Sitting in your favorite sofa, solving Sudoku, it doesn’t sound like an effective way to burn calories. If you are willing to give up exercising and going to the guy for today and refer to the “Coffee Break” section in your favorite newspaper, you may be pleasantly surprised. Solving puzzles for an hour, it seems that it can burn more calories than they contain in many biscuits.
This unexpected statement was reported yesterday by experts attempting to encourage more people to enter in their site so they can develop their brain. Solving puzzles and test burn an average of 90 calories for an hour, they say, while chocolate biscuit contains an average of 56 calories, egg cream 57 calories, biscuit filled with jam 85 calories.
Tim Forrester, a famous researcher, explains: “Our brains require 0.1 calories per minute, only to survive. When we do something challenging like solving puzzles or quizzes, our brains can burn over 1.5 calories per minute.”
The brain is build up with millions of nerve cells, called neurons, which transfers information to the body, he explains. The neurons produce chemicals, also known as neurotransmitters to transfer their signals. Those neurons extract three- quarters of the sugar glucose, the free calories and one fifth of the oxygen in the blood, so they can produce the neurotransmitters. In that case, solving difficult and challenging Sudoku puzzles, means that your brain will need more glucose and calories, adds Mr. Forrester.
It means that, if you’ve spent two hours in solving puzzles, you would use 180 calories- which is more than what the egg cream contains (173) or bag of chips (175) and little less than in a mug of beer (182). The spokesman of the British dietetic association announced: “When you’re thinking too much, your brain needs energy. He can take this energy from burning calories”.
“The brain is like any other part of the human body- if it works hard, it will need more calories to work well.“
But this doesn’t means while thinking you might become weak. Although the brain uses a lot of energy, he doesn’t use the accumulated fat. Unlike the sugars, the fat molecules can’t be broken down into glucose. The amount of energy used during the thinking process is a small percentage of the total energy that the brain uses, which is used continuously so the brain can function, the experts warn.
If you want to lose weight, you still need to do exercises and to eat healthily.
It became clear that last year, millions of people use Sudoku to improve their math abilities, after failing math classes in school.
A lot of people were giving up on math exams after the finals, because the lessons were too boring and difficult for learning. This “lost” generation finds interest in the ability to focus while solving logical puzzles.
Although you don’t have to be good at math for playing Sudoku, the game requires logical thinking, which is the basis of math, the researchers from Reform, London adds.