I've been wearing one for 6 years straight and wrote a post back in 2018 when I first got one. As someone who lives with Type 1 diabetes its been one of the absolute biggest game changers for my health
Heat pumps are really amazing and can be used both for cooling and heating with the same hardware. If it wasn't for natural gas they would make sense for many American homes
That depends on the cost of electricity, which varies widely across the continent. I ran the numbers a few years ago for central Ontario (napkin math), and natural gas was 2x or 4x the cost (I can't remember). Anyway, definitely not worth it, especially since it falls back to pure electric heat when it can't keep up. And the house is heated with NG anyway, no point in making that energy transfer even less efficient.
(NG fireplace heats the air, air heats the hybrid water heater coils, which heats the water via refrigerant and a noisy compressor. Instead of NG just heating the water directly.)
Makes sense for hot water, but with central heating less so. The energy is mostly needed during the months when there is not a lot of sun, over-sizing the solar collector is financially untenable, as is large enough insulated storage to cover months of heating.
Black pipes are great, it would make some interesting calculations to compare:
Pipes vs. PV taking heat pump characteristics into account, whose efficiency depends on climate. Installation costs, maintenance costs. The Pipes compete for real estate space against the PV, so if pipes are more efficient, does it off set the lost electricity (that would be more expensive, but cheaper than from the grid, but only when it's sunny and you can use the appliances at that time, unless you have a battery which is more capex, so does the interest/repayments on that cost get offset by using electric 24/7). Etc. Etc.
It might need some ML to figure out the best solution. And by ML I mean linear regression.
Gas is super expensive here in Australia and I plan to try and put 10kw solar on the roof next year. Our hot water is currently gas but I would like to move to electricity. The solar will take 10 years to pay off, I expect adding this to the mix would take another 10 years.
I have a AO Smith hybrid water heater for the last year and half. Seems to work. Made sense in my case because I wanted to move water heater from the house to the garage. Using a hybrid unit meant I didn't need to plumb gas and figure out how to install a vent.
My suggestion is when you get your solar system installed have the electricians run a 30 amp circuit and disconnect to the water heater location. That way you'll be ready to go. Otherwise you can get stuck if you current water heater dies. You'll be basically forced to replace it with a new gas heater.
Also I saw a youtube video by a off grid nut talking about installing a heat pump water heater. It worked, the only problem it had was the AO Smith unit he was using would test it's heating elements on startup. Which would overload his inverter. I think he fixed that by getting higher resistance heating elements. Otherwise the current draw in heat pump only mode was 300 Watts.
10kW on the roof and a Sanden heat pump hot water set to only run 9-5. I get credit from the Energy Australia for all the summer months which I spend on on the AC heat pump in winter. 25 year warranty on the panels and 20 on the micro inverters. The economics stack up.
Sanden do seem to be the recommended option for this. The problem is if you have a functional gas, the economics rarely stack up to change. If I knew for sure the Sanden would last 10 years yes, but unlike very simple gas water heaters, heat pumps have a disturbingly high failure rate.*
*At least that was the way it seemed from my research, similar situation 6.66kw solar on roof, functional gas hotwater. We do have both Gas and Heat pump house heating/cooling. Heat pump is much cheaper, gas is much faster, even running the largest size possible ducted heat pump split system. I have the gas warm the house from 6am to 8am, then heat pump take over for the rest of the day.
Diabetes technology is becoming pretty cool :) I have a Dexcom G6 CGM on my arm that sends blood glucose measurements to my phone every 5 minutes. It then sends it to Dexcom's cloud service which I poll using an open source project called Nightscout which I have deployed on Heroku.
FWIW, I am indian, and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture. The firsts thing that comes to mind is just 'sweet'. It's got positive connotations for me.
I don't think he meant sugar in the sense of being bad when he compared it to heroin. The comparison was to highlight the similarity of addictiveness of sugar in children and heroin in adults. Addictiveness isn't necessarily always bad.
> and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture
Sugar IS bad, scientifically speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if sugar is an important reason for the high levels of obesity and heart diseases in India. In the end, I think we need to move ahead from traditional values and selectively and logically think about the parts of our culture we want to retain.
I don't use Slack, but from what I gather it's general slowness and the way it aids constant distraction means it is a pretty good productivity killer, so calling it 'Slack' is actually Truth in Television.
It is not sugar per se. It is being able to concentrate and crystallize it and then eating it in a completely non natural way.
Fructose in nature , on fruit, has lots od fiber(celulose), that makes release of sugar in the bloodstream slow, that is
Glycemic Index low.
Refined sugar on the other way, specially in dissolved water, like with milk, coffee or soda, release enormous amount of fructose in a very short amount of time.
In nature, only honey does that. Refined sugar was a luxury until 200 years ago.
US by the way produces the worst sugar of all, because it is not fructose, but something they could produce from corn, way cheaper than brown sugar that comes from tropical places.
It is most certainly not. The soluble and insoluble fiber in fruit is good for humans because it prevents rapid absorption of fructose, which is most definitely toxic. (Paracelsus was right when he said that the dose makes the poison! It just so happens that even small doses of fructose have an outsized impact on appetite.)
Fructose is toxic because it is primarily metabolized by the liver. It has been shown to be at the root of overeating because of its effects on satiety signaling via leptin and ghrelin.
> Fructose also has the best ability to be absorbed by muscle cells without the need for insulin, compared to other sugars.
This is simply false. (Google it!) When used by an athlete after strenuous activity, it is true that fructose replenishes _glycogen_ in the liver, which is released as glucose, which muscle can use. But most people haven't just finished running a marathon when they gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up.
I recommend a few educational videos to bring you up to speed on a great deal of science that has been discovered in the last 15 years or so. Dr. Lustig (endocrinologist at UCSF) lays it out:
Fruit is absolutely healthy for humans - physiologically we are frugivorous apes, after all. Hence why nearly all evidence-based nutritional guidelines from all around the world encourage whole fruit consumption, as part of a diet with other whole plant foods like grains, legumes and vegetables.
> gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up.
This could not be further from the truth. Humans are notoriously inefficient at de novo lipogenesis - the process of turning sugar into fat. The myth that sugar causes weight gain (on its own, not accompanied by a high-fat diet) is just that - a myth. Not to say gulping down Gatorade is a good idea, but it isn't nearly as harmful as consuming a steak, or a stick of butter, when it comes to weight gain.
There is a huge discussion amoung evolution scientist if we can even adapt that fast. It usually takes muuuuch longer to adapt. We certainly did do selective breeding to ensure that the current population of humand is "better" at surviving meat/dairy/grain/extracted-fat consumption. But adapted? That's much contested.
And yes, high meat is one thing in modern diets. But dairy/grains/extracted-fats certainly also need to be considered as "foreign to our original diet"
Sorry, I'm confused where you stand on the issue - do you agree that we are originally physiologically frugivorous? It's possible to get all necessary nutrition through fruits, leaves (greens), nuts/seeds (and may have once required the addition of insects for which we can now supplement) but it's very time consuming and tedious to do so. And in fact, I don't believe we are well adapted to eating animals.
> do you agree that we are originally physiologically frugivorous?
Yes.
> It's possible to get all necessary nutrition through fruits, leaves (greens), nuts/seeds (and may have once required the addition of insects for which we can now supplement)
I totally agree. Except apes are not known to eat nuts, and are known to eat insects (when a tasty one craws by). So I expect us to be adapted to that as well. As a vegan I refrain from eating insects (although I find it a lot less offensive than eating mammals), so some selected nuts/seeds and a B12 supplement do the trick for me.
> but it's very time consuming and tedious to do so.
Given that we can buy tropical fruit (yay for mango) by the box, and have knives, I'd say it has never been easier.
> And in fact, I don't believe we are well adapted to eating animals.
Obviously. It causes us a lot of diseases. Animal product industry trying to spread FUD in order to stay in business a few months longer, but the end is near for them. And good riddance. :)
> As a vegan I refrain from eating insects (although I find it a lot less offensive than eating mammals), so some selected nuts/seeds and a B12 supplement do the trick for me.
Hey cool, I'm vegan too! I agree, supplementing B12 and eating nuts and seeds is way nicer (morally and taste) than eating bugs.
> Given that we can buy tropical fruit (yay for mango) by the box, and have knives, I'd say it has never been easier.
That's a good way to look at it and I agree. However in my own experience, it is still a lot of work. I live in the tropics where it's easy to buy a huge box of papayas, mangos, etc. I did this for about 3 months, eating only raw food and mostly only fruit, and some greens and soaked seeds. My body felt very strong and refreshed, but I spent a lot of time preparing and even buying food to keep it in stock and fresh. I slowly went back to more cooked foods like rice and lentils. It doesn't feel as good, but it's a compromise of time at this point.
would not know. and something bad needs to happen for me to try :)
> I did this for about 3 months
well done. I'm also experimenting with this. Just not so consistent per day (eat on average about 1.5 non raw meals per day), but managing to keep it up well (1+ year now).
A helpful way I've heard this described is "high raw" Also I think it may be easier to maintain long-term, which maybe you'd agree. In any case I'll always be vegan, no matter how much raw or cooked food I eat. Too many "raw vegans" I've seen revert to eating carcasses.
you are literally claiming the opposite of almost everyone else. could you back that up with some evidence please?
for decades the word has been that fat is bad, now the narrative is slowly changing to sugar. now you are either turning it around again, and if so, i'd like to see the evidence for that. (and by that i mean current studies that prove that other studies about sugar are false) or you are simply repeating what we have been told for decades which has been shown to be false.
One cannot say any diet component is absolutely bad or good. It needs to be compared to something else, quantities/quality needs to specified, bodily condition needs to be considered.
If you're interested see Greger, McDouggal, Esselstyn, Fuhrman, they are evidence based "meta study" doctors, that try to bring all evidence together. They also (each) have videos showing how to spot a paid for study (like the one showing butter is not bad by comparing it to huuuuge intake of coconut oil, which no-one does, but then "butter is back" get's printed on TIME mag).
Fat has more calories and is more easily stored by the body than carbohydrates. Processed carbs, simple sugars give a greater rise in the hormone insulin, which basically puts fat into fat cells. It is not carbs' conversion to fat which causes weight gain, but their consumption in the presence of a high-fat diet.
Yes. In case both meals are calorically equal, yes.
The excess in cals from carbs are only marginally turned into fat (lipogenesis is not something humans are good at) and thus the excess is mostly burnt up by heating your body a bit higher (forgot the scientific term for this).
So the fat you eat is pretty much the fat you wear.
If you eat fat and carbs together (almost everyone does that) then your body will choose to use the carbs energy directly and store the fat. As fat is good for long term storage (unlike carbs, that get stored as sugar for short term use in muscles and liver), and carbs not bee efficiently turned into fat (as mentioned) yet can very efficiently be stored.
so low fat, in the end is actually good for you... sometimes i really feel bounced around by all of these diets that come and go... but i’ll read up on those links and other info you shared.
One can only gain weight when over eating calories.
But if one over eat calories but NEVER takes high fat foods it becomes A LOT harder to put on weight.
If one overeats but eats a lot of fats (especially saturated fats) COMBINED with sugars (the softdrink at the snack meal) and COMbINED with inflammetory foods (all animal drive foods and processed foods) then putting on weight is super easy.
Making fat out of carbs (sugars+starches), lipogenesis, is something humans are not good in. Eating low fat is healthy, but do the math because you will easily think you eat low fat without even going under 10cal% from fat (which is like the cut off value for actually a low fat diet — I dont reach that usually, but then I'm not gaining weight).
so if i wanted to prevent gaining fat, the best bet is to keep fat under 10% of carbs, then if eating carbs with say vegetables and (non fatty) meat or fish, i would not gain weight vs a carbs + fatty meat + other oils type of meal (even if calories were equal) ?
If you are interested in this you may want to read "80-10-10".
> and (non fatty) meat or fish
The tiniest bit of fish/meat/oil will likely get you over 10cal% fat. Because there is a little fat in all veg/fruit/etc, which will bring you to 5+cal% without nuts/seeds/avocado. Half an avocado a day, or a small hand of nuts and you already cross the 10cal% in most diets.
You can use cronometer.com to do your research on this. It's fun and enlightening.
> The tiniest bit of fish/meat/oil will likely get you over 10cal% fat. Because there is a little fat in all veg/fruit/etc, which will bring you to 5+cal% without nuts/seeds/avocado. Half an avocado a day, or a small hand of nuts and you already cross the 10cal% in most diets.
wow, that sounds difficult!
> If you are interested in this you may want to read "80-10-10".
I think you got it wrong. Fructose is more inflamatory than glucose (which is not good in high concentrations as well). Fructose-Glucose would be saccharine, the most common type of sugar extracted from cane and beet.
The big innovation here is actually the CGM sensor. Having a sensor on your body that passively gives you information about how your body reacts to food, exercise and medication is amazing. I wrote a post last year on how it TOTALLY changed my life: https://medium.com/south-park-commons/the-wearable-that-chan...
Thank you for sharing this post. I enjoyed how similar the feedback loop for your experiments was to optimizing code for performance, and it makes me (someone who doesn't have diabetes) want to try CGM. However, I don't think I can get it through insurance. It costs about $42.99 for a 10-day sample, so maybe I'll try a 10-day sample to play around with it.
Steady Health | Software Engineer & Product Designer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | Onsite
Managing your diabetes well can be the difference between a long, healthy life and heart attack, cardiovascular disease, amputations, and blindness. Today, diabetes care is based on guidelines that are the same for everyone, regardless of motivation, lifestyle and other individual factors.
Steady Health (https://steady.health) is changing diabetes care by leveraging a new technology and dataset, continuous glucose monitors. These sensors let patients track their levels throughout the day without pricking their fingers with complex equipment. We’re building an entirely new clinic experience that use data analysis to help patients understand how diet, physical activity, and medication is impacting their blood sugar levels.
I’m an experienced founder who previously sold a company to Dropbox. My co-founder is an MD who specializes in internal medicine. I’ve also been diabetic for 18 years so between us we know both the patient, and care side, really well.
We're looking for passionate people with a low ego and a drive to learn. Our first clinic will be in San Francisco and we are currently building out our founding engineering and care teams. The company is backed by top funds and angels including former Dropbox CTO, FBs first female engineer and Head of Data Science at Airbnb.
Steady Health | Software Engineer & Product Designer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | Onsite
Managing your diabetes well can be the difference between a long, healthy life and heart attack, cardiovascular disease, amputations, and blindness. Today, diabetes care is based on guidelines that are the same for everyone, regardless of motivation, lifestyle and other individual factors.
Steady Health (https://steady.health) is changing diabetes care by leveraging a new technology and dataset, continuous glucose monitors. These sensors let patients track their levels throughout the day without pricking their fingers with complex equipment. We’re building an entirely new clinic experience that use data analysis to help patients understand how diet, physical activity, and medication is impacting their blood sugar levels.
I’m an experienced founder who previously sold a company to Dropbox. My co-founder is an MD who specializes in internal medicine. I’ve also been diabetic for 18 years so between us we know both the patient, and care side, really well.
We're looking for passionate people with a low ego and a drive to learn. Our first clinic will be in San Francisco and we are currently building out our founding engineering and care teams. The company is backed by top funds and angels including former Dropbox CTO, FBs first female engineer and Head of Data Science at Airbnb.
Steady Health | Software Engineers | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | Onsite
Managing your diabetes well can be the difference between a long, healthy life and heart attack, cardiovascular disease, amputations, and blindness. Today, diabetes care is based on guidelines that are the same for everyone, regardless of motivation, lifestyle and other individual factors.
Steady Health (https://steady.health) is changing diabetes care by leveraging a new technology and dataset, continuous glucose monitors. These sensors let patients track their levels throughout the day without pricking their fingers with complex equipment. We’re building an entirely new clinic experience that use data analysis to help patients understand how diet, physical activity, and medication is impacting their blood sugar levels.
I’m an experienced founder who previously sold a company to Dropbox. My co-founder is an MD who specializes in internal medicine. I’ve also been diabetic for 18 years so between us we know both the patient, and care side, really well.
We're looking for passionate people with a low ego and a drive to learn. Our first clinic will be in San Francisco and we are currently building out our founding engineering and care teams. The company is backed by top funds and angels including former Dropbox CTO and Head of Data Science at Airbnb.
https://blog.steady.health/the-wearable-that-changed-my-life...
I also started a company focused on CGMs which was too early and didn't work. Maybe its time to try again? :)