Does exercise make you smarter? We thought that exercise sends the blood racing through the body in and out of the brain, bringing oxygen that ignite the neurons that Miriam screamed were not lighting up in the prosecutors' brains.

Well, guess what? Exercise does not feed but sucks energy the brain needs to work. When you run, swim, do weights, any other sustained exercise, you get stupid for a while. This explains a lot of athletic behavior. And why athletes have a faraway look and open mouths.

New experiments show when people exercise, brain glycogen drops as it rushes to the legs, when it should stay in the head. That is not all. When exercise stops, the level of brain glycogen has all but dropped to the floor which is why athletes are always looking down after exercise. And there it was. Brains starved for energy, empty of intelligence.

But when they are ingesting carbohydrates, quaffing spaghetti a la vongole, lasagna, and linguini with truffle oil, tracers in the food showed it rushing from the tummy straight to the brain, going straight for the most starved for nutrition.

But there was more. It was found that more nutrition went to the brain than it ever had before so that glycogen levels rose, not just back to their normal levels but way, way above than before, as much as 60% more. The body was not just replenishing. It was overcompensating to the part that lost the most from exercise: the brain. And not just the brain but the remembering and reasoning parts thereof.

So exercise is like exhausting gas to gun a jet engine while pulling on the brake and then letting go the break and shooting across the runway and flying off.

I knew this without research. I never liked exercise. I hate it. It's hard, tiring and you don't end up with something you can sell like a license plate in prison. Though I must say, I had come from strenouous exercise when I heard Corona explain for three hours and my attention never waned. But that's just me.

What does this say? 1) No pain, no gain. 2) To get something you must lose something. Dullness is a prelude to sharpness. 3) Require public officials to rise and shine early, and starve the rest of the day. The best are lean and hungry.

Keep well.