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Eat bananas

bananaI’ve never heard of this before, but I read here that eating bananas wil help deal with presentation nerves.  I can’t for the life of me figure why it might work, but if it does, who am I argue!?!?

Actually, the other ideas on the page are pretty sensible, so there might be something to this one, too.  Anyone tried it?  Did it work?  Anyone know why it might work?

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{ 5 } Comments

  1. Chris | May 6, 2007 at 11:46 pm | Permalink

    Bananas have lots of carbs in them, and carbs calm you down. Why carbs calm you down, I’m not entirely sure.

  2. simon | May 7, 2007 at 9:46 am | Permalink

    So by that logic I can eat pizza! Yippeeeee! :)

  3. Laura | May 27, 2007 at 9:39 pm | Permalink

    Strange as it may sound, blowing on a banana helps with presentation nerves. Yes, it may look silly, but the science is sound.

    By blowing on a banana, you get control of your diaphragm, which helps calm you.

    Don’t have a banana to blow? Relax, and blow your own thumb. Same result, more portable, and much less ridiculous.

    Don’t have thumbs? Here’s an even less ridiculous option:

    Just take a deep breath, man.

    No bananas necessary!

    (Stop laughing. This is serious! And by all means, don’t hyperventilate. And don’t blow your banana on stage!)

  4. simon | May 28, 2007 at 8:08 pm | Permalink

    Thanks Laura.

    Recently (at one of our public presentation skills courses) a nutritionist who attended suggested it was particularly useful to eat a banana because a] there was lots of carbohydrate energy and b] it contained the precursors to seratonin (the feel-good hormone).

  5. Tracy Dempsey | June 11, 2007 at 2:21 pm | Permalink

    Hi Simon,

    It’s the tryptophan that does the trick - it’s an essential amino acid/precusor to seratonin, and has been found useful as a sleeping aid, as well as being touted as an effective anti-depressant. As well as bananas it’s present in oats, dried dates, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, red meat, eggs, fish, poultry, sesame, chickpeas, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, spirulina, peanuts and …. chocolate. :)

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