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I hate this. I keep unusual and oftentimes random hours and I like it. I pull all-nighters maybe once or twice a month. Sometimes to party, sometimes to work, s

I hate this. I keep unusual and oftentimes random hours and I like it. I pull all-nighters maybe once or twice a month. Sometimes to party, sometimes to work, sometimes just because. But there is a lot of research arguing that my habits are a terrible idea. I consider myself healthier, more active and more resilient than a lot of people in their early 40's. But I'd hate to think I'm shooting myself in the foot by making my various internal systems go haywire because of my bizarre sleep patterns.

Barrin92 4y ago
>I consider myself healthier, more active and more resilient than a lot of people in their early 40's then I suggest you keep doing what you're doing because life isn't lived in the aggregate, and if your behavior works for you there's nothing wrong with it. If your schedule is liberating to you throwing that away for a 0.1% chance of whatever complication probably isn't worth it, as long as you're aware of the trade-offs.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  I don't agree with that. Would you say this to a smoker or someone morbidly obese? This isn't something harmless like treating yourself to drinking diet soda or eating ice crime on the odd occasion. It's not hard to fix for most people either. Switching off devices and lights at night, and getting sunlight in the morning, is often what's needed to fix what presented as mild DPSD or N24 sleep disorder.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >I don't agree with that. Would you say this to a smoker or someone morbidly obese? Yes. This neurotic obsession with health that categorizes every deviation from the norm as something that needs fixing rather than a choice that people make needs to stop. Smoking is bad, drinking is bad, unhealthy food is bad, staying up at night is bad. For everything that even remotely makes live fun you now have some health fixated busybody lecture you on it.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      > unhealthy food is bad ... everything that even remotely makes live fun You've swept the dose of the poison under the rug in order to make your point that it's neuroticism and health fixation to suggest that people should avoid morbid obesity.
      - Barrin92 4y ago
        >that it's neuroticism and health fixation to suggest that people should avoid morbid obesity that isn't what I said. I said that people should make their own decisions and listen to themselves. If they feel bad being obese, they should change it. If they don't, they shouldn't. What people ought to stop doing is being driven by others to make these decisions. And that is where the neuroticism from an entire self-help and lifestyle industry comes in. the OP is apparently happy with his lifestyle and feels good and that's what they should care aobut, period. Smoking is a prime example of this. Other than in public places it's a purely private choice. If people enjoy smoking and they're aware of the risks other people should stop meddling with their decisions.
        hackerlight 4y ago
        > If they don't [feel bad about being obese], they shouldn't. Well let's agree to disagree on this. When these obese people age a further 20 years and get health complications caused by metabolic syndrome, they will wish they could go back in time and change things or they would wish that the people around them didn't placate their desire to destroy their own bodies. Someone's current feeling, which might just be because they're misinformed or addicted or on autopilot and not thinking about it, doesn't count for everything. It's also not just a private decision when my insurance health premiums and taxation pay for the consequences of their self-destruction.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        1. Most people, when regretting about decisions they could have made, are unlikely to even make those decisions at the time of that realization, if those decisions involve lifestyle changes, because change is hard and modern life is full of addictive superstimuli. 2. Trying to hard-sell people into making changes, whether by scare tactics, shaming, and so on, might cause them to actively avoid making those changes. Simply telling people what they're doing is unhealthy and they should stop it is often not enough. Public health education is an incredibly difficult and lacking area. 3. There's only so much that could be done to encourage or deter people. At some point these half-measures of nudge economics are useless, and if you really want to improve public health, you might as well start banning harmful products and practices, and mandating healthy ones. That would be more helpful than being a nag.
swatcoder 4y ago
You will never have enough information or control to optimize for longevity, nor to know if you’d actually want to live in the world left for you at 100. Just do your thing while you feel like doing your thing, and if there comes a time that something personally meaningful makes you want to do something else, do that thing. Lifestyle research is great, but it’s glacially slow, prone to dramatic revision, and inherently impersonal. It’s not meant to be a textbook on how to live your life.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  "Lifestyle research is great, but it’s glacially slow, prone to dramatic revision" Would you say this about smoking and morbid obesity? Just because some things in lifestyle research are wishy washy and uncertain doesn't mean all of it is. Rotating shift work is one of the things to avoid.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    I think it took 50+ years for public consensus to form around smoking (even if many people bought in sooner), and now vape culture has challenged that same consensus by formally changing the subject of research. Meanwhile, challenges to the consensus around morbid obesity are skyrocketing to the top of thoughtful communities like HN as recently as last week. I’m personally skeptical on both fronts, but also don’t find myself drawn to either, so my skepticism isn’t practically meaningful. And especially since I’m not much effected, I can’t moralize over somebody else’s relationship to those beliefs or how they live in light of them. If they want to hope vaping is safe and obesity is misunderstood, or even if they’d just rather be a fat smoker and take statins, that’s kinda their thing to sort out. I can’t possibly expect myself to know their context better than they do.

Barrin92 4y ago

>I consider myself healthier, more active and more resilient than a lot of people in their early 40's then I suggest you keep doing what you're doing because life isn't lived in the aggregate, and if your behavior works for you there's nothing wrong with it. If your schedule is liberating to you throwing that away for a 0.1% chance of whatever complication probably isn't worth it, as long as you're aware of the trade-offs.

hackerlight 4y ago
I don't agree with that. Would you say this to a smoker or someone morbidly obese? This isn't something harmless like treating yourself to drinking diet soda or eating ice crime on the odd occasion. It's not hard to fix for most people either. Switching off devices and lights at night, and getting sunlight in the morning, is often what's needed to fix what presented as mild DPSD or N24 sleep disorder.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >I don't agree with that. Would you say this to a smoker or someone morbidly obese? Yes. This neurotic obsession with health that categorizes every deviation from the norm as something that needs fixing rather than a choice that people make needs to stop. Smoking is bad, drinking is bad, unhealthy food is bad, staying up at night is bad. For everything that even remotely makes live fun you now have some health fixated busybody lecture you on it.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    > unhealthy food is bad ... everything that even remotely makes live fun You've swept the dose of the poison under the rug in order to make your point that it's neuroticism and health fixation to suggest that people should avoid morbid obesity.
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      >that it's neuroticism and health fixation to suggest that people should avoid morbid obesity that isn't what I said. I said that people should make their own decisions and listen to themselves. If they feel bad being obese, they should change it. If they don't, they shouldn't. What people ought to stop doing is being driven by others to make these decisions. And that is where the neuroticism from an entire self-help and lifestyle industry comes in. the OP is apparently happy with his lifestyle and feels good and that's what they should care aobut, period. Smoking is a prime example of this. Other than in public places it's a purely private choice. If people enjoy smoking and they're aware of the risks other people should stop meddling with their decisions.
      - hackerlight 4y ago
        > If they don't [feel bad about being obese], they shouldn't. Well let's agree to disagree on this. When these obese people age a further 20 years and get health complications caused by metabolic syndrome, they will wish they could go back in time and change things or they would wish that the people around them didn't placate their desire to destroy their own bodies. Someone's current feeling, which might just be because they're misinformed or addicted or on autopilot and not thinking about it, doesn't count for everything. It's also not just a private decision when my insurance health premiums and taxation pay for the consequences of their self-destruction.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        1. Most people, when regretting about decisions they could have made, are unlikely to even make those decisions at the time of that realization, if those decisions involve lifestyle changes, because change is hard and modern life is full of addictive superstimuli. 2. Trying to hard-sell people into making changes, whether by scare tactics, shaming, and so on, might cause them to actively avoid making those changes. Simply telling people what they're doing is unhealthy and they should stop it is often not enough. Public health education is an incredibly difficult and lacking area. 3. There's only so much that could be done to encourage or deter people. At some point these half-measures of nudge economics are useless, and if you really want to improve public health, you might as well start banning harmful products and practices, and mandating healthy ones. That would be more helpful than being a nag.

swatcoder 4y ago

You will never have enough information or control to optimize for longevity, nor to know if you’d actually want to live in the world left for you at 100. Just do your thing while you feel like doing your thing, and if there comes a time that something personally meaningful makes you want to do something else, do that thing. Lifestyle research is great, but it’s glacially slow, prone to dramatic revision, and inherently impersonal. It’s not meant to be a textbook on how to live your life.

hackerlight 4y ago
"Lifestyle research is great, but it’s glacially slow, prone to dramatic revision" Would you say this about smoking and morbid obesity? Just because some things in lifestyle research are wishy washy and uncertain doesn't mean all of it is. Rotating shift work is one of the things to avoid.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  I think it took 50+ years for public consensus to form around smoking (even if many people bought in sooner), and now vape culture has challenged that same consensus by formally changing the subject of research. Meanwhile, challenges to the consensus around morbid obesity are skyrocketing to the top of thoughtful communities like HN as recently as last week. I’m personally skeptical on both fronts, but also don’t find myself drawn to either, so my skepticism isn’t practically meaningful. And especially since I’m not much effected, I can’t moralize over somebody else’s relationship to those beliefs or how they live in light of them. If they want to hope vaping is safe and obesity is misunderstood, or even if they’d just rather be a fat smoker and take statins, that’s kinda their thing to sort out. I can’t possibly expect myself to know their context better than they do.