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How modern life makes us sick
- blamestross 1y agoTurns out a bunch more alive people find new and interesting ways to get sick.
- ekaryotic 1y agoor that the leaders of our society have consistently elected to increase the birthrate in the hope that attrition will prop up the status quo rather than making a social contract with their populace to achieve what they mutually want from life.
- nickjj 1y agoFor around 10 years I've walked 2-4 ~(3-6 km) miles a day but when traveling I usually go into hardcore walking mode since I like hiking and exploring places on foot. It's not uncommon to end up walking 12-15 miles (~19-24 km) for those days. Has anyone experienced walking a solid 8-10+ miles a day for a few weeks straight? It's counter intuitive but everything seems to work better. I'm less tired, eat less and I have more mental clarity. It is a world of a difference compared to 3 miles a day broken up through out the day. I wonder if I've built up a tolerance or if there's something biologically different from putting in longer sessions.
- giuliomagnifico 1y agoIndeed, I walk several kilometers a day for health. The only drawback is that I wear out shoes within a few months!
- megaman821 1y agoI buy sacrificial walking shoes, usually Sketchers. They look ugly but only cost 30% of my day-to-day shoes.
- kg 1y agoI moved to a downtown neighborhood a couple years ago, and got rid of my car when I did. This meant way more everyday walking, and I noticed an almost immediate improvement in how I felt. I'm not even walking as much as you are and it still made a big difference. On days when I end up walking further, like a long distance grocery trip or whatever, I'm tired that day but usually do feel better the next day.
- ortusdux 1y agoI've had similar results biking 30mi+/day
- tantivy 1y agoBest I ever feel is when I'm walking 4+ miles daily. The phenotypic human body (not to dismiss any individual's disabilities or idiosyncracies) is top-to-bottom built to walk long distances, and bipedalism is an older trait of our evolutionary lineage than a lot of the other qualities we take as "human." This really stuck with me from studying comparative primate physiology as an undergrad. The human leg and foot is a total outlier in comparison to any other primate's limbs. Our bodies are incredibly specialized for walking and running.
- sakopov 1y agoI walked about 15 miles every day while hiking El Camino de Santiago. I lost around 50 pounds which would probably be unhealthy under any other conditions but I've never felt better and kept the weight off for years after.
- whitehexagon 1y agoRespect, especially if your route was anything like the section I recently passed along in the north. The road spent more time going up and down, and in and out of every coastal inlet, than actually progressing. Some amazing scenary though!
- sakopov 1y agoI did not do the northern route which I hear has spectacular views. I did the "French way" which I liked so much I did it again in 2017, however, it ended up being a completely different experience than the one I had the first time and I ended up finishing it in just 20 days. Did you end up doing the entire northern trail or just parts? When did you go?
- patrickhogan1 1y agoI try to get 20k steps/day (10 miles). The jump from 10k to 20k steps/day was a big improvement: better sleep and clearer thinking. Most of those steps are from walking. It helped sprinkling in some hard efforts (running/basketball) that push breathing from ~18 to ~40 breaths/min. Feels ancestral: lots of walking, punctuated by occasional all-out bursts.
- Daniel_sk 1y agoI have a 10km walk with some elevation in the nearby woods, I do it several times a week if possible (it takes me ~2 hours). I listen to podcasts during the walks. A few times a months I try to do a fast pace ~20km walk in mountains. Currenly I don’t have issues going 30km fast pace without stopping. A few times a year I do multi-day long distance walks (with some 50-60km days). It seems to bring me a lot of inner peace and better sleep.
- hvb2 1y agoFrom your own description it sounds like the change of scenery when traveling might be just as important as the distance you walk? How did you eliminate that variable?
- whitehexagon 1y agoI recently finished a challenging project, and spent a few weeks just hiking 15-20km a day, what a difference it makes. But scarily, it was just starting to feel addictive, just before I was thrown back into this crazy world.
- Ferret7446 1y agoI think a big factor is what you're not doing, or what you're not thinking about. Disconnecting from modern life likely has as much an effect as the exercise itself
- ivape 1y agoI think, maybe, that as a human moves away from the innocence and security of their childhood years, that “ending” continues to be a lifelong depression in reaction to that end, and it manifests in a variety of ways. We have a lot of technology so it’s expressed technologically (digital addictions). But overall, every human that has ever lived, lived out this prolonged lifelong depression. Clinically, this would be considered dysfunctional. But subjectively, there’s no reason why you can’t be in grief forever. People will never want to accept this, but it’s something to think about. So many people were depressed throughout time, and I think we need to see it more as a spiritual condition more than anything else, as it appears to be not bounded by time, or circumstance.
- r14c 1y agoI don't understand this at all. I love being an independent adult. I am certainly critical of how certain things are done where I live, but I really do not long for being a child. I had a good childhood, but I like being able to chart my own course and face my own challenges. I love the adventure ig, it saddens me to see people trapped in nostalgia when there's a whole world of possibilities out there if you're just a little bit brave.
- ivape 1y agoYou’ll probably take this the wrong way but I have no other way to say it. If are not in grief over your past, you truly had a poor past, or you have not yet realized the significance of it. Good things that end should elicit mourning, and I do believe this can be an everlasting mourning that no human will escape. And again, subjectively, there’s is no reason why you can’t mourn something good forever. In that way, depression is a way of life.
- r14c 1y agoMy past led to me to my present circumstances . You must have a huge regret somewhere if your past hasn't built into a future and present that you're happy with and excited to continue building. I'm not saying there's nothing I miss, but that's not the singular focus of my existence. I still have good times, even when I have struggled or will struggle in the future. Or you might just be depressed.
- cyberax 1y agoI stopped wasting tons of time by walking several kilometers a day, and instead got a car. I also started doing weight and resistance training for 2 hours a week. I'm feeling much better as a result. YMMV.
- jebarker 1y agoI’ve been both an ultra runner and a committed weight trainer at different times in my life. For me I believe the weight training is better for overall health (as long as a minimal dose of cardio is also included), but the thing it really lacks is the time outdoors. So calisthenics outdoors might be the sweet spot!
- xandrius 1y ago> I stopped wasting tons of time by walking several kilometers a day, and instead got a car. This sentence is so surreal, I feel like I'm dreaming.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWhat's strange about this? Depending on the start and destination, a car can either be faster or slower than other modes of transportation.
- mmmllm 1y agoOne of the biggest factors for me personally was going vegetarian, and then vegan. I didn't realize it for 30 years, but it's hard to feel connected to nature, animals, and the environment when you are eating something you didn't kill yourself. Once I made that move, it's a beautiful feeling and a kind of connection to animals and the planet I never knew before. I wasn't even much of a pet person before that.
- AaronAPU 1y agoInteresting. For me, eating the animal makes it feel more a part of me.
- mmmllm 1y agoWell, the animal died in an intensely stressful situation that you would probably struggle to even watch, let alone do yourself. I guess all that cortisol and stress is now also part of you.
- southernplaces7 1y ago>I didn't realize it for 30 years, but it's hard to feel connected to nature, animals, and the environment when you are eating something you didn't kill yourself. Really? I'd think that living surrounded by a modern society whose benefits you fully enjoy does a lot more to really disconnect you from nature than some notion of not killing the meat you ate. You're still fully participating in the daily destruction of nature, animals and living things just about as much as anyone who eats meat, you've simply removed yourself symbolically a bit more from one specific expression of it, so you can (entirely subjectively) feel as if it somehow makes much of a difference for any real connection to the planet.
- mmmllm 1y ago"You're still fully participating in the daily destruction of nature, animals and living things just about as much as anyone who eats meat" - I mean, that's categorically not true. All else equal the meat eater has a far more destructive daily impact on nature. I can also pet a dog with a good conscience, because I don’t turn around and eat an animal just like it. I don’t see one as a friend and the other as food just because society dictates that
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- southernplaces7 1y agoIf people today believe this is something that happens to a terrible level, they'd just truly get a mouthful with all the myriad ways in which premodern life killed us and made us sick. The mortality rates for the prehistoric societies and hunter gatherers that the author mentions was absolutely atrocious by modern standards, based on archeological evidence.. The fundamental problem with many of these analyses is that they're basically stating: "things aren't ideal, boo hoo". Being human in a complex world full of threats internal and external, and both natural and artificial, by default will always make us sick as we individually make our choices to make it worse or better where we have any control at all. How well we mitigate this compared to how well we mitigated it at any time in the past, and how many completely new options we have for mitigation are much more important than bemoaning the essential reality of the situation. For example, a hunter gatherer could only do so very little to change any aspect of their diet, daily living habits or basic survival needs. Inside that range was their life and their death. An average modern human, saturated by junk food that their body isn't adapted to handling well, canon the other hand at any time completely remake their diet into something entirely new, or change their career, or take up all kinds of different exercise and sleep options.
- yoyohello13 1y agoWeights + short/mid distance running is the sweet spot for me. I think it provides the best health/time ratio. You can get in absolutely amazing shape with 45-60mins per day. The people suggesting 8-10 miles of walking a day is absolutely bonkers to me. That’s like 2-3hours of walking a day! How have you got that kind of time?
- Spartan-S63 1y agoFor me, it’s an under-desk walking pad. I’m not super consistent with that yet, but I’ve been infrequently doing something like: - 3-5 mile run, 5 days a week (one long day at 6+) - 5 days of lifting (upper/lower, PPL hybrid) - walking 2-3 miles during the work day to supplement All told, sticking to this would bring me up to a 1.8-2.5 PAL every day which should confer lots of longevity and body composition benefits over time.
- tock 1y agoGoing remote did the trick for me. I have a lot of free time.
- hvb2 1y agoI sure hope you're referring to not having a commute instead of goofing off and being the people that justify RTO policies
- zkmon 1y agoGoals of modern life do not seem to include improving human health. The main goal is to just keep pushing the boundaries of every trend as hard as possible and let it take us wherever it goes. Pushing the trends blindly, gives a selling opportunity. We really don't care about where we end up with the trends. It's like an evolving picture where multiple artists keep extending the curvy lines in weirdest ways on all the fringes of the picture and call their part a great art. There is no one who looks at the full picture.
- sctb 1y agoThere is no one without a uniquely narrow perspective who could possibly see a full picture.
- r14c 1y agoModern life is really good at isolating people. I've faced plenty of struggles in my life and its always the hardest when I don't have a community to lean on. There's a lot to criticize about modern life, sure, but the worst part to me is how challenging we make building and maintaining communities. Displacement has a huge psychological cost that we don't pay a lot of attention to.
- mannanj 1y agoDidn’t read the post but my perception with decades of wisdom is modern life wants to keep us alive as long as it offers value to the leaders. When the value has fallen as AI is conveniently revealing, the principle remains.
- mrweasel 1y agoPart of this is something I've been thinking about lately. We're reluctant, if not down right unwilling, to un-invent things. By and large we've generally invented things that improve our lives, but with a few slip ups. Some of the slip ups we've undone or trying to undo, e.g. freon based refrigeration, fossil fuels (a be it VERY slowly) and some questionable medical procedures. Other mistakes we're not willing to undo, either do to commercial reason or because we don't like being bored. We seem to be rather unwilling to undo things that hurt us mentally. Things I really think we need to rollback include social media, which on paper seems like a good idea, but doesn't work well in practise. The same goes (highly) commercialized TV. The 24 hour news-cycle isn't providing any real value, but is still immensely harmful. You can just avoid those thing, but many people can't, they are mentally not equipped to do so. Even those of us who think that we're in control of our media consumption will often catch ourself slipping. We've created a world that we can't mentally handle, but we're not willing to rollback the inventions that are clearly harmful, because they are profitable and we're bored. We can barely manage gambling, we not even trying to manage or just label media.
- juliansimioni 1y agoI think it's more than unwilling, we're straight up unable. Not in principle, but because it's a coordination problem. Think of how many parents now want their kids not to have a smartphone or social media. There's genuine, well researched evidence that this would be good. But there's also real harm to kids who see all their friends with iPhones and Instagram. It might sound silly to us but it's definitely real feeling to the kids. A lot of the parents who let their kids use smartphones and social media probably could be easily convinced that it's a bad idea, they just don't know. Or they don't know how bad it is, and so something else, like displaying status via a nice phone, they value more highly. But until we can reach critical mass, and fight the (not insignificant, and quite intentional) momentum to use social media, it will be hard.
- abnercoimbre 1y agoThe livelihoods of many come from social media, so this is a war not unlike regulating the tobacco industry (remember when we could smoke on planes? It was un-American to suggest banning people's right to do so.) A recent HN thread examined [0] the NYC ban on smartphones for teens at school. We see positive results so far. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45211527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45211527
- siliconc0w 1y agoIf you actually have time to walk, get a dog. I find it hard to motivate going for a walk solo but walking my dog feels like a productive activity. I know if I walk my girl she'll be happier and content just to lie on top of my feet under my desk rather than hunt around the house for trouble.