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Comment by probablynish | Hacker News Reader

Other than no smoke, alcohol, the basics to aim for would be: good quality 8 hours sleep every day, a few hours exercise a week (mix of strength and cardio), healthy-ish diet (minimize sugar and processed foods), look after your mental health.

For more detail, Peter Attia's new book 'Outlive' is a good introduction to some of the more involved steps you can take (wear a CGM to fine tune your diet for metabolic health, do more exercise and target it more specifically).

Attia does have some recommendations on protein (eat a lot, eat meat) that conflict with other longevity researchers' suggestions ( https://www.valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet-for-adults/ ) so take that with a pinch of (metaphorical) salt.

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The math on getting more sleep may not check out though. You may live longer but you may not be awake longer. If you can get by at 5 hours per night instead of 8 then that works out to 21 hours or about 1 full day for every week. That's 1/7th long life span equivalent right there, and that 1/7th would come at the end of your life, not right now when you're fit, curious and healthy.

Lots of my family members are in their late 80's now and I really wouldn't want to exchange say a decade of their life with a decade of mine if that means I will only live to 75 instead of 85 or 90. The number of people in their 80's that I know that I would want to exchange with is vanishingly small, most of them are going from one health issue to another, whereas most people in their 70's that I know, even the ones that lived relatively unhealthy are still going quite strong.

It's a bit shortsighted to only look at numbers. Quality of sleep affects how tired you feel, how well you can think, etc. Plus I fucking love sleeping, if you consider sleep as a necessary battery charging then you're missing out.

Ah, but do you love sleeping itself, or the context to safe and secure sleep, the luxury of a warm bed and the knowledge you can get the sleep you need, getting up when you like and feel refreshed?

I get that that is what you are saying is a part of the quality of sleep experience, but those qualities are not really about duration, you either have those privileges or you don't. If you are lucky enough to have a biological clock requiring less hours per night to enjoy them fully, that's ok.

I would agree though that to forgo those qualities intentionally over an extended timeframe is a curious choice.

I love dreaming and I think it can be used as a tool to get to know yourself, and even practice skills.

I think some people, specially nowadays, live in a very conceptual world inside their minds, and anything that they don't understand or deem unrelated to it, they compartmentalize as disposable, where in reality they're being a bit childish in how narrow they view the world.

Or maybe 'each to their own'. I've had insomnia for a while so I know how bad it is to go on too little sleep but I also really don't need 8 hours and staying in bed when I'm awake and have stuff to do is something that I find pretty hard to do.

You may live longer but you may not be awake longer.

I find that the 16 hours I have after clocking 8 hours are infinitely more "awake" than the 19 hours I get when I only clock 5.

Which is basically what the sleep researchers say. The bottom line is that there's clearly a tipping point, not the same for everyone of course but averaging around 7 hours, below which "wakefulness" (and functioning metabolism in general) experienced throughout the rest of the day rapidly starts to tank.

Sure. But people are not all exactly the same.

Sure, but what I'm getting at is that your advice doesn't seem applicable (or even remotely so) to most people.

You're right, and the wider point is that one should always maximize their own utility/happiness function. So also, if smoking cigarettes and eating ice cream makes you so happy that it compensates for poorer health and shorter lifespan then it's optimal for you. I was just addressing the question about lifespan/healthspan

I’ve always wondered about the 8 hours of sleep thing. I rarely get more than 5.5 hours a night, but I’m not tired. I’m a healthy weight, eat reasonably, and work out 10-15 times a week (cycling, running, lifting, and playing the drums (which is surprisingly good low-level cardio (avg hr 125ish (resting hr normally in the 40s))). No, I’m not a lisp programmer.

Do you think I should be aiming for more sleep?

It's very difficult to know if you are tired or not.

When you feel tired, it means you are very tired right now.

People who are sleep deprived and rate themselves as not tired shows poorer intellectual performance in tests.

Wild guess - you're also young.

Some people have "short sleep" genes and just need less than average. If you can wake up without needing an alarm clock then you're probably getting sufficient sleep.

I'd say that that is a positive goal - to wake up before any alarm goes off.

Of course this is subject to perturbation by complicating factors like hungry cats.

Minimizing sugar might be bad for your health - https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml

I don't know why sugar intake needs to be minimized. Sugar is simply a carbo-hydrate, I don't think it's special in this regard. But maybe I'm missing something.

Some argue that all carbohydrates can be problematic. If you like, you may read literature on low-carb high-fat keto diets.

All carbohydrates are problematic for people who are insulin resistant. Those with normal endocrine systems can tolerate limited quantities of carbohydrates with no negative effects, provided that overall energy balance is maintained.

Sugar as in sucrose is not strictly glucose, it's half fructose, which is basically poison/alcohol as far as your liver is concerned.

Sugar is not precisely a carbohydrate. Sucrose is a disaccaride.

Sugar - here - covers more than just sucrose, especially when one of the more commonly used (and controversial) sweeteners is fructose, a monosaccharide.

Also, normal people (entirely correctly) call table sugar a carbohydrate. Why nerd snipe?

It’s not a nerd snipe. Some people or possibly all people digest monosaccharides and disaccharides differently.

Also, that might be a distinction without a difference in most cases, but sucrose and fructose also may not produce identical glycemic response to simple carbohydrates.

The point is this is a very complex topic, and some of it is at the edge of what humans know about nutrition.

It's precisely a carbohydrate.

https://startingstrength.com/article/sugar

High glycemic index

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