Life Update - On Health
Introduction
For some time now, I’ve been afflicted by some health problems. They’ve impacted basically every aspect of my life, so I’ve decided to take a step back and reflect on everything. Along the way, I’ve decided to share some of my personal experience that I have learned throughout this process. I hope that it can be useful to others in staying healthy.
This post will not be about mathematics. It’s about some values that I have developed based on my own personal experiences in life.
As a disclaimer, I will be discussing many personal opinions that may be disagreeable or wrong by different standards. If you prefer to avoid content that is philosophical or subjective in its nature, then feel free to skip this post. You might be instead be interested in my blog series on mathematical optimization in machine learning.
I’ve been working on a series covering optimizers for a while, with the goal of developing some of the basic principles and mathematical theory involved, and different modern perspectives that can lead to different designs. I aimed to be as self-contained as possible, developing many crash courses to cover the essential mathematical foundations to be built upon. In its current state, most of the content is finished, but some has not been reviewed in detailed or polished for clarity as much as I would have liked. Due to my current circumstances, I have paused further work on it, so please keep in mind that certain sections could be inaccurate or disorganized. If you spot some mistakes, feel free to leave some comments in the relevant post. If you are unable to see it, you might need to do a hard refresh.
I’ll start with some blanket advice to maintaining health, then I’ll discuss (perhaps quite negatively, be warned) about my own conditions.
Maintaining health
These are some basic ideas to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I suppose most of it could be considered obvious and common sense, but I believe that these points are neglected enough that I should list them explicitly nonetheless. For this reason, and also because I don’t have so much energy to write elaborately, I’ll keep things brief.
Prevent, don’t cure
Form healthy habits to prevent illnesses rather than having to deal with them as they arise
3 pillars: sleep, diet, exercise
All 3 are essential and cannot be compromised long-term at every cost. And no, you can’t trade one for another.
It’s important to maintain a consistent sleep and also meal schedule. Ideally, align your sleep with the sun to balance your circadian rhythm. Fix your meals at a designated time and avoid snacking in between so your digestive system develops a predictable pattern between resting and functioning.
Concerning exercise, stay active throughout the day. Get up every half hour to walk and stretch some amount. Simply dedicating a chunk of your day for a gym session then sitting for the remainder is still bad for you.
something to remember
I find that the following ideas are useful to contemplate.
- Sticking to convictions
- Feeling too strongly about something little informed about
Don’t micro-optimize: stick to convictions
Form some unbreakable habits for things you know are healthy from wide scientific consensus. Sure, consensus might be wrong sometimes, but usually it brings 90% of value you need, and people who allow themselves to stress over the remaining 10% typically spend more energy than they gain. It’s easy to get caught up in this study that comes out about this particular substances having some effect in the body, but many things require lengthy verification and testing for many, many complicated interactions between so many variables.
Don’t overdo anything: don’t feel too strongly about something little informed about
Even something that is good for you will be detrimental if you do it excessively. As an extreme example, drinking water is essential for survival, but drinking too much can quickly deplete electrolytes. If you drink extreme amounts in a very short time, you can even create problems such as water intoxication.
As a rule of thumb, try avoiding obsessing over a single “health hack” that is supposed to keep your body super healthy forever. In fact, your body adapts to whatever environment you put it inside, so if you stay stuck on one idea too long, you’ll find yourself stalling. For instance, you can hedge your bets by varying your diet and exercises every once in a while.
More commonly, sometimes, you get sudden bursts of motivation or streaks of good momentum. These situations are arguably the most important times in which you must maintain careful control of your discipline. It’s very easy to push yourself too hard when you get overconfident and feel unstoppable, which can sometimes lead to very poor outcomes like injury or burnout.
Medicine is still underdeveloped
Chronic vs acute conditions, lifestyle vs medication
Taking medication long term for chronic conditions in my case was ineffective and unsustainable. Unfortunately, many doctors act in their best interest, not yours. This does not mean that every to doctor is evil and you should discard every word they say. Simply, given certain constraints, it is better for them to focus on helping as many patients as possible with acute conditions because they are better trained and equipped to handle these problems than to care about complex, chronic conditions.
However, honestly, while I do believe there are almost no doctors that are purely malicious and are deliberately looking to harm people, there are a non-negligible amount who would rather protect their egos than your health.
My situation
Please be warned that the following section will contain significant negativity.
For sake of privacy, I won’t get into too much detail about my own conditions, but it has to do with allergies, inflammation and chronic pain. Originally, I have long been ranting and complaining extensively about my situation, but I have decided to exclude it. I figure that it would be unproductive. So instead, I leave you with the a few words of caution and a hopefully positive outlook on the future.
Please, take care of your body. Treasure it, as it’s the only thing you really have. You don’t want to have to go through the process of understanding from experience what I mean by this. Your health is the most important aspect of life. Indeed, while some of my genetic traits predisposed me to certain conditions, my own poor choices have led to worse outcomes on my health.
In my case, I was quite fortunate. I say try is as a global outlook on my case, because frankly, I feel very angry. I do feel that I have been struck by misfortune and essentially robbed of a normal life that others around me are able to experience. I was supposed to graduate high school this year. I was supposed to follow up on some great opportunities and live some great experiences. I could confidently declare that I was able to live the great joy that is life. But I can’t really believe this sincerely anymore.
At the same time, it’s easy to forget that I live in a first world country in a family that does not experience great financial struggles. I don’t have to live with shortages of food, water and electricity, of technology. It’s important to stay grounded and reflect on what you do have and appreciate it. I think we all take some things too much for granted. It’s easy to get caught up only in moments of frustration, so we should constantly remind ourselves to appreciate the forgotten luxuries we are fortunate to have.
Anyways, I will say that chronic insomnia, in particular, is very damaging both physically and mentally. So, whatever you do, please understand the value of good sleep. I see too many people, especially young, living and almost glorifying bad sleeping habits. It’s not worth it.
On this topic, I want to talk about medications again. For people who experience chronic pain or insomnia, I warn against the use of sleeping aid medications or painkillers. Some people react positively to it. But some, like me, experience quite negative effects with little benefit. Some of these medications have side effects that permanently affect you in even worse ways than your original condition.
I strongly advise anyone to try any other options before this, as you don’t know how you will react. It should be a last resort option. I really don’t feel the same after experiencing this. If I do not sugarcoat it, I’ll put it this way: I’d rather kill myself than live the rest of my life on sleeping pills and painkillers.
It’s hard to describe how tired I am; it’s a very weird feeling. Everything feels fake. It’s like I’m living disconnected from reality, like a video game in which I have to consciously make inputs to see outputs in front of me. Every time I experience joy or some other feeling, it’s like only half my brain registers anything, and the rest just doesn’t exist. Nothing really makes sense. Which is why I find that in hard times, it is important to remain explicit and clear about naming and listing and emphasizing positive moments and also remain grounded in a very general perspective. Whatever it is that you go through, there will always be someone who has gone through way worse than you, in way worse conditions. Similarly, there lie different great opportunities ahead of you.
I remain very hopeful about the future. One reason why I am so interested in artificial intelligence is because I truly believe it can bring so much good. It certainly can change the world. I hope that collectively, we can work to ensure this change is a good one. I guess from my perspective, you hear all the time about stories of people, positive or negative. But I believe that for most people, this information really doesn’t hold the same impact unless you live through some similar experiences.
For me, I feel that my world has been turned upside down. It’s been ongoing for a while, but it’s really worsened recently to a point where it feels really bad and devastating to me, for my own experiences in life. But I still know that countless others routinely deal with much greater struggles and suffering. I really hope that the world can be improved as time goes on for each and every single person, and that we all work toward this goal globally.
As for mathematics and the like, I simply have to take a break from everything. As I said, nothing really feels like it makes sense or is meaningful, especially not a collection of abstract symbols and relationships. In such a state, even trivial tasks seem dauntingly overwhelming. So, I’ll pretty much just lay low and not do much for an undetermined amount of time, possibly occasionally trying some things here and there if I feel better during some periods.
Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read my blogs. I’m very grateful for all of the support and feedback that helps to improve it. Unfortunately, I will probably not respond actively to anything my for a while. Still, I hope this blog can continue to provide value to those who read it.