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Comment by Dangeranger | Hacker News Reader

This story and the comments make me curious as to how many hard charging project leaders have, or would, work through a heart attack.

These words stuck out to me:

> I was fucking annoyed – I felt like I was just super tired and needed some energy, and energy drinks and caffeine weren’t doing the trick.

He then went on to keynote a conference and live for what seems like at least two more days without seeking medical attention.

I'm a mid 30's man, my family history includes heart disease, my father is stubborn as am I. If some day I felt tired, and constricted, my first thought would not be that maybe my heart is failing, but it probably shouldn't be my last thought.

We cannot achieve our goals or lead projects if we are dead. This close call woke me up to paying attention to my body, and maybe we all can benefit from it.

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I'm not completely sold on the relationship of stress and heart disease. I spend some time working in politics, and almost all principals worked 18h-days with less than 5h of sleep during the week. Yet life expectancy is higher than average.

There are obviously ots of competing factors at work: they have plenty of opportunities to eat healthy, and the discipline that makes them get up at 5am also makes them go for a run at 5:30. Then again two of my bosses had to retire after run-ins with the crystal meth law they themselves passed...

Considering the limits of willpower, I'd rank it Smoking/Exercise/Food/Sleep/Stress.

higher than average for people with similar wealth, education and medical history, or higher than average nationwide, including people in poverty with poor health care and nutrition?

> bosses had to retire after run-ins with the crystal meth law they themselves passed...

Wait, what?

Sounds like his bosses were politicians who helped get stricter drug laws passed, then were caught using those drugs.

(Presumably to sustain the will power to work 18h days on 5h of sleep)

That is interesting. I wonder if there have been studies on occupation and heart disease. One contributing factor to the incidence of heart attacks in the tech field could be our propensity to sit still for many hours in a row to retain focus.

Maybe not for heart disease, but stress should be number one for health overall because it affects all the other things you mentioned: sleep, appetite, exercise, and smoking.

With the principals being able to work 18h days, I think their discipline plays a huge part, as you wrote, and maybe they're outliers who naturally cope with these demands better than the average person. I personally can't sustain 12h days for more than a month.

This is what is called a non-representative sample. To say the least...

Sheesh.

They're called "elected representatives" for a reason :)... I had actually seen a study showing the advantage in life expectancy for high-powered executives/lawyers/politicians. Only the tendency to work long hours was from my sample.

Unless you smoke, heart attack or MI is highly unlikely before 40. I would review lifestyle choices though and make sure to have a complete medical checkup before 40

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