min() and max() functions are implemented in MySQL as macros.
This means that max(a,b) is expanded to: ((a) > (b) ? (a) : (b))
Note how 'a' is quoted two times.
Now imagine 'a' is a recursive function call that's several 10s of levels deep.
And the recursive function does max() with a function arg as well to dive into
recursion.
This means that simple function call can take most of the clock time.
Identified and fixed several such calls to max()/min() : including the IF() 
sql function implementation.