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Comment by warrenmca | Hacker News Reader

What a time to be alive! Me, I drink when I'm thirsty.

I don't think this feedback loop is working well for everybody. I know many people, including myself, who don't get the urge to drink until they're severely dehydrated, so they have to force themselfs to drink even in the absence of thirst.

It is also well known that it gets worse with age - fainting due to dehydration is a common occurence with the elderly.

All of those elderly people with their github repositories?

I built this script, and I'm 17. Gained over 20 pounds since I started programming all day.

Paying attention to your body is a skill. Alot of people do have some degree of innate proficiency at it, but it is something to be done deliberately and practiced, and with enough deliberate practice you will eventually do it automatically with high mastery. You're still a child, so you have plenty of time to develop this skill :)

May I make a suggestion? Instead of just water breaks... take breaks. Get up, stretch your arms and hands, your neck and back. Walk around for a few minutes, even just in place. Drink your water.

You'll save yourself a lot of future pain.

I'll definitely keep that in mind. I'm planning on using a standing desk, does that do any good?

It certainly can, but you have to remember to monitor your posture so you don't slump. Good luck!

I agree. Personally if I'm hacking away at something I tend to forget about the world for hours, and it is frustrating to later realise that I couldn't do the least for my health ie : drinking sufficient water.

>A student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?" The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."

-Old Zen Tale

This is probably a myth too, but I've heard that by the time you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated.

How does this one not die?

When someone says it, they are confronted with glibness instead of evidence, so it persists.

Until I saw that this was posted from Github, I honestly assumed that this was a cute way of describing thirst. The reality is so much stranger.

Nitpicking obviously, but isn't it "too late" if you're drinking when you feel thirsty (it means you're already dehydrated)? Iirc you should be drinking before you feel thirsty.

No, that's also a myth:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/05/09/dehydration...

In most cases, thirst is a reliable signal that more water is needed.

Too late? I've done that for thirty years and I'm not dead yet.

Our evolution has failed miserably if the calibration is that far off. Talk about your ship-stopping bugs.

No, as another commenter pointed out, what you've read is bullshit.

Nah, just playing the long game :-)

"If we prioritise for intelligence then they'll eventually just write a bash script, none of this vague hormone and 'feeling' nonsense."

Adding on to the other commentators, a certain type of headache is a good indication of dehydration.

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