What diseases or health problems do programmers commonly suffer from?
How do you take care of yourself? What mistakes you made?

Are computer glasses worth it?
What is the best investment you made for your health? e.g. ergonomic mouse or keyboard. How useful are these ergonomic gadgets?

I'm 26yrs. old. I've learnt the value of physical and mental health, so I'm starting to take care of it now.

Probably mostly myopia, which to my knowledge you can mitigate by regularly looking at distant objects while at your computer, and generally being sedentary, which you can mitigate by lifting (which is "based", see https://reddit.com/r/...) and doing other intensive physical activity. I have no idea if ergonomic input devices actually do anything.

Let me start with a clear warning: Health has become a market.

By market I mean the capitalistic form aka "we sell you any crap we could come up with to make bucks".

What I'm missing most is movement. If I'd get up my workaholic ass every day for 30 mins, I'd probably be a super model.

But yeah. I'm lazy.

The rest of gadgets and tools depend largely on personal physique.

But most of the time .... Gadgets don't solve the underlying issues.

E.g. an ergonomic keyboard / mouse eases the strain on wrist / shoulder,but a better long term solution could be physio therapy - fix the underlying issue, don't "work around" it.

Blue filter glasses seem to have no effect according to recent studies, still in my *subjective* opinion it made my headaches less... No science here, might even be a placebo effect.

What's important imho is good seating.

If you sit like a retard, don't cry when you're in constant pain.

So all in all...

Physio therapy. Regular exercise. Eat your veggies.

Get professional help.

Back pains. Esp. between my shoulder blades.

I ask my wife to rub my back real good, with her heels [I like rougher massages]. This relaxes the fuck out of me.

For milder cases I have a few harder balls, I wedge them between my back and a wall, back of my chair, floor [lay on them] and roll them around. Also relieves the suffering quite well.

No phychical health issues anyware. Just use k120 keyboard and you'll be fine

I go to the gym 6 days a week. I've gotten to a point where I can deadlift 135 KGs. So my physical health is quite good.

Mental health on the other hand is another thing.....

Best investment I made for health? - I quit cigarettes and weed for good and bought Protein powder and Creatine.

I don't know because I did not read the other replies, but weight gain.

It is important to move, sometime, I leave my desk and go for long walk along the place I work (which is a rather large campus) to chill and talk to the people in different buildings. Walks help, specially because I see a lot of our department's developers/analysts being severely overweight.

Not only does walking around keep me busy on the cardiovascular level, but it gives me a chance to know people from different departments. It has also made me known, as in, people from different completely unrelated departments know who I am and act positively in my presence. I understand that many have social anxiety (I am a social butterfly) but to me this is quite an amusing and amazing experience.

I also lift, I recommend everyone here to pick up weight lifting, for their own gains, not to look like an instagram influencer. Keep yourselves busy, and workout.

@Nanos it does not

Dev isn't a dangerous job, but lack of physical activity can lead e.g. to back pain in the long run.

The most basic home gym that I actually use is still better than a commercial gym that I wouldn't attend because the commute alone would already suck.

See the picture, that's what I have. Spare weight plates not shown, I got them tucked away under some cupboards.

Back pain, Red eyes, some even have wrist pains, Dehydration ( surprisingly yes, people forgot to drink water under stress )

How i have managed to avoid all this

- Mechinical keyboard ( In a size that matches your hand movement range)
- Standing Desk
- Height Adjusted Monitor
- Stretching Exercises
- Periodic water breaks
- Ability to say No and fuck you as needed 😇

@Nanos But you can have it custom built. Or try and find different right sized variants