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Comment by findthewords | Hacker News Reader

There are three ways to flush acute glutamate buildup from the brain:

1. Exercise. The brain can direct glutamate to be used as an energy source to dispose of excess amounts. Glutamate naturally flows by diffusion from areas of high concentration (in blood vessel wall cells) through the blood vessel wall into the circulating bloodstream, where the concentration is lower.

2. Eat a tuna sandwich or drink an energy drink. Vitamin B6 is a a coenzyme in the synthesis of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA from glutamate. Thinking jobs is also coincident with rising popularity of energy drinks from 2000s onwards.

The Economist is most likely regurgitating Nature:

11 August 2022 Why thinking hard makes us feel tired https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02161-5

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> The Economist is most likely regurgitating Nature:

> 11 August 2022 Why thinking hard makes us feel tired https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02161-5

And Nature was only citing: Wiehler, A., Branzoli, F., Adanyeguh, I., Mochel, F. & Pessiglione, M. Current Biology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.010 (2022).

This is the only top-level comment responding to the content of the article, not the mangled HN title stating a trivial commonsense fact.

What's the 3rd way?

I was just saying the same thing :)

It's gotta be sleep, right?

> “We’re still far from the point where we can say that working hard mentally causes a toxic buildup of glutamate in the brain,” says the study’s first author, Antonius Weihler, a computational psychiatrist at the GHU Paris Psychiatry and Neurosciences. But if it does, it underscores the well-known restorative powers of sleep, which “cleanses” the brain by flushing out metabolic waste.

https://www.science.org/content/article/mentally-exhausted-s...

Cache invalidation, probably.

...though "naming things" also qualifies :D

No, I think it's off by one errors.

OP is (trying to) findthewords.

Let me think....? Er...? Hm... ... Doh!

There are more than 3!

N acetyl cysteine is a supplement that does.... A lot! But it's also a glutamate mop.

And what does it turn into after it combines with that glutamate?

Good question!

Glutathione. Amazing.

There's a lot more to it than that of course, glutamatergic dysfunction and, well, nearly any neurotransmitter is so complicated (this is more a general statement to the comment thread readers at this point).

I had not known about the diffusion of glutamate as an energy source! That's very cool and news to me. I'd like to learn more about that at some point soon.

Would a good tekka maki do the trick in place of a tuna sandwich?

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