Is proper nutrition really important for the brain of a programmer (in terms of science)?

Question

IT education

Hello!
1) I often see articles saying how important it is for programmers and other people of mental work to eat right, eat more fruits, nuts, juices, healthy fish and other vitamins / minerals. And also avoid fatty foods, alcohol and smoking. It seems like from the point of view of science, this is all justified, and if you don’t listen, your brain works inefficiently and even ages faster.
2) On the other hand, I see a bunch of programmers thumping to death on Fridays (and sometimes not only on Fridays), drinking beer at work (if at home), smoking in offices, eating fatty kebabs, fast food and who also seem to work fine , solve quickly assigned tasks and "do not take a steam bath". And they don’t give a damn about scientific articles about cholesterol, which clogs blood vessels and prevents blood from delivering oxygen to the brain in the right amount, they don’t care at all that alcohol / nicotine destroys some kind of spherical brain neurons in a vacuum. And I'm sure if you ask these people how you live, work normally, don't get sick, you will most likely get the answer "yes, I just don't worry, and you don't worry - drink a beer better" or "yes, you are generally some kind of driving, you need to relax, let's go barbecue with vodka on the weekend"
Where is the truth?)

Answer 1

On the other hand, I see a bunch of programmers thumping to death on Fridays

There are few sensible ones among them somehow.
Yeah, and even recent studies say that nicatin kills only weak and diseased brain cells, which reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease. So it's still questionable whether it's harmful. Of course, there are also resins and carcinogens, which lead to cancer, etc. but this is the subject of a separate dispute. I've switched to e-mail and am generally satisfied.
these problems appear closer to the age of 40, and they are manifested in general by a deterioration in well-being. Again, it's a matter of motivation.
The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. There must be balance in everything. Let's say if a person smokes, let him smoke. Now there are electronic cigarettes and other substitutes. Alcohol is everything in moderation. Completely without it is also bad (depending on nationality), but consuming a lot of it is not very cool either.
If you are interested in how any food affects the body - there is a wonderful book - The Chine Study .

Answer 2

Intellectual specialists need not only to eat right, but also to live right:
1 - noise distracts, "turns off" the brain. Noise is radio, TV, and relatives.
We need a separate room, a separate hut is desirable.
Children in the house - the end of the work, the room will not save.
The only quiet time is night, but it is too short.
2 - without a clear daily routine, work is inefficient; From the point of view of evolution and survival, the work of the brain is the most difficult in terms of the resources of the body, so the body is trying to save these resources by turning off the brain. This also includes irritants and distractors of attention - the Internet, telephone, relatives.
You can train willpower, but it’s easier to accustom yourself to a certain order of actions, for example, block communications during working hours: smart phones are in silent mode and out of sight, the router cuts everything except for reference sites, reference sites can be replaced with an offline book. In general, try to bring yourself offline. Night hours are almost automatically offline - no one will disturb you.
3 - when you work with your head, you need to constantly study, but by the end of the working day the brain "goes bad", so you need to study in the first half of the day.
On nutrition:
I noticed that I feel much better if I do not eat sugar, meat, fatty, and do not abuse water, and in general I am a little hungry.
However, when you are passionate about something, you go hungry automatically - you stupidly forget to eat. But if you don’t eat at all, you quickly lose strength, you quickly run out of breath, weakness and exhaustion appear. In general, the food is literally energizing.
At the same time, if you drink too little or too much, eat densely, plentifully, eat a lot of sweet and fatty things, it will definitely get worse, immediately or delayed, for several days.
Water and fat do not combine at all: if you have excess fat, excess water will "bloat" you like a hippopotamus, significantly increasing the volume of fat, but when the water comes out (and it comes out quickly, within 2-3 days) - you will also quickly "lose weight" . So fat is a real subcutaneous container that can supply water directly for several days, and for a few more days as the fat burns out.
Thus, you need to eat and drink a little more than the minimum required level.
At the expense of thinness - too much fat in the body is bad, and all sorts of diseases, and just hard, but at the same time, fat is an excellent source of energy, and when you have to work hard, but there is nothing to eat / forget - fat is desirable.
Here's what I googled:
1 - indeed, a lack of fluid is deadly, water is vital, an excess inflates fat cells, and causes water poisoning. Therefore, you need to drink, but according to the norm - take a closer look at your feelings, what is the minimum amount of water per day that is comfortable for you, and drink a little more than that. Please note - the lack of fluid not only leads to a slowdown in metabolic processes, but also to delayed problems with the toilet.
2 - the body can synthesize glucose itself, from fats. Excess glucose is converted to fat.
In general, everything is very funny with the energy supply of the body: the native fuel of cells, into which all other fuels are converted - ATP molecules, is something like small chemical batteries, the whole body is saturated with this substance, but its instantaneous mass is negligible - about 250g. The trick is that these batteries are produced by the body in huge quantities, and are immediately consumed. Stores sell ATP powder for athletes, they recommend taking half a gram a day - this actually sounds ridiculous, given that the body produces about 40kg (!) ATP per day (and immediately absorbs them) - these half a gram of weather will not do anything . An excess of 250g is exactly what an operational (ATF is an "instantaneous" fuel, can be consumed immediately as needed) reserve, like a capacitor, in case there is a jump in energy consumption: while this reserve will be spent, additional synthesis mechanisms will have time to turn on. And we have many of these mechanisms.
The main cycle of energy exchange: ADP + phosphoric acid + energy <=> ATP + water.
Those. the cycle is closed: how much is absorbed, so much is released. But you can see that without phosphorus and water, the process does not go.
Phosphorus is in fish, which means you need fish in the diet, and more: the brain requires active energy exchange.
The processes of synthesis and splitting are often local - i.e. Energy is produced where it is consumed. Also, the body is essentially a huge barrel of water, so it’s not the mass that plays a role in it, but the concentration of substances in the solution, and the main highway is the circulatory one, so the concentration of substances in the blood is important: each system has blood composition analyzers, and if it detects a lack of “its own” substances - starts the synthesis and enriches the blood with the required substances, at the same time, the consumers of these substances deplete the blood, absorbing substances from it, thus achieving independence from the location of synthesizers and consumers: a battery, an amino acid, or some other substance can be produced in one place, but consumed by the cell at the other end of the body.
The main mechanisms of ATP synthesis:
1 - glycolysis: C6H12O6 (glucose) + 2H3RO4 + 2ADP \u003d 2C3H4O3 (PVC) + 2ATP + 2H2O. To convert sugar / carbohydrates into glucose, insulin is needed, which is synthesized by the pancreas.
PVC in the muscles turns into formic acid - the one that causes burning in the muscles.
2 - oxygen glycolysis: 2C3H6O3 (lactic acid) + 6O2 + 36H3RO4 + 36ADP \u003d 6CO2 + 42H2O + 36ATP
3 - breakdown of fats, lipolysis - gives a lot of heat, 131ATP and a lot of water are released. Insulin inhibits lipolysis - glucose does not burn fat. The fat reactor allows you to warm up in winter, and "drink" without water - that's why bears gain fat before hibernation, for heating, and camels store fat in their humps - to drink.
Note:
-glucose gives PVC and little energy, PVC turns into lactic acid during muscle work, lactic acid, when burned in oxygen, gives very, very much energy. And each of these processes is provided by phosphoric acid.
-fat provides much more energy, and also requires exercise.
In order to increase the energy supply to the brain by 20 times, you need to eat carbohydrates (sugar for example), work your muscles and actively breathe (yeah, sex counts).
In order to increase the energy supply to the brain by 65 times, you need the presence of fat in the body (in principle, normal nutrition already provides up to 100g of fat per day, so there is always something to burn) and an hour of physical activity in the air (requires a lot oxygen), lack of insulin: after training, eat nothing for 2 hours and do not consume carbohydrates for 12 hours, you can only consume foods with a low glycemic index, otherwise carbohydrates will trigger insulin synthesis, which will extinguish lipolysis.
Thus, there are two main sources of energy: oxygen glycolysis and lipolysis.
Glycolysis - "fast", starts as soon as work begins in the muscles.
Lipolysis - "slow", but extremely powerful, kindles an hour, but burns for 12 hours, and provides four times more power than the first - allows you to endure heavy loads, and endure for a long time.
Both sources are mutually exclusive: as long as there is glucose, lipolysis will not start; when lipolysis is started, carbohydrates cannot be eaten.
Knowing this, it is possible to “profile” energy production: in case of urgent work, we take sugar and water (to prevent dehydration and dissolve sugar), and work; fats will have to be compensated in advance, otherwise there will be nothing to burn, so if such loads are not uncommon, a diet with a lot of fats and salts is required: the liquid washes salts out of the bones, makes them brittle, and when we sweat or burn glucose with fats - fluids from the body, and hence the salts (because the solution), it takes a lot. So that with all this the teeth do not crumble - we use pastes with fluorine.
So, in order to feel better, you need training, physical activity, and fat burning - the most profitable and "easy" source of energy: by starting the reactor, you can finish the workout, but continue to receive energy for another half a day! These half a day you can maintain high activity, without exhaustion, fatigue.
Here is how it all works. This is probably why daily morning runs in the fresh air are so popular abroad - I ran for an hour, and the whole day as usual, but without special nutrition (sugar restriction) they are useless.
Links for the curious: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
Based on the foregoing, the ideal working day looks like this:
We woke up, washed, ate, ran for an hour, swam, and went to work, the first hours - we learn new things, the rest - we work, after a run we don’t eat for a couple of hours, we don’t consume sugar-containing things all day, we eat fish, we consume fats based on needs: we need to maintain the amount fat, if you start to get fat - reduce the amount of fatty foods, start to lose weight - increase. We drink water a little more than the norm, we don’t allow overdrinking - otherwise we’ll swell up, a sports trick works very well here: when you want to drink, but you can’t drink, you rinse your mouth with water and spit it out. And every day we use fluoridated paste or powder - not so much for brushing our teeth, but for tooth loss.

Answer 3

The brain needs rest first of all. The supply of phosphorus and glucose in our time is easy to provide.
The rest of the diets are more for the body.

Answer 4

1. People are different, although in modern medicine there is a tendency to standardize and unify everything.
2. For someone at the age of 20, a bottle of beer will be a lethal dose, and for someone a pleasant soft drink. But it's definitely bad for everyone. Also for other products.
3. The speed and type of thinking are influenced by innate (initial, karmic, as fate would have it) abilities, but to some extent they can be developed.
4. Nutrition. Definitely for everyone, with the right application, a raw food diet will be useful in combination with physical activity. Just try. YOU Just understand that it is stronger than even the coolest farm dope for the brain.
PS: This is not only my opinion ;-)

Answer 5

Of course nutrition is important. You need to eat everything in moderation, it is useful to eat something unusual (useful) from time to time. Nicotine and alcohol harm the brain, you need to get enough sleep so that, figuratively speaking, "everything has decomposed on the shelves," because many programmers suffer from lack of sleep.

Answer 6

I've tried everything in my experience.
Caffeine - come on, few people even use it correctly.
Cigarettes - never smoked and do not recommend.
Alcohol - that's the hero that inspires the desire to code, of course it's not coded very well, but it's fun, sometimes it's not even clear what happened the next day, but it works.
There are also all sorts of DMAA-type stimulants, they must be bought before May 2022, because they are planned to be banned, after all, in structure it is almost like methamphetamine. It also gives a boost, but along with the boost, expect a total collapse of the endocrine system, vasodilation, hypertension.
Regarding the position during coding, only office plankton codes while sitting. Outsourced people either code lying on their backs with a laptop on top and a can of Pivchanskoye (I know such), or they code "in Japanese" lying on their stomachs with a keyboard on the bed.