinary. These green objects are newborn brain cells. Sporadic bouts of hunger actually trigger new neurones to grow.

Michael: “Why should a brain start to generate new nerve cells when you stop eating?”

Mark: “If you think about it in evolutionary terms, it makes sense that if you’re hungry, you’d better increase your cognitive ability. That will give you a survival advantage if you can remember where location of the food is and so on.”

It seems like fasting stresses your gray matter the way the exercise stresses your muscles.

Michael: “So hunger really does make you sharper.”

Mark: “Yes. We think so.”

It’s amazing that ACD appears to have had some notion about it in the 19th century and weaved it into Holmes’s image. Discovering such things about the canon is really fun.