by Brian Tomasik
First written: 8 Apr. 2015; last update: 29 Feb. 2016
This page collects some health guidelines that I find important enough to actively adhere to. I made it mainly as a reminder for myself, but perhaps others will also benefit.
This page omits many obvious points (e.g., wash your hands, get enough sleep, eat fruits and veggies) and so shouldn't be considered exhaustive.
- 1 Summary
- 2 Avoid open CFL bulbs
- 3 Supplements
- 4 Foods to eat
- 5 Food precautions
- 6 Chemicals in foods/drink
- 7 Exercise
- 8 Dental
- 9 Ears
- 10 Sanitation
- 11 Body checks
- 12 Around the house
- 13 Pregnancy prevention
- 14 Sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
- 15 Don't start addictions
- 16 Chores
- 17 Social
- 18 Financial security
- 19 Computer security
- 20 Computer
Avoid open CFL bulbs
Some CFLs emit harmful levels of UV:
The Health Protection Agency of the United Kingdom has conducted research concluding that exposure to open (single envelope) compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for over 1 hour per day at a distance of less than 30 cm can exceed guideline levels as recommended by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). [...]
close proximity to bare skin can result in exposure levels similar to direct sunlight. The Health Protection Agency of the United Kingdom recommend that in situations requiring close proximity to the light source, open (single envelope) CFLs are replaced with encapsulated (double envelope) CFLs. [...]
Ultraviolet radiation emitted by fluorescent lighting can increase an individual's exposure to carcinogenic radiation by 10 to 30 per cent per year, with an associated increased probability of contracting squamous cell carcinoma by 4 percent.
The Wikipedia article has pictures of single- vs. double-envelope CFLs.
UV radiation from CFLs can often, but not always, be avoided by purchasing “double-envelope” bulbs in which the spiral tube is enclosed in a glass or polycarbonate cover resembling a standard incandescent bulb. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada advise that single-envelope CFLs should not be used at distances closer than about one foot.
at close range, around a foot or so, CFL exposure is "the equivalent of sunbathing at the equator." This may not be cause for alarm for those who have CFLs mounted in ceiling fixtures, but it should be a concern with desk or table lamps. The researchers recommend avoiding CFLs at close range and placing them behind glass barriers or enclosures.
However, there are alternatives in energy-efficient lighting now that LEDs are dropping in price and manufacturers are making more efficient versions of incandescents.
"LED and incandescent light bulbs have no emission in UV range; therefore, they do not pose any risk,"
"There is no UV component to LEDs, as far as I know," says Terry McGowan, director of engineering and technology for the American Lighting Association.
Cree reports: "Unlike incandescent and fluorescent light sources, Cree LED Lighting Products produce virtually no light in the Ultraviolet (UV) or Infrared (IR) spectrums." Similarly: "an employee from EnergyCircle said that most residential LED bulbs give off almost no UV light. [...] Consumer LED bulb maker Pharox advertises its bulbs as having no UV, so it's something worth checking when you're shopping around."
Personally I've switched to LED lights. Note that while these don't have significant UV risk, they are still toxic if broken:
If any LEDs break at home, Ogunseitan recommends sweeping them up while wearing gloves and a mask, and disposing of the debris — and even the broom — as hazardous waste.
Using LEDs at night may also interfere with melatonin production.
The particular LED lights I bought also have the problem that they have an outer bulb with holes in it, which bugs can get trapped in, presumably causing them suffering. To solve this problem, I initially put Scotch tape over the holes, but I found that bugs still got in. After that, I taped plastic wrap over the metal light holders that contained the bulbs, and this has worked well.
I currently take the following:
It's not clear whether multivitamins make any difference to health, but it seems plausibly safer to take them, and they're so cheap that cost shouldn't be a relevant factor. My current choice is Centrum Men's Multivitamin/Multimineral Supplement, but I haven't done much research. I don't know if multivitamins specifically for men are better than generic adult multivitamins.
Vitamin D and K2
Multivitamins don't have enough vitamin D. Typically they contain 400 IU, which is called "100%", but this is inadequate in my opinion. A recent analysis suggested that the current RDA for vitamin D may be 10 times too low and recommends 7000 IU/day. I don't know how to square this with existing recommendations against more than 4000 IU/day for adults. Currently I get 2900 IU per day: 400 from a multivitamin and 2500 from taking half of this vitamin D and K2 (MK7 form) supplement. I chose that supplement specifically rather than a vitamin-D-only supplement because some people recommend taking K2 with vitamin D: "For every 5,000–10,000 units of D3 being recommended and tested for, we are recommending 100 mcg of K2 mk7 to be sure and prevent the inappropriate calcification that higher doses of D3 alone could cause." Some claim the MK7 supplement form of K2 is better than the MK4 supplement form, while others contend that MK4 has more evidence of bone-health benefits.
B12 is especially important for vegans. This piece recommends:
- Eat fortified foods two or three times a day to get at least three micrograms (mcg or µg) of B12 a day or
- Take one B12 supplement daily providing at least 10 micrograms or
- Take a weekly B12 supplement providing at least 2000 micrograms.
The relationship between dose size and time between doses is very nonlinear. Let t be the time interval between doses in days, and let m be the mcg required per dose. I don't know the exact shape of the curve for t as a function of m, but here are some possibilities, fit to the data points that t(10) = 1 and t(2000) = 7:
|Curve type||Fit equation||How often to take a 1000-mcg tablet?|
|Logarithmic||t(m) = 2.1215 * log10(m - 7.04)||every 6.4 days|
|Square root||t(m) = 0.14437 * sqrt(m) + 0.54345||every 5.1 days|
|Generic power||t(m) = 0.42927 * m0.36727||every 5.4 days|
All told, taking a 1000-mcg tablet every 5-6 days seems good.
Currently I take Jarrow Formulas Methyl-B12, 1000mcg, 100 Lozenges about once every 5-6 days. I chose a methylcobalamin supplement rather than a more common cyanocobalamin one because some people say methylcobalamin is better, and I haven't found anyone saying it's worse. This post reports that an average daily cyanide intake of Norwegians is 95 mcg/person, while "The amount of cyanide in a 1,000 microgram cyanocobalamin is 20 micrograms." That statement was intended to show that the cyanide from cyanocobalamin is unlikely to be problematic, and that seems probably true, but since 20 is not completely trivial compared with 95, and since some claim other benefits to methylcobalamin, it seems perhaps worth spending an extra ~$10/year on more expensive methylcobalamin supplements?
[EDIT, Dec. 2015: I've decided to mostly cut out creatine because the health risks seem like they might be nontrivial. I still take small amounts here and there because I don't get creatine from my diet.] Because creatine is naturally found only in meat (although the liver can also synthesize it), creatine supplements might improve IQ slightly in veg*ans. I read somewhere that ~2.5 g/day is a good maintenance dose relative to my body size. I currently buy MET-Rx Creatine 4200 Diet Supplement Capsules, 240 Count. In Apr. 2015, a study was reported possibly linking creatine to testicular cancer. This makes me think twice about creatine, though it's not obvious how to trade some remote possibility of increased mental function against some remote possibility of increased cancer risk. Another consideration is that if creatine encourages me to walk on my treadmill slightly more during the day due to making my legs less fatigued (does it?), the health benefit of the extra exercise might outweigh the cancer risk.
Omega 3 capsules
It's important to get capsules with EPA and DHA, rather than just ALA. I currently use Nature Made Omega 3 Vegetarian Softgels, 540 mg rather than fish oil because (1) it's vegetarian and (2) it seems a priori less likely to have mercury contamination. Make sure not to leave them out in very hot weather or else they'll go bad.
Foods to eat
Eat mostly raw and unprocessed foods, except when cooking increases nutrient availability.
Eat many colors of fruits and veggies.
Don't go on diets, except for obvious "diets" like eating less or no junk food. Don't actively try to lose weight, since your body is likely to rebound afterwards. If you lose weight at all (which is unlikely), it should happen naturally as part of your regular lifestyle.
Avoid burned toast, french fries, etc. "Acrylamide can form in some foods when they are fried or baked. These foods include potatoes, cereals, coffee, crackers, breads, and dried fruits, according to the FDA. [...] The agency also advised consumers to avoid crisping or burning sliced potatoes and to toast bread and bagels to a light brown rather than dark brown color. Potatoes should be stored in a dark pantry — rather than the refrigerator — to reduce the amount of acrylamide formed during cooking." (source)
Avoid nutmeg (or eat only small amounts). "It takes a fair amount of nutmeg — two tablespoons or more — before people start exhibiting symptoms." (source)
I try to spit out apple seeds, but eating a few is ok as long as they're not chewed. Chewing and swallowing lots of apple seeds is unhealthy. Eating a bowl of apple seeds is dangerous.
See other poisonous foods: "Top 10 Poisonous Foods We Love To Eat".
Chemicals in foods/drink
Minimize food eaten from cans because of BPA.
Avoid plastic water bottles to reduce chemical leaching. I'm not sure how much difference this makes, but it seems worth a few dollars to buy a stainless steel water bottle. In the past I didn't use glass bottles out of concern that if the bottle cracked imperceptibly, I might swallow a small piece of glass; however, it seems swallowing a tiny glass piece is unlikely to cause major harm. This page agrees that stainless steel bottles are best. This page reviews pros and cons of different bottle materials. This page notes some things to watch out for when buying metal water bottles and recommends Klean Kanteen.
Pesticides (TODO: I should add stuff here). The choice between organic vs. conventional crops has implications for insect suffering as well as health. I weakly suspect that organic farming is worse for insects all things considered, but I remain very uncertain. If that's true, then the reasons to buy conventional are (1) better for insects and (2) cheaper, while the reasons to buy organic are (1) plausibly slightly healthier in general.
Use a treadmill desk. I hate sitting or standing still all day. My treadmill desk improves my quality of life by more than any other item on this list. Walking allows me to feel less fidgety, less stressed, less full after a big meal, and more alert. I wear earmuffs on the treadmill so that its (minor) noise won't hurt my hearing.
Pair intense exercise with something rewarding, such as watching a movie. If you feel mentally as though you can only watch movies/TV when exercising, you'll want to exercise more. (Thanks to a friend for this suggestion.) The power of plain old classical conditioning is impressive. (Though don't take it to extremes.) As another example, I only listen to music when I'm doing "boring" tasks, and this makes those tasks more enjoyable. This particular pairing is unintentional, though. Music, especially when it has lyrics, disrupts my ability to process language (presumably because music and language involve similar brain regions), so I can only listen to music while doing "menial" tasks, like managing my todo list or checking my Gmail spam folder for false positives.
Don't share toothbrushes. "brushing sometimes causes the gums to bleed, which exposes everyone you share your toothbrush with to blood stream diseases. Therefore, by sharing a toothbrush, the couples are actually sharing blood, which is a lot more risky than just sharing saliva." (source)
Avoid carbonated drinks, since they cause tooth decay.
Brush before eating, or wait ~20 minutes to brush after eating. I typically floss after a meal and then brush 20-60 minutes later. At first it felt weird not to brush immediately after eating, but I've gotten used to it. Now it actually feels slightly unpleasant to brush immediately after eating, which I only do if I need to leave the house immediately. I prefer to brush after eating rather than before because I want to remove the food taste from my mouth.
"Brush longer, not harder." "Children and adults tend to spend less than one minute at a time brushing their teeth, even though removing plaque from the mouth requires at least two to five minutes of brushing at least twice a day." (source) I brush and floss while reading at my computer. This means I waste no time brushing. It also makes it trivially easy to brush for a long time.
Consider getting a dental-floss holder. I use Flossaid Dental Floss Holder-Single Handle. It makes flossing effortless, allows me to floss with one hand, and keeps my fingers from getting saliva on them.
Don't use cotton swabs to remove ear wax. "The use of cotton swabs in the ear canal is associated with no medical benefits and poses definite medical risks. [...] the American Academy of Family Physicians, among many other professional medical associations, recommends never placing cotton swabs in the ear canal." (source) See also "Stop Cleaning Inside Your Ears: It’s Bad for You" and "The health benefits and dangers of earwax, from the Harvard Health Letter".
It seems plausibly better to avoid sharing bar soap. "The Centers for Disease Control recommend using liquid soap over bar soap to prevent a MRSA infection, noting that antimicrobial soap is unnecessary. If you still want to use bar soap, do not share it, and leave it somewhere where it will dry off easily after use." (source)
Check for ticks after every time you go outside near non-city grass, forest, etc. Some parts of the USA have fewer ticks (e.g., WA state), making this less necessary in those areas.
Check your moles every so often. "Everyone should check their moles, at least every 3 months. But if you have developed new moles or have a close relative with a history of melanoma, you should examine your body once a month." (source) Because I have so many moles, I see a dermatologist annually to take records of how my moles look. I had a few of the most worrisome moles removed.
(males only) Check testicles for bumps every so often.
Around the house
Check your house for radon. Test the room(s) where you spend the most time. I use the First Alert RD1 Radon Gas Test Kit.
Check that your smoke alarm works every few months.
If you have a home built before 1978 in the USA, get it tested for lead, especially if you have children.
Don't use just condoms. The failure rate for even perfect use is 2% per year. Over 10 years that's about 18%. Use an additional form of birth control as well. (But still use condoms, because they're important for STI prevention.)
Consider getting a vasectomy. I did.
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
Use condoms / dental dams for oral sex. Several STIs can be passed by oral sex. Genital herpes is carried by 15-20% of Americans. It's usually not a huge deal medically, but there's a big social stigma against it, so it might permanently hinder your dating prospects. It can come from oral herpes (which 50-80% of Americans have) during unprotected oral sex, which means that even if you're with a partner who has been tested for most STIs, there remains a risk of getting genital herpes from oral herpes during oral sex. I assume the risk is somewhat low, but "HSV-1 [oral herpes] is a fast-growing cause of genital herpes."
Keep a list of all your STI vaccinations, such as for HPV or hepatitis A / B.
Get STI checks with each new sexual partner. Wikipedia has a helpful chart of which STIs to worry about depending on the type of sex being done. See also this excellent article. Condoms help a lot but don't guarantee 100% protection against HIV, HPV, syphilis, etc.
HIV testing usually has a 3- to 6-month "window period", which means that unless you think condoms are sufficient protection, it's ideal if your partner hasn't had risky sex for ~6 months before being tested.
Not all STIs are tested for at routine screenings. "make sure to ask which STIs your health practitioner is testing for you. Some infections like HPV, genital warts, and herpes are not routinely tested." (source)
Some STIs can be spread just by skin-to-skin contact. "transmission of STIs such as herpes, HPV, syphilis [rare but dangerous], pubic lice, or scabies [not so bad because it's treatable] can occur even if a condom is used." (source)
Personally, I find that thinking about STIs is a huge headache, and combined with pregnancy risk, it provides a non-prudish reason to avoid casual sex. (Indeed, I suspect that disease transmission and pregnancy were two of the big reasons for social stigmatization of casual sex prior to 20th-century medicine.) Casual sex is a lot of work for little reward. Indeed, especially in light of the hedonic treadmill, it's unclear whether sex has any long-term benefit at all relative to just masturbation and outercourse.
Don't start addictions
"I wish I'd never started" is a common refrain among smokers and other addicts. It's so easy to not start an addiction compared with kicking an active addiction. It seems clear that one should generally try to start as few addictions as possible (except for mild addictions to productive activities, like exercise or learning).
It seems advisable to eschew not only exotic drugs but also socially acceptable drugs like caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine is very addictive, and a small portion of the population finds alcohol very addictive. Even if a drug isn't addictive, I doubt that it improves long-term happiness in view of the hedonic treadmill. So there seems little point in taking drugs unless you're already addicted and can't stop. Drugs are expensive, take time, may harm your health, probably don't increase long-run happiness, and may cause long-run trouble if addiction develops.
Alcohol interferes with the development of young brains, even up to age ~25. Beer and related beverages also fill their drinkers with empty calories. And drinking makes you less productive and might lead to behavior you'll later regret. So I've never had alcohol, except for small doses on two occasions by accident.
I've had caffeine about ten times. It feels good in the moment, but its side effects aren't pleasant. Some suggest that it doesn't actually improve long-run cognitive performance. I quit using it before addiction set in, remembering how unwise it is to start addictions.
Once someone asked me in the morning: "How do you get by without caffeine?" My silent reply was: "If you don't have highs, you don't have lows." I'm skeptical about achieving "free lunches" in terms of productivity by chemically altering one's body. Indeed, even sleep plays a crucial cognitive role, and I would not be as creative or sharp if I didn't sleep as much as I do.
Listen to podcasts while doing chores. This saves hours of otherwise wasted time per week and makes chores fun.
Don't worry much what others think except in cases where conformity is unimportant and useful, like wearing a suit for an interview. Caring too much about other people's approval is a recipe for unhappiness.
Check credit-card, bank, and brokerage transactions regularly, such as once per month. I once discovered that someone had stolen my credit card this way. Doing this also helps ensure you're not being billed for a service you don't want anymore. Checking brokerage-account transactions keeps you aware of whether you need to take action in response to an update (e.g., responding to corporate actions or buying new stocks following liquidation of a security).
Check your credit reports every once in a while. You might or might not want to sign up for a service that protects against identity theft like Identity Guard, since in addition to checking credit, they show information about Social Security numbers and other data.
Consider a credit freeze to reduce the risk of identity theft. Doing this might or might not be worth the hassle in your situation.
Don't use wifi unless it has a password to avoid having someone access your information through it.
Lock your computer when not in use. Unless you have sensitive corporate/government information, this is probably sufficient to prevent run-of-the-mill criminals from stealing what's on your hard drive.
Consider a laptop lock. I use Dell Premium Laptop Keyed Computer Lock XHC2X.
Consider using a password manager like LastPass, especially with two-factor authentication. LastPass Premium + Yubikey is a convenient way to do two-factor authentication, since you don't need to type in anything. You can also use Yubikey for two-factor authentication with Gmail. You might not want to store crucial passwords (e.g., Google, Facebook, financial institutions) on LastPass, since LastPass (though quite secure) is a single point of failure.
If you lose a laptop/phone, change important passwords immediately to prevent the thief from using accounts where you're signed in (especially if your computer was unlocked).
Buy a computer with lots of RAM, since this is the most important factor for making things run fast. In 2015, I got a ~$600 Windows laptop that came with 12 GB of RAM.
Kill Chrome/etc. processes that are hogging CPU. Sometimes I notice that my computer's fan is running at full speed even though it doesn't seem as though my computer is doing anything. By looking at Windows Task Manager -> Processes and sorting by CPU, I sometimes see that there are random Chrome processes that are hogging ~25% of the CPU non-stop, day in and day out. Or there might be programs that are not responding and hogging CPU. Ending these tasks can save CPU calculations, electricity, and fan noise. Often, CPU-hogging pages have lots of ads on them, and you can see them running in Chrome when the circle for the page's tab doesn't stop spinning.