Hospital food proven bad scientifically – and may undermine health | Hacker News Reader

Hospital food proven bad scientifically – and may undermine health

newatlas.com

15 pointsgeox11 comments

Unhealthy food isn’t the only problem. The environment for quality sleep is as bad as the food. Lights, beeping machines, etc. It’s as if hospitals don’t understand - or don’t care? - the basic ingredients of recovery from compromised health.

A 24/7 cacophony of beeping gadgets, flashing kleig lights, hourly blood draws, and 3am colonoscopies are all very visual, obvious, and performative.

I'd bet that hospitals understand that quality sleep is a silent, invisible, and statistical requirement for recovery. But they also understand that most humans mostly care about the performance. And that most humans will "understand" any negative outcome which somehow occurs, in spite of the hospital's obvious "we did everything possible" performance.

Psychiatric institutions are even worse. Seeing a friend with a mental problem getting locked up with a bunch of other mentally unwell - it is just extremely unhealthy.

Paranoid conspiracies, threats of violence, rape, forced submission to powerful doctors, sadistic nurses, general craziness, etcetera.

Last resort when someone is a danger to others or themselves.

Modern skills with psychiatry are frighteningly similar to the medical dark ages. We really don't understand much about the brain or how to resolve problems.

They are still mental asylums - toxically dangerous for patients. Also physically dangerous for staff (my ex worked as a nurse at one for a while).

> We really don't understand much about the brain or how to resolve problems.

Agreed. Sadly medical science is more interested in presenting as “expert” and “we know it all” instead of leaning into humility.

We have more to learn, plenty. But why do we insist on not using what we do know to minimize to pain and maximize the outcomes. In short, how can good sleep and good food not be a priority?

's/quality speed/quality sleep/', perhaps?

Yes. Sleep. Fixed. Ty

I remember being a little frustrated at the number of times they woke my wife, baby and I up after we had him.

You couldn’t have waited two more hours to take blood? It’s 430am…

Sure, but then if they don't take the blood at the specific prescribed interval and there ends up being a problem, they then get sued to hell for not perfectly following the established ideal medical procedure. "Why didn't you catch the issue earlier? If only you had done the tests on the prescribed interval rather than delaying."

Have to make sure that the labs are not only taken, but results provided before the attending(s) and care teams are looking at the chart to determine next steps for you. And that starts even earlier if you have a surgeon as your primary.

Same here. We were in the hospital for a couple of days after the baby was born and I think I got woken up every two hours. Little did I know that I would get little sleep for the next year or so.

Misleading title - the study was limited to food at 2 German hospitals, and 3 German nursing homes. Those 5 were not randomly selected.

And the study only looked at the food served to patients and residents - not what they actually ate.

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