The Nutritionista on Being Mental

As a dork/scientist, I get overly excited about attending conventions where other dorks/scientists present results from their recent experiments.  Besides hearing about the latest and greatest on nutrition research, it is a glorious occasion to watch polyester suits and bow ties socialize over white zinfandel, speaking in string of acronyms and scientific colloquialisms. If I had a dollar for every bad pun or silly science joke I heard over the past 3 days, I'd be flying home in a private jet instead of this clown car called a commercial airliner.
This year I went to a session called, Mental Energy, because who wouldn't want to learn more about that?  "Yes please, I need more of that asap to perk up my EEG and bpms!"  (EEG = electroencephalography, aka brain activity and bpm = beats per minute, aka heart rate).

According to one of the presenters, well over half of all women over 30 feel like they need more energy.  So I thought I'd re-cap some of the more interesting learnings from the session for all the SHE's out there:

1. Caffeine is the only food substance that definitely stimulates energy.
2. About 15% of the population has a funky gene that makes it difficult for them to process caffeine.  These are folks that get amped up and jittery from just one cup of coffee.  My condolences to all of you with this funky gene, and apparently, you know who you are according to Dr. Dude.
3. There is a scientist from the UK that could be Paul Rudd's identical twin.  He is clearly not related or a fan of the actor because he did not laugh when I asked him if he likes "slappin' the base".
4. Dr. Paul Rudd's twin is doing research on how very small doses of certain herbal extracts might affect things like memory or attention.  It was hard to understand what he was talking about because he kept pronouncing the "h" in "herbal" when he should know that we call them "erbs" around these parts. 
5. Eating a breakfast consisting of slower digesting carbohydrates (e.g., oatmeal) or low in carbohydrates (e.g., eggs) helps your memory and attention later in the day, but only a little bit.  You're better off with a cup of coffee or tea.
6. Exercise also increases mental energy, although no one really wanted to talk about that very much.  Too much effort, I guess
7. All of the Dr. Dorks/Scientists presenting in the session on mental energy appeared to be lacking energy themselves (Dr. Monotones...all of them).  This leads me to believe that they are in the 15% of people that cannot tolerate caffeine, and therefore they have dedicated their lives to finding other foods to help them be high-energy people instead of robots.  Rock on Dr. Robots!  Maybe if you come up with something that directly competes with caffeine, my latte will only cost $2 instead of $6.