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The Other Half

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Re: The Other Half

#311

Post by mtw »

Dangeranger wrote: post #48

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…

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

Re: The Other Half

#312

Post by [deleted] »

mbrock wrote: post #307
DaUR wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That wasn't what I was trying to communicate at all. My intended meaning was that women—by wanting to look good, or to seem happy, or to put on one of the numerous other faces people expect women to present to the world—are forced to pay attention to their own bodies. I misunderstood that, you're right. About your wider point: you seem to put a lot of importance on societal roles ("expected to", "narratives"), and…

> About your wider point: you seem to put a lot of importance on societal roles ("expected to", "narratives"), and I don't think much of this (if at all) is caused by society rather than self-directed. Why do you think so?

[deleted]

Re: The Other Half

#313

Post by kozak »

revelation wrote: post #31
smacktoward wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even if you're not experiencing any pain -- if you haven't been to the doctor in a long time... go to the doctor. Get a routine checkup! It can save your life. I almost learned this the hard way a few years ago. I was in my late 30s, and handled going to the doctor the way I always had since reaching adulthood -- which is to say, I didn't bother with it unless I was feeling out of sorts. Routine doctor visits seem…

Sometimes a high BP is just a reaction to someone measuring your BP. One side effect of a high BP is that you hear the thumping sound of your blood pulsing. I personally have my heart rate and blood pressure explode whenever anyone tries to measure them. So I was referred to a cardiologist who did some basic checks like an echo, found nothing wrong and wired me up to a device that measures BP continuously for 24h. My…

In this case the solution is to measure your BP yourself at home.

Re: The Other Half

#314

Post by matt4077 »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #253
matt4077 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: The Other Half

#315

Post by hnbroseph »

adrianN wrote: post #299
ars wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to disrupt the heart attack market? Make a small home machine that can take an EKG and tell you if everything is fine, or if you should go get checked. Adjust it to give some false positives, but no false negatives. Make it cost around $50, and make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check). If machine learning is not up to the task, then send the EKG to a doctor, I belie…

Good luck with the lawsuits when your machine gives the wrong answer.

doctors have insurance for when they do the same thing, there's probably something similar available.

Re: The Other Half

#316

Post by hnbroseph »

lkrubner wrote: post #70

Once again, the policy on headline titles for articles on HackerNews is a bit bizarre. The original title explained that the man almost died. This current title is "The Other Half" and does not explain anything at all. As a practical matter, the policy seems to amount to "We use the title of the original article, unless it is strongly stated, in which case we regard it as clickbait and change it to something dull." T…

> since we should all hope for and promote strong writing, and the fact that a strong headline could be confused for clickbait is not a good reason to change it.

i don't know what you mean by "strong writing" here.

Re: The Other Half

#317

Post by komali2 »

markvdb wrote: post #294
ars wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to disrupt the heart attack market? Make a small home machine that can take an EKG and tell you if everything is fine, or if you should go get checked. Adjust it to give some false positives, but no false negatives. Make it cost around $50, and make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check). If machine learning is not up to the task, then send the EKG to a doctor, I belie…

Want to disrupt the heart attack market? Might be a good idea! Just don't stop there and be more ambitious. Kill the heart attack market as much as you can by making this technology widely available to those that need it at no cost. Find different ways to earn something from it... If there is one thing that has been proven over and over again, it's that the market and health care don't go together in terms of efficie…

Food as well. When I worked at a grocery store, it boggled my mind to watch food stamps families buy frozen meals. I wasn't on food stamps but I was paycheck to paycheck, what made me aware that it was cheaper and healthier to buy dry beans and raw veggies but them, unaware?

Re: The Other Half

#318

Post by textfiles »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #309
bleair wrote: post #208

This part fascinated me : "" I waited 5 anxious minutes, and then was bought into a room with two doctors, one of whom turned out to be Dr. Sonny Palmer. Sonny said Georg thought I needed some help, and I’d be checked within a day. I asked if he’d seen the letter with his name on it. He hadn’t. He went and got it. He came back and said I was going to be operated on in an hour. "" You obviously don't want to be rude w…

I've been in the hospital twice in the past year (once to visit my grandfather, once to have my appendix removed), and I was really bothered by the lack of communication. In my grandfather's case, the nurses were bewildered by the fact that his blood pressure varied so wildly between lying down and standing (which causes him to pass out). I finally had to ask them "Surely the doctor told you he has Shy-Drager syndrom…

Jason Scott, the heart attack guy, here.

During the weeks I was with my dad, at Duke Hospital, I got to see extremely excellent care - because he'd been a transplant patient, they took his medications incredibly seriously. Everything was charted and they were always on top of it. There were arguments about his exercise needs, but mostly between him and the nurses, who exhibited a wide range of bedside manner. I definitely think having an advocate with you at the hospital is critical.

At St. Vincent's, I really dealt with superior nurses. Only one was short with me, and that's mostly because she was asking me a question and my answers were too fru-fru for her; she wanted a number, and all I had was a guess. When I finally guesstimated a number, she went away; never saw her again. Meanwhile another walked me though a large post-heart attack education patiently to make sure I understood everything.

The hospital, I'm sad to say, makes a big difference.

Re: The Other Half

#319

Post by eon1 »

derefr wrote: post #221
eon1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "getting a physical" annually is purely an old school American thing anyway. I don't know anyone in my country who does this - although apparently nowadays US med associations recommended you go visit a doctor every 5 years or so if you're under 40. Still, if I walked into a doctor and said "is anything wrong with me?" with no symptoms or obvious indication that this might be so, they would probably take bl…

Personally, I kind of wish my GP was there to help me optimize my health, rather than just to diagnose illness. Like, all those dietary restrictions they give to people who've had heart attacks? Why not give them to me before I have a heart attack, so I won't ever get one? Make my life more of a hassle, so that I live longer! I want to have someone in my life who plays the same role that a dental hygienist plays a de…

Okay.. so that kind of sounds like you need a dietician, which is someone you can ask your GP for a referral for, or in many cases just book an appointment with. Your GP doesn't send you to the dentist unless there's something so wrong with your teeth it's impacting the rest of your health; why would it be any different for your diet?

Re: The Other Half

#320

Post by mitchty »

thecrazyone wrote: post #291
fapjacks wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seneca talks about this a lot. When I first started going to war in my early twenties, I began confronting my own mortality, and found myself slowly being funneled towards the great Stoics.

Humans have found different ways to deal with their own mortality - denial or religion or saying that's "natural". More people learn, their techniques have also changed, like (almost) no one thinks you/somebody died because it rained the day before and the rain gods spite you for doing XYZ. My point being, drawing from the practices of people multiple centuries ago might not be the best thing

> My point being, drawing from the practices of people multiple centuries ago might not be the best thing

Given how much of cognitive behavioral therapy borrows from stoicism in this case I think this assessment is premature. Stoicism like buddhism are great philosophies on how to deal with the world as it is. And to understand that most of the problems we think of are products of our own mind.

Stoicism doesn't do either denial or say its natural. It forces you to reevaluate how you think of the question. For that alone it is worth drawing from.

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