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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

I use mine almost every day, it's awesome for traveling. It might be the best "watching videos in bed" device ever made.

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This frightens me. I have been working at reducing my time of watching videos in bed, and all I have to tempt me is a phone and a laptop. It's such an easy trap to fall into.

Spending time horizontal while not asleep is very unhealthy for your heart, and many other systems in your body.

> Spending time horizontal while not asleep is very unhealthy for your heart.

Why is this?

To be clear, it's not that sleeping while horizontal is better than being awake while horizontal. We all need solid sleep, but being horizontal should otherwise be minimized as it is the ultimate sedentary lifestyle.[0] This causes heart atrophy.

[0] https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/the...

see my other comment for other references: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40549893

I think you’re incorrectly jumping to correlations/causations.

Your references are due to sedentary, not laying down. You can have a sedentary life standing in place most of the day. Likewise, the problem is being sedentary, not what position your sedentary in.

Look at the logic in my comment link, does this not make sense? This seems like basic physics and cardio to me.

The less time that your heart has to fight against pressure/gravity, the weaker that muscle will become. This is pure causation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40549893

It’s a reasonable hypothesis, but you’d need to experiment to validate it. It’s easy to imagine how prolonged exposure to bed rest or microgravity may trigger heart muscle remodelling in a way that intermittent bouts of lying down would not.

> Spending time horizontal while not asleep is very unhealthy for your heart.

Never heard of this before, any references?

I will try to find some references, but the basic concept is that your heart will atrophy when it doesn't have to work against gravity, as in pumping blood from foot to head, while vertical.

This is why standing desks are a thing, why an astronaut will lose 30% of his heart-mass after one year on the ISS, and why patients after a long coma have a hard time doing cardio.

edit:

"Cardiac atrophy after bed rest and spaceflight"

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11883764_Cardiac_at...

"Cardiac atrophy in women following bed rest"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17379748/

Seems like it should be easy enough to offset with exercise though? Like if you’re doing cardio a few days a week you’re not going to suffer too much by chilling in bed a couple evenings.

Yeah, this seems possible. I was thinking of someone more generally increasing their horizontal time without doing anything to make up for it. This is my own projection, as it is what I have been guilty of doing.

I read the second paragraph as a euphemism for having sex. I was confused because consensual sex is generally considered a healthy activity.

I fell into the trap ages ago, and spend as much time horizontally as possible without actively dying.

You’re absolutely right that it’s bad for you.

The thing is, the Quest 2/3 is nearly as good for watching videos in bed.

There's no need to pay the extra $3,000 or whatever it is.

I'm very curious to see if more people adopt the AVP for productivity while traveling though. That's what the Quest seems pretty useless for still.

I have both Quest 3 and AVP, and they are not even close for “watching videos in bed”. Partly just pure video and audio quality, where the AVP is a generation ahead, at least.

But also for less than singleminded video watching: if you get a text, the notification appears. If you are watching a long-running deployment, you can have a terminal window off to the side to glance at periodically.

And if you want a drink of water or even to get take the glass to the kitchen for a refill, you don’t take the headset off. The passthrough is that good on AVP, where Q3 is sort of functional but very acid trippy with bending geometry when you look around.

Is AVP “worth” 5x as much? IDK. Depends on your income and priorities. But it is certainly a dramatically different experience.

(Q3 is still hands down better for games, BTW)

Apple consistently has the advantage of good UX: tight integration with their ecosystem, including message notifications and calls. Costing around $3,000, the product must feel solid with top quality components. I'm wondering about the external battery and how it affects mobility. I imagine there might be downsides to having to carry it around, but maybe it's not as bad?

i've definitely snagged the cable on a doorknob walking around the house, it's not great, i've been meaning to get one of those ipod armbands people used to wear at the gym to avoid the issue

The battery is annoying but not terrible. At least as a guy who wears pants with pockets, it’s not much different than having a cell phone in a pocket.

The cable is also somewhat irritating, mostly in that “a big just landed on me” moment when an arm brushes it.

It is definitely suboptimal and contributes to the AVP’s vibe of absolutely incredible and yet not quite ready for mass market.

Ha! This morning, laying in bed, I put on my AVP and saw that Dune 2 is now on Max. "I'll just watch five minutes..."

You can imagine what happened :-)

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