Sometimes you get pretty busy, and what’s the first thing to lose out? The daily exercise, being outside (sunlight) for a bit, perhaps the fruit (see the How-To). Sound familiar?
Depending on how you’re going at the time, you may actually get away with it. But it’s a dangerous track to go on… if you happen to get sick or add a bit of stress, there’s trouble. For me personally, I think it works somewhat like an equation, roughly this:
doing ok = ((exercise + daylight + fruit + sleep) >= (stress + illness))
Perhaps someone would care to refine this further?
(I’ve never coded in Lisp but I always use parentheses to keep math clear without implied rules. I know about operator precedence – heck I’ve written little compilers – but being explicit eases code maintenance and reduces bugs)
By the way, we got some press attention this week, see When hackers get the blues. It’s also November again, and that means Movember: the yearly fundraising drive raising awareness for men’s health, this year focusing on depression and prostate cancer. I’ve added it to the links, if you know of other relevant links please let us know!
I have worked night shift for over 4.5 years. I stayed out of sunlight to keep my body clock steady. But then, I noticed my mood was turning dark. Also, night shift has twice the rate of cancer than the general population. I believe that I discovered the remedy to my dark moods and the cancer issue. It’s due to the lack of vitamin D. Human beings evolved in sunlight. Sunlight exposed skin makes vitamin D which is a prohormone that is converted to a hormone. Lack of vitamin D is associated with seasonal depression, increased cancer risk, bone loss, etc. If you work indoors a lot, buy some vitamin D (1000 IU). Take two pills for a week and then lower it to one pill a day. You’ll notice the depression abate, your mood will improve and and you’ll feel a bit better.
The Scandinavians (Sweden, etc) actually have facilities where you go to say read a book, while sitting under a special “daylight lamp”. This to resolve the issue that during winter there’s just not enough daylight (particularly if you’re above the arctic circle). Perhaps this would be a solution for shiftworkers who sit at a desk.
I’m personally not a fan of taking vitamin supplements to fix up a problem that has another solution. In addition to the vitamin D production, exposure to sunlight also resets your body clock. That’s what you need, and while you could stuff around with melatonine tablets for that, it’s really not the way.
Do get the daylight, and possibly find a more suitable job. Shiftwork is not for everybody.