(WJW) - We’ve all been there. It’s been hours since lunch, and your mood is tanking fast. You feel short on patience and highly irritable. You’re hangry. It’s not just a cute word, and you’re not being dramatic. Biologically, you are fighting an incredible stress response. Science behin d the grumpiness Kelli Santiago, a clinical dietician and wellness coach at University Hospitals, described the feeling that begins to take over in terms of “What happens if I don’t eat?” She added, “It can feel very panicky.” Our bodies need fuel to keep running. When you are hungry and your blood sugar drops, the brain is one of the first things affected. It becomes harder to concentrate. “You’re not able to focus, complete a task,” Santiago added. “We might get distracted easily, we might be feeling a little tired, just from the effects of the low blood sugar,” she said. Low glucose also activates your “fight or flight” response. Your body begins to release cortisol and adrenaline. “The body does not want to pass out,” Santiago said. “It's either eat this cookie or hit the floor.” “You’re not you when you’re hungry”  Do you remember the Betty White Super Bowl commercial for Snickers? The 2010 commercial features Betty White trash-talking with a group of guys playing tackle football in the mud. Betty grabs a Snickers, and then transforms into “Mike,” with the tagline: “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” While hangry became an official part of the zeitgeist when it made it into the Oxford Dictionary in 2018, it seems humans throughout time have been looking for a way to describe the feeling. “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - Virginia Woolf “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.” – Albert Einstein “A hungry man can’t see right or wrong. He just sees food.” – Pearl S. Buck “Eat something, you’ll feel better.” – Every grandma everywhere Or the old saying, “Don’t go to the grocery store hungry.” Symptoms of being 'hangry' Decision-making Science shows hunger significantly affects our ability to make decisions. “We found that a part of the brain that is crucial for decision-making is surprisingly sensitive to the levels of hunger hormones produced in our gut,” said Dr. Andrew MacAskill, lead author, UCL Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology. A 2023 study by University College London researchers was considered the first to show how hunger hormones directly impact the activity of the brain’s hippocampus when an animal is considering food. The study in mice was published in Neuron.  Aggression A 2021 study found male fruit flies became more aggressive when food became scarcer. Dietary stress was shown to directly influence the flies’ behavior. Several studies also show that hunger can affect our emotions. Emotional distress The American Psychological Association theorized in 2018 that when people experience hunger, the emotional distress then prompts them to process everything with a negative filter (look for the bad!) The research also pointed out that while the word hangry is associated with “anger,” the range of emotions is much broader -- from feeling jumpy to even flashbacks of traumatic situations. Hunger fullness scale Santiago said University Hospitals and many other medical institutions look at hunger in stages. They use the Hunger Fullness Scale, with Level 1 being "starving" and Level 10 being "extremely stuffed." “Ten is like, overly stuffed -- like, think after Thanksgiving dinner, 10 is like painfully, uncomfortably full. We don't want to be at a 10; 10 is not a pleasant deal,” Santiago explained. “A one is like, you’re starving, about to pass out, blood sugar is low, you’re dizzy,” Santiago said. “Three is like the onset of hunger,” she added, referring to "pretty hungry" on the scale. “I like to call it a polite hunger, if you will." “We know it's been a little while since the last time we ate. We can feel those first beginning signs of being hungry. That's where we kind of want to start to eat is at a three,” she said. “We want to stop ourselves before we get to a two,” she said, referring to "very hungry" on the scale. “And you can identify, like, physically what do you feel right now? Mentally, how do you feel right now? Are you able to focus? Are you not able to focus?” Santiago said. “So sometimes it can be a hard thing to feel because we tend to blow right past it.” The remaining levels on the scale are "little hungry" (4), "satisfied" (5), "little full (6), "uncomfortable" (7), "too full" (8), and "very uncomfortable" (9). Maybe you just need a snack The first thing to do is get the blood sugar back up, Santiago said. “That's when we tend to go for crackers or cookies or even juice. Something like that is going to bring the blood sugar up really quickly,” she said. (Getty Images) Santiago said quick-digesting carbs such as potatoes, white rice and pasta, are good options for a blood sugar boost, so you can then focus on a protein. Santiago said once the body hits Level 2, you’re also more likely to overeat. “Your body is just going to go for anything and everything,” she said. “Whether you call it hangry. Or, you know, you identify two as hangry and three as a polite hunger or whatever you want to label it," said Santiago. "It all ties back to what am I physically feeling?” ...read more read less