Health Problems Related to the Geek Lifestyle 495
jonasj writes "A doctor and former programmer has written a good article on common geek health problems. From the article: 'If I were to go and try to run a few miles this weekend, I would not be able to easily do so. [...] However, if you take one of the these college basketball athletes, any of them would be able to run miles without even breathing heavy. However, if you made them sit down and try to learn Java for 12 hours a day, most of them would be asleep at their desk before lunch. The typical geek trains their brain to be heavily focused while multitasking day after day. Is it surprising that this same brain does not do well when forced to isolate down to one task?'"
lol (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
I mean come on everyone knows - if you don't excercise then you don't have strength and endurance.
And the computer geek lifestyle leaves little time for excercising.
Same thing with a professional basketball athlete - he does muscle and coordination training for hours daily. He does not practice abstract semantic concepts in his head while making those baskets, either.
I'm really not seeing where the story is here.
getting excercise is not that tough.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Excercise is a good thing - yeah, it takes a bit of effort (and cursing) to get into it, but once you get into the habit, everything just seems to flow better - smoother thinking, better sleep and so on.
Whatever. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but putting up an excuse for not being physically active because your brain can't deal with only handling a single task is specious at best.
There are plenty of us programmers, geeks, and nerds who still engage in sports and athletic activities. I have my degree in Computer Science from the U of A, graduated with a > 3.5 GPA, work as a software engineer, and yet I still play soccer, go to the gym, mountain bike, snowboard and can run a mile no sweat.
Just cause this guy can't is no reason to stereotype the rest of us.
No, geeks are lazy... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is insulting (Score:1, Insightful)
But to make a blanket statement that people who are techies have poor health habits is absurd. I go run, ride the bike, and go lift very often- I have at least 40 minutes of hard physical activity a day. I ran a half-marathon in under an hour and a half and put up 235 pounds on the bench for anybody who doubts me. I also rarely eat fast food. I bet I can out-run and out-lift whatever journalist wrote that crap, as well as be able to keep my computer rid of Viagra pop-up ads.
This kind of crap sickens me like it should sicken 95% of the other tech people who are not in any worse of shape than the average non-techie desk jockies and couch potatoes.
Balance, it's all about Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
If I do one thing at a time it gets done faster, and with better results than if I try to multitask.
If I get out for exercize - any exercize - a couple of times a week I feel better and can work more productively.
If I limit work to something like 9-5 (well, actually 10-4) I get more done, with better results.
If I have interests outside work like art, or film, or reading, or just hiking in the woods, my work improves.
Despite the Wal-Martization of work in North America, it remains true that a healthy, balanced lifestyle allows you to work faster and more productively.
Yes, the less that I work, the more that I am able to do.
Shenanigans on #4 (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy is clueless and confused. He even proposes a genetic basis for the problem. First he states that "Poor Attention Span" is a problem for geeks then his argument is that they have a GOOD attention span and get bored when running... which is it?
Some of my best programming time (problem solving) happens when I am running, XC skiing, etc. You have to pay attention and multitask to perform any exercise (as well as program). If you get bored and don't pay attention while running, you'll fall over.
Multitask / one task? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:getting excercise is not that tough.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Geeks are just another subset of the populace that stops engaging in any kind of physical activity once they get out of mandatory athletics in middle/highschool.
You didn't have mandatory athletics?
Bastard..
But the point remains that large numbers of 'adults' don't excercise, or even worse, they pay for a gym membership and don't go. Only two or three of my friends regularly exercise. The rest just eat right.
This guy needs to get out more (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to know what I did last Sunday? I climbed a mountain. Yesterday, after work, I ran 4 miles. Today, I'm going to run another 4. Last week, I biked 10. I lift weights. I play DDR.
Being a geek has NOTHING to do with being a lazy fat ass. Using that as an excuse is pathetic. A pasty, weak geek sitting in his parents' basement in front of a computer is no better off than a pasty, beer-bellied sports geek sitting in his livingroom in front of a TV.
Mind and body are both important. To exercise one at the expense of the other is unbalanced and unhealthy (severe medical problems aside). The Greeks knew this. The Romans knew this. It's nothing new.
Re:getting excercise is not that tough.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. I fail to see how spending 20 minutes a day either running or lifting heavy crap over my head somehow makes me less intelligent. Nice try. If you aren't working out on a regular basis you are either ignorant as to the many benefits of physical fitness, or you are extremely poor at managing your time.
Re:No, geeks are lazy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes they would still exercise but I would bet the longer they are tied up the less exercise they will do until eventually they are doing none at all. I've seen this happen many times. It happened to me. I used to play soccer and basketball. Believe it or not it takes a lot of energy to devote yourself to any task. I have a lot of friends in med-school, they are busy studying. Yes they still get some exercise in but it is a lot less than they used to.
Geeks are not lazy, they are willing to work as much as anyone else. I think you mean geeks don't have a lot of energy. You don't see too many people in IT blabbering away at 50,000 words a minute with enough energy to party it up for 4 days. Yes there are exceptions but, well, they are exceptions.Re:Whatever. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:lol (Score:3, Insightful)
I was an olympic hopeful for fencing - I hope one day to pick it up again but being confined to a wheelchair kind of prevents that lol
And I, like you, used to put my physical training time to good use mentally as well.
Are there geeks out there that don't get enough excercise? Oh yeah. Is it everyone? no. Is it a majority?
Ummm... probably?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell me when (Score:4, Insightful)
My life got much more enjoyable when I realized that work is just that...work. I've got better things to do than sit in an office for 12 hours a day.
Re:Sounds mostly familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
the more you exercise, the less you feel like you need to stretch or get massaged
using your muscles stretches and massages them
much back pain is impacted muscular tissue that you'd think could be helped with deep-muscle massage
some is strained muscular tissue that needs stretching and strengthening
working that tissue the way it's designed to work opens up the channels for blood and lymph and makes the fibers more supple
no more pain
oh, and one more benefit: after the first few workouts, you'll probably stop getting post-exercise soreness as well; in fact, you'll be tempted to think you're not progressing because of it; that's when you start increasing reps (from 5 reps to 12 or more in 2-rep increments per session) and weight (add an increment when you hit 12 or more reps and go back to 5 reps), and improving your strength; you still won't feel sore, but you'll know from the numbers that you put up that you're getting something out of it
Re:So get up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it is also hard to find the hours in the day to do it 'all'. Right now, I've got an extra PITA in that my job is moving around the state (post Katrina)...I now have a commute that is about 1 hour each way...worse if I hit traffic. So, I now have 2 hours of the day just travelling, which I've never had to do, but, I know lots of others do. But, say you have 2 hours travel, 8 hours work, and say about 1 hour or so to cook, eat and put things away..add maybe 1 more hour for getting up and ready in the morning, that's 12 hours...with 8 hours of sleep, that leaves maybe 4 hours in there somewhere..and that gets lost often in the middle of the other activities...
Before I had to do this, my schedule was pretty full, up at 6am..walk dog, get ready, work at 8am..off at 4:30, to gym...1.5-2 hours, get home about 6:30, take out dog, cook, clean, pack lunch and gym back for next day..by then it was close to 9pm...watch tv for a little and try to crash about 10:30 or 11pm.
I had a hard time squeezing anything else in to that schedule...and I don't have a wife and kids to bother with. People with full blown families, I don't see where they can fit time in for exercise, hell most of them can't seem to find time to cook home cooked meals anymore, and just eat junk food.
No wonder we're all in bad health....
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Eat your cake and burn the calories, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
For that matter, why can't a person be both an athlete and geeky? Think of plays as functions. Your selector class reads a variable passed by the QB/coach/point guard, then picks a function and executes the steps. Coaches spend enough time pounding plays into jocks heads, so someone might as well take pride in being good at learning them quickly and executing them properly. OOP. Object Oriented Playmaking. The only drawback is when endzone_dance() gets stuck in an endless do/while loop.
I recognize some people have truly crappy jobs and spend 12 hours a day in front of a monitor, but I'd be more than willing to bet that the vast majority of geeks have time to spare for exercising and healthy cooking if they're willing to re-arrange their priorities a little.
You're right though. I'm not seeing much of a story in this. Exercising and eating right makes you healthier. Doing brain work helps intellectual acuity.
Re:lol (Score:4, Insightful)
To add to this.
The bloated rolling non-sporty geek is an American phenomenon.
In all my years of working in EU I have never had more than 2-3% of these in the company. In fact the IT industry in most EU countries is generally more healthy than the remaining population.
I am one of the least sporty individuals in my company (which is a typical UK telecoms/IT shop) and I always walk for at least 20 minutes at lunch, cycle for 3 miles a day with a 4 year old on a tag-along whenever the weather allows (picking him up from the nursery is a perfect excuse for some exercise). On top of that I try to do at least 1 hour basketball or 1 hour swimming per week.
That does not prevent me from doing design work, coding and a bit of sysadmin here and there.
To summarize - geek lifestyle is whatever you make it. Being a rolling ball of fat does not make you a geek. Being a athelete does not exclude you from being a geek. At least outside US.
you can be a geek and healthy (Score:5, Insightful)
I highly encourage you to get to the gym, make yourself go regularly. The health benefits are outstanding, and the girls definitely pay more attention. Most people will be impressed simply because you're a geek and a gym rat.
I'm not trying to delude anyone. You're not going to turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger if you're a scrawny fucker like me, but if you seriously commit to it the difference will surprise you and maybe even get you laid. Besides, the chicks at the gym are often hot, and they don't wear those outfits anywhere else.
Re:Balance, it's all about Balance (Score:3, Insightful)
If I do one thing at a time it gets done faster, and with better results than if I try to multitask.
This is quite true. Multiple studies have shown that every context switch takes you 15 to 60 minutes to return to full productivity (depending on the focus required for the task), with a complete loss of about 50% of that time.
Most geeks who think they're great at multi-tasking should try focusing deeply on one problem some time. Their productivity would skyrocket.
If I limit work to something like 9-5 (well, actually 10-4) I get more done, with better results.
I prefer to limit any day to 10 hours and any week to 45 hours (in the office). Some people who've heard me advocate that think I'm a slacker, but I'm getting a lot more done than when I have pushed myself towards burnout and I always get more done than others in the office.
The fact that management doesn't get this in most companies just reinforces my utter contempt for most of the MBA's and suits who I see acting quite superior and self-important...
Regards,
Ross
Re:This is insulting (Score:5, Insightful)
Said health problems can be summed up so:
Nowhere does he say anything about couch potatoes, sedentary lifestyles, eating Cheez Doodles and drinking Mountain Dew, or any of the other things that people assume he's talking about because, as usual, they have not RTFA.
Mutlitasking and running a mile are not comparable (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you were to tell your basic geek to Juggle with one hand, play sudoku on their cell phone with the other AND run a mile it would be no problem. Somehow I don't think concentration has anything to do with the heavy breathing...
Re:lol (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
I mean come on everyone knows - if you don't excercise then you don't have strength and endurance.
And the computer geek lifestyle leaves little time for excercising.
[/blockquote]
The least surprising thing is the hilarious justification of, "We're just too darn smart to exercise'.
Geek lifestyle leaves no time for exercise? There seems to be plenty of time for jacking off and playing video games. Just get off your ass.
If you need to multi-task while you exercise because that's how your brain works, do a sport instead of just exercise. There are plenty of purely recreational leagues everywhere. (Often called beer leagues, which is just about the best part of it)
I recommend baseball for the beginner geek because it is the least stressful as a sport and offers a nice transition. It is also chock full of numbers a geek can spend his day calculating, and believe me your team will appreciate even a novice statistician.
For the intermediate geek I recommend Soccer or a racket sport(even ping pong!), but those don't offer any numbers to fuck around with.
Hockey I recommend for the geek looking move up in sports difficulty, and hockey offers the most variables. Not to mention that Ice Hockey allows you to get a decent workout without sweating. (If you go crazy nuts you'll sweat plenty, but it's very easy to keep your heart rate in its optimal zone without getting too sweaty to go to work.)
Hockey gear is expensive but you can find recreational games without more than leg pads.
It'll also help the geek tendency to be a fucking social troll and retard.
(beer league baseball/softball is by far the best way to go from zero exercise to building healthy habits. Working out is way more fun when you're drunk, just like most things.)
multitask?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds mostly familiar (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't go so far as to suggest Zoloft or Prozac to people suffering from chronic back pain, but depression would be a valid factor to examine.
Re:This guy needs to get out more (Score:2, Insightful)
In high school I was fairly fast and could do 4 miles at a sub 6 pace. I'm nowhere near that fast now but my endurance has seen significant increases. I ran a marathon in October. I never would have considered running that far in high school. I'm never going to win a marathon but I can compete with myself to keep improving.
You don't have to be fast. Just get off your butt for half an hour a day!
Re:Eat your cake and burn the calories, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the American God Complex at work. Americans need to feel like a God, and therefore they spend unhealthy amounts of time at that which they are good at and nothing else. The only way the stereotypical Comic. Book. Guy. can fulfil that god complex is to specialize in an esoteric pastime, detracting from physical as well as social health. The whole ancient greek concept of the Balanced Person is lost on the American society. We are reared to be automatons, mindlessly and endlessly consuming. Any notions of self-concept and individuality are quashed from age 5 on, and therefore are lost on the culture as a whole. There were more votes cast for American Idol than American President, if that's any indication of how fucked up we as a culture actually are.
Re:Eat your cake and burn the calories, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Although excercise does, obviously, keep you in better health, the problem for most geeks is that it is so tedious and boring. A lot of the discussion here has been on how to make excercise more enjoyable for the (if you'll pardon the pun) overclocked mind of your average geek.
Some suggestions.
1. Read a book while you excercise on a stationary machine.
2. Listen to an mp3 player (preferably in conjunction with #1)
3. Some people describe excercise as a "mental vacation". Some geeks (including myself) don't want a mental vacation, we =like= our brains churning at full speed thank you very much. So take this time to look at some problems you're dealing with in your job, personal projects, personal life etc and reevaluate them from the beginning. You'll be suprised how often this can help solve whatever problem you're facing.
4. This may seem horribly fundamental, but make sure you're breathing deeply. If you don't breathe properly, you're just going to be in a lot of pain and the whole experience will be miserable.
5. If all else fails, remember that in the end, your body is a machine and needs regular maintanence. Just like a neglected computer will fail, so will your body if it is not cared for.