Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

I would add Pickles, Kimchi, Sauerkraut, Soy Sauce, Worcestershire, pretty much any preserved or fermented food is going to be processed food and was the norm before refrigeration. Some of it is really good for you some of it is not so good.

As well there is a lot of misinformation and pseudoscience miracle cure babble in nutrition. For a long time now, we have been sold that preserved/processed foods = bad. But we where also sold that butter was bad and to eat margarine. Come to find out, trans fats where worse and butter and olive oil are actually pretty healthy for us. We were sold that all fat are bad and to eat more grains and carbs, then we got an explosion in diabetes, heart disease and various other related ailments.

These, examples don't even get into the pseudo science "cure cancer with body ph diets" type snake oil being sold, as well as the other multitudes of quackery that exist to sell a book. The fat, sugar dynamics was considered settled science and was pushed hard by the American Heart Association, and the Cancer Foundation for decades. In my opinion, nutritional science and the big tobacco science debacle that was raging at the same time, did more to damage "sciences" credibility with the uniformed public than anything else.

The reality is there are processed and preserved foods that are really good for us, there are processed and preserved foods that are really bad for us. Just as there are fresh foods that are really not so good for such as Asparagus for women.

Honestly short of a a few really bad things, such as slim-jims, modern processed candy and candy bars, soft-drinks and processed juices, the real trick is balance and moderation. Food variety, calorie restriction and fasting will do more to preserve health than eliminating a certain type of food, because it has been deemed "unhealthy" by the current regime of nutritional pseudoscience.

I have an attention disorder with hyper focus. Most of the time for people like me (at least the other ones I have talked to). The focus is on items that interest your mind, it can be a blessing and a curse. Obviously it works well if hyperfocus hits you while you are programming, not so well when it decides to focus on something like say sexual desire as hyperfocus is an almost compulsive behavior.

But honestly, at least for me, the hyperfocus is not really that debilitating, it's the lack of being able to focus on anything mundane or boring, your mind will literally just not latch on and it's like pulling your hair out to continue to force yourself to try to mentally latch on.

This is where medicine comes in, specifically amphetamine based stimulants, which honestly are one of the real true success stories of modern mental health science. There are few other drugs in the mental health sector that have the efficacy of amphetamines and its ability to regulate the issues associated with ADD/ADHD.

So the problem with those of us that have attention disorders is our minds latch on hard to what we are interested in and just fog on the uninteresting parts. This leads to a few issues, one can be sloppiness, one just flubs over the details that they don't like, no follow thru is another big issue, so one starts a project does all the details they are interested in and then loses interest in the project. Avoidance of task until it becomes a big problem is another. As a note on the latter, for some tasks that one cannot focus on are almost physically painful and extremely stressful to even think about. Before I sought treatment a big one for me was just doing the dishes, I don't know what it is about dishes but I find it to be one of the most boring and mundane tasks you can do. So I would avoid it, until the sink hit critical mass, and then I had to drag myself kicking and screaming to the sink and in the processes I would get distracted by every single little thing. What should have been a 30 minute job would stretch out 2 to 3 hours while I found every other thing I could to distract myself in the kitchen. The whole time, I knew the dishes needed to be done, I knew as they where stacking up it would be easier to just deal with them now, and it would be worse later, it caused me a lot of stress knowing it was building, but yet I was locked in this pattern each and every week yet my pathological behavior never changed.

Now back to the medicine, ADD/ADHD medicine provides those of us that suffer from it, with the ability to turn on and off focus as well as allows us to remain focused on more mundane tasks. When I am on my medicine it is like I have the ability to turn hyperfocus on and off, on whatever subject I want to, it becomes like a superpower as well I am able to break that focus as it is not so compulsive. As a contrast, now I can be extremely focused on a task, realize that I am getting eye or wrist strain remind myself that I need a break, get up walk over to the sink and wash a few dishes as an activity to do while I take a breather. Where off the medicine, I am extremely single task focused, and have to drive that task to completion, any distractions from that single task are almost physically painful and stressful to even think about.

The way I always explained it, is it's like taking a road trip where all you focus on is the destination, you dream about the destination, you speed to get to the destination, you don't get off any exits until you are so low on gas that you can't ignore it, but in the end the destination was far less interesting than the trip to get there but you missed all that, because all you could do is focus on getting to the destination. With medicine you can still be extremely focused on the destination but realize that the sign of the roadside oddities and emporium at the next exit actually looks pretty cool and might be worth a slight detour. It allows you to see opportunities along the trip and view the trip as an experience in and of itself.

The problem is that the converse can be true, this is true if you actually hit the hyperfocus trance but if you don't get there, the noise can actually distract you from ever getting there and if it is not a task you want to do, the noise is guaranteed to provide the needed distraction, to avoid the task all together.

Same, I sometimes start getting a headache in the late afternoon only to realize I’ve only had coffee a my one liquid intake for the day. It’s not as bad when working from home because I have more reminders to drink, including when in the kitchen to make lunch.

Aye, I recall several studies about it. The one that sticks out the most is an Army study about how sleep deprived soldiers performed tasks (driving, etc.) at a capacity similar to someone who was legally drunk.