Pharmacology or brain. Learn not to work

Not being a full citizen of habrasocium, I write in the sandbox. Well, here also took me on Habr.



Readers recommended introducing themselves. Graduate of the medical faculty of honey university. To date, a graduate pharmacologist, scientific work is related to drugs acting on the central nervous system.



The other day I read posts on Habré devoted to how IT people try to increase the productivity of their work. It was believed that some of the habrovchan is ready for anything, for the sake of dubious pleasure to plow up the extra 10-12h. This article is the answer to the habra-users articles that surprised me ( this , this, and this ). I really hope that their authors do not have a medical education, because recommendations of drugs of this kind, even if provided with a warning “Use at your own risk”, are unacceptable for a doctor.

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Remember! A person who is thoughtlessly taking medicine is a monkey with a grenade. It can hurt yourself and others.



But let's leave, for now, medications aside. They are just an imperfect instrument. What would you like? There are two options: emergency and long-term. With the development of events on the emergency path you need right now, today to perform a fairly large amount of work that will require at least 12-24 hours of uninterrupted labor. The exact opposite is when it seems to you that you could work better and longer. In other words, you intend to increase the load in the near future, or simply to make your brain produce more creative ideas per unit of time than it does now.

Extreme path

It would seem that I would drink a magic pill and would, like Standartenführer Isaev, sleep for 40 minutes a day without leaving the computer. But this does not happen! We all understand that working without sleep and rest is a road to nowhere (or rather, to the next world). But this is not all, for the pharmacological support of Stakhanov's labor you will need drugs - psychostimulants , which you cannot get legally. And even if you get amphetamine, for example, you hardly work: you don’t want to sleep, but the attention will be scattered, you will be pulled to talk, you will want to do something great, and after 15 seconds something else will be great, etc. One thing is certain, there will be no productive work. And your strength will quickly deplete, because these drugs do not give you absolutely nothing, they only force the body to waste all the brain resources in the reserve. In addition, do not forget about the negative impact on the heart and the risk of addiction.



Today, only one psychostimulant is available to you without restriction - caffeine. But it should be remembered that there are quite a few people on whom he acts depressingly. Therefore, before using it, think, and do you sleep well after a cup of coffee? Suddenly, the effect will be directly opposite to the expected?



What can I advise when developing an emergency work scenario. Only one thing - to hope for yourself, not for drugs. A healthy body + well-expressed self-motivation can work wonders. Do not believe, check.

Long-term hard work

To begin with, it was in the above mentioned posts. The most innocuous recommendation is vitamins . Almost completely agree. But there is one feature. Well-advertised today multivitamins, cause fierce disputes among specialists. There is an opinion based on proven facts that mixing a bunch of vitamins, or even together with minerals, in one pill is not good.



The fact is that interactions between vitamins and minerals occur both at the chemical and physiological levels. As a result of chemical interaction, the actual amount of vitamins or microelements in such a complex may be much less than that stated. In the interaction of vitamins and minerals in the human body, one component of a multivitamin complex can influence the effect of another in the desired or undesirable side (more here ).



Interesting fact. If you are a woman and are going to have a baby in the near future, then the use of multivitamins before pregnancy will increase the likelihood of having twins . This, of course, is not fatal, but it speaks in favor of the fact that any medicinal intervention in the body can bring quite unexpected results, unfortunately, not always pleasant. If you are fluent in English, see our multi-vitamin guidelines for patients.



I do not want to say that vitamins are evil. It's not like that at all. Just always, before deciding on the reception of a drug, you should consult with a competent specialist. But if you really want to buy any vitamins right now, pay attention to vitamin C. Yes, just vitamin C. Naturally, your body needs other vitamins, but with a rational and varied diet of vitamin deficiency you will not.



We turn to the nootropics . You may have been surprised that I did not mention them in the section on extreme methods of work (not to be confused with extreme programming), but these drugs will not give you an instant effect. Despite the fact that fenotropil, for example, has its effect already after a single application, the course of administration varies from 2 weeks to 2 months ( link ).



In addition, the effects of nootropics are not at all stimulating . That is, they will not give you the strength to the last spurt and will not be able to stimulate the body to work until the last breath. These drugs can help you, if you have already managed to bring yourself “up to the handle” with continuous work, or they will allow you to slightly increase your efficiency during preventive use (I will give my opinion on the use of drugs by healthy people below). For your information, nootropics are a group of drugs whose effectiveness has not been proven. They are used mainly only in the CIS. For some reason, in Western countries they are not considered to be drugs.



Many times mentioned in the comments glycine. Glycine is a inhibitory neurotransmitter. He will not encourage you and will not give strength to work. The drug has a sedative (sedative) and mild tranquilizing (anti-anxiety) effect. Enhance mental performance occurs due to calming a person, due to the activation of inhibition processes in the brain and normalization of metabolism. The key word is normalization. Superman you will not.



There are also so-called adaptogens . Examples: Rhodiola rosea preparations, sandy immortelle, ginseng, Eleutherococcus, and others. A healthy person most likely will not have a pronounced effect, just you will become a little more resistant to stressful situations. But we should not forget that individual sensitivity is strongly pronounced for adaptogens: about 15–20% of people react to taking medications paradoxically - a decrease in efficiency, lethargy, and deterioration of mood. Adaptogens have more or less pronounced side effects: hypertension, hyperthermia, increased excitability of the nervous system, insomnia. Their use may lead to the manifestation of previously latent epilepsy. Therefore, even with the use of herbal remedies, medical supervision is required ( link ).



Now about dietary supplements. Supplements - not drugs. This means that a reasonable person should not be afraid of them. True and there are no guarantees of effectiveness. It is unlikely that they will help you with something.



Further excursion into pharmacology is considered meaningless. Therefore, I proceed to the conclusion.

Conclusion

It would seem that it is worthwhile for a young strong person to work to lose heart rate, and then to work like that, and then another and more ... Price is the quality of your life in 15-30 years (if you live). The money that you earn today, tomorrow will be given to us - the doctors. Only the former health in full, we will not return.



Any sane person realizes that nothing just happens. There are no magic pills and you have to pay for everything. No drug will make your life better, and you will be smarter, and even more so to jump above human capabilities will not work. But at the same time I really want to get a good return on my work. Here it is worth thinking a little about mathematics. If a person works very hard and even earns a lot, he still works inefficiently. Man is not a server, and uptime of 99.9% is fatal to him.



You might think that I’m just scaring and urging the reader not to work. But it is not. Start giving advice.



Our goal: to achieve high productivity and, if necessary, to withstand a significant peak load. What is needed for that? That's right - health. Physical and mental health. And if you have not yet ruined it, then apply drugs, and even more so on the recommendations on the Internet, is not necessarily. Healthy lifestyle has not been canceled.



In fact, everything is simple. Just to disgust, to nausea, but very few people do it. Do what your mom and kindergarten teacher told you. Observe the regime, that is, sleep at least 7-8 hours a day, food is regular and varied, moderate exercise (for example, daily morning exercises). Give up bad habits. But the most important thing is to respect yourself. Only respect for yourself and your beloved will allow you to think not about the boss of the lost profit, but about your own future.



It is worth saying that I am not a professional IT specialist and I don’t know the subtleties of your work, maybe I don’t understand you well. But after six years of study at a medical university, I learned the most important thing: Noli nocere! What does it mean - do no harm, first of all, to yourself. What you and advise.