A Sudoku diet can hlep you burn 90 calories an hour whilst sitting on your sofa.
Puzzles are the new workout, so says a researcher who makes the assertion above.
This is the eyebrow-raising claim some mental agility experts made yesterday in an attempt to encourage more people to log on to their brain-training website.
Researcher Tim Forrester, from cannyminds.com, explained: ‘Our brains require 0.1 calories every minute simply to survive. When we do something challenging such as a puzzle or a quiz we can burn through 1.5 calories every minute.’
The brain is comprised of millions of nerve cells known as neurons which transmit messages to the body.
Doing puzzles and quizzes apparently burns an average of 90 calories per hour, compared to a 56 calories’ chocolate chip cookie, a 57 calories’ custard cream and an 85 calories’ jammy dodger.
Neurons produce chemicals called neurotransmitters to transmit their signals.
These neurons extract three-quarters of sugar glucose, available calories and a fifth of oxygen from the blood to create neurotransmitters.
Therefore, doing difficult crosswords or challenging Sudokus means your brain will want more glucose and extra calories too.
However, it is clearly impossible to think yourself thinner as the brain uses a great of energy, but not fat. Unlike sugars, fat molecules cannot be broken down into glucose.
So should you wish to lose weight, you will need to exercise and eat a healthily balanced diet .
