Be honest. Think about your typical behavior in work just before you eat lunch. How you treat your family just before you eat supper. Now ask yourself this all-important question.

Am I prone to bouts of hanger?This is not a typo. "Hanger" is what's called a blend, a combination of two previously established words to create a third. Words created this way purely for humor tend to have a short life, like "pagejacking," "testilying," and, "spamouflage," but blends necessitated by societal change often thrive and legitimize, such as "electrocute," "telethon," and "motel."It's still to be determined whether "hanger," the blending of "hunger" and "anger," is an example of the former or the latter. What is known is that the word accurately reflects the results of a study that appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: that to some degree bad behavior can be correlated to blood sugar levels.So it appears that the premise behind the Snickers' long-running and hugely successful campaign ad, that "You're not you when you're hungry," is dead on.Or, as you've recently learned in a recent Snickers' commercial: Godzilla is a superb ping-pong player, a suave lady's man, and a playful practical joker except when he's hungry. Then he trashes your town.In the three-year study, 107 married couples first completed typical surveys on relationship satisfaction. Then the researchers got creative.They measured the anger one spouse felt for another through the use of voodoo dolls.Yes, that's right, researchers used voodoo dolls. But previous research had established that the use of the dolls was an accurate gauge. Subjects received a doll that represented their spouse, 51 pins, and the instructions to insert the pins depending on how angry they were at their spouse that day.For 21 days, the subjects did the sticking without their spouses being present and recorded the number of pins used each day. They also used a blood glucose meter before breakfast and before bed to record their glucose levels.Even when the researchers factored in the satisfaction or lack of satisfaction the couples had with their relationship before the experiment started, a clear pattern emerged: low blood sugar, more pins.This even held true for the couples who had the highest levels of satisfaction.Brad Bushman, the lead author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University, believes the link between low blood sugar and anger is simply one of energy. Self-control is needed to positively channel anger and that takes energy.He explains in an article posted at Medical News.com that even though the brain is only an average of 2 percent of your body weight, it requires 20 percent of your caloric intake to function most effectively.But the solution to low blood sugar is not to chomp on Swedish fish or licorice every time you feel frustrated with somebody else. According to Liberty Medical.com, a feeling of irritation and/or fatigue, the inability to concentrate, and the tendency to be short-tempered are all possible if your blood glucose level gets too high.So to keep from unwarranted anger or even spousal abuse here's what you need to do: follow the dietary advice I've dispensed many times before.Eat frequently, preferably every two to three hours.Create feedings that contain mostly protein and complex carbs.Keep tabs on your dietary fat intake. While many can maintain a healthy weight on a diet that allows for liberal amounts of healthy fats, such as the eating patterns espoused in the Mediterranean diet, just as many will not lose weight without a conscious reduction of dietary fat.This is not so much a testimony to fat's adverse effect on health as it is a product of science and society. Fat contains twice the calories of protein or carbohydrates and Americans are accustomed to large portions.One way to keep portions large and pounds off is to keep from calorie-dense foods, which tend to be high in fat and simple carbohydrates.Possibly the best bit of advice to give to you is to limit your ingestion of simple carbs to no more than 10 percent of your total daily caloric intake and to never I repeat, never eat simple carbohydrates in isolation.When you do this, you not only consume calories that do little to help your health unless you are really low on glycogen from a hard workout but in 90 minutes or so you also create specifically what eating is supposed to counteract.Low blood sugar.