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Comment by jehb | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see the results parsed by reason for skipping breakfast.

I used to intentionally skip breakfast as a part of an intermittent fasting routing. I wasn't particularly strict about it, and I didn't really buy into the ketogenesis arguments. But it was a calorie restriction scheme that worked for my lifestyle.

Fast forward a few years, and while I still miss breakfast a lot, I find now it's because of work stress. It seems like I can't ever get out of bed in the morning without being immediately greeted by some "emergency" that popped up overnight, and jumping into that before I've really had any opportunity to start the day on my own terms.

I can't help but feel like the latter is going to be a lot more correlated with health problems down the road than the former.

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I hear you and I have the same job as when I identified with what you're saying about not starting the day on your terms. However now I just start every day on my own terms and I am measurably getting more done overall. They just have to wait for me to get my morning routine done before they get replies to their slack beeps.

Yes there are exceptions to this rule but in general 'no' being my default until I'm up and running has basically only brought benefits. Hope things improve!

I like your line of thinking.

The mention of liver cancer makes me wonder if it's a hydration issue. Fasting intentionally shouldn't be correlated with dehydration, but missing breakfast due to crisis may mean you are skipping hydration and not making up for it.

How would hydration predispose to liver cancer?

It shouldn't, but dehydration might?

Why?

The liver filters the blood. Blood is mostly fluid.

Dehydration isn't good for you generally.

And when my dad was told to get his affairs in order, his cancer was going to kill him, hydration was a big focus for my parents. He lived another two decades.

So obviously I'm an idiot and it's "anecdata" and I can't cite any large scale studies, but I can wonder in good faith if hydration might impact cancer for more people than just my father.

And the Houston Clinic interviewed my mother on tape for two hours because they knew they didn't keep him alive, she did, and changed their practices because of what she said. So people with better medical credentials than "My daddy didn't die when he was supposed to" also thought maybe something my parents did was significant.

IANAN, but typically you're talking chronic kidney damage with regards to habitual dehydration, in a healthy person.

+100 on cancer support via nutrition and hydration though. Folks don't realize how many cancer outcomes are exacerbated by "I just won't get my nutrients checked and continue with my normal diet." Your body is fundamentally different, especially on chemo, and needs different support.

A quick search suggests kidney and liver problems are related and liver damage tends to precede kidney damage.

Maybe someone more invested in this question will go down a rabbit hole and share. I was just doing a gut check of my knee jerk reaction of "But what I know of the human body...."

They're both complicated enough systems that there can be independent or causal (either way) disease progression.

Something like hepatorenal syndrome [0] would be a liver to kidney collapse, but that's more to do with blood supply.

[0] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23399-hepator...

Search for "does dehydration negatively impact bloodsupply"

Gets me:

Yes (in big bold lettering) followed by a statement that it increases sodium and thickens the blood, interfering with circulation, which my cheap phone is refusing to let me copy-paste.

Please take this the way it's intended: nurses and doctors study blood and internal organs for years, and diagnosis is still challenging. This is complex stuff.

I don’t know of any established correlation of dehydration to any of this. Our bodies evolved over periods of time when bouts of dehydration were much more common. I just thought that maybe I missed some recent counterintuitive discovery. Of course, please hydrate properly but if you don’t, no need to worry about future cancers.

Higher concentrations of bad things, for longer, in absence of water, and fluid movement.

I skip breakfast because when I wake up, I'm simply not ready to eat at all. I can force myself to eat breakfast, but it's unpleasant and makes me feel worse for the rest of the day. So I skip it. I do have a mid-morning snack, though.

There is a variety of confounding factors taken into account.

People with overall unhealthy lifestyle are more likely to be breakfast skippers, but even controlling for these variables, the effect remains.

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