15 tips every computer geek should know to stay healthy | Hacker News Reader

15 tips every computer geek should know to stay healthy

goplexian.com

11 pointsgoplexian10 comments

More HFCS scaremongering. Making an effort to cut HCFS will probably help you because it'll force you to cut out processed foods that wouldn't have been healthy no matter how they were formulated. But the "HFCS is poison" meme leaves you ready to be victimized by the next sweetener-du-jour.

The food industry adds sweeteners because consumers love them, and foods with sweeteners sell better. Read Cooks Illustrated for a few months and note how many of the winning recipes are balanced with a sweetener of some sort. Extraneously-sweetened foods are not going away.

Being careful about what you eat: good. Rubber chicken health claims: not so good.

What the whole HFCS scaremongering has done for me is raise my awareness of what is actually in the foods I'm eating. I can agree that people probably see health benefits cutting out HFCS because it probably cuts out other highly processed ingredients. Just the other day I was looking at bread ingredients and all the ones without HFCS (which weren't very many) also had the best ingredients all around.

I'm no expert, but my understanding's been that the chemical differences do matter in your body's ability to break it down. Is that incorrect?

Maybe 'carbocation will jump on and set me straight, but my basic understanding is that large amounts of pretty much anything that has both nutritive value and sweetening value is going to screw you. I watched the UCSF fructose-is-bad movie too, but HFCS is "high" relative to other corn syrup; it's not like weaponized fructose or anything.

Great article. I have been trying to implement a lot of those points that you make.

If you really need to try and drink something other than water I would recommend Apple juice. It's really the only thing you can find that is 100% pure all the time. Even OJ isn't something especial if it's from MinuteMaid.

For taking breaks I would recommend a few applications a computer geek can download.

Mac OSX: TimeOut: http://www.dejal.com/timeout/, AntiRSI: http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/antirsi/

Linux: Workrave: sudo apt-get install workrave or http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/workrave/

Windows: Workrave works for windows as well, Bigstretch: http://www.monkeymatt.com/bigstretch/

Thanks very much.

That's a great idea, I'm going to edit the article and add those links!

No problem.

It's hard to be disciplined when your really into the code so having something to trigger you to take a break is very useful.

Can someone comment on the redshift thing? Has anyone tried that before or is it hippy stuff?

I've had F.lux installed on my main home PC for a couple of months and I really like it.

I have flux installed on every computer that I have (at least, ones with displays). I like it a lot. Non-flux displays (like my tv, iphone), seem extra bright at night (so I turn them off earlier).

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