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by thaumasiotes 606 days ago
> Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taking vitamins took a back seat?

This is crazy. You deal with the morning routine by taking your pills when the alarm goes off, because there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that.

Flying, driving, and driving are exactly the same. Take your pill when the alarm goes off.

If you drank so much that it rendered you unconscious through the time you needed to take your pill, the solution is "don't do that". That's not exactly an unavoidable necessity of life.

2 comments

> because there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that.

I feel you don't have young kids then. Jumping on you, bleeding, having a nightmare, making possibly-chocking-sounds, running away with your pills, vomiting on the floor, etc. will definitely take priority over whatever you thought you were going to do after waking up. And that doesn't even touch on people with executive functions issues. Or the 1-2yo period where the time you officially wake up may be often a very fuzzy concept. (You mean the 5am wake-up, the 5.45 one, or the getting up after not falling asleep)

Do you miss urinating? Drinking water instead of dying?

It's literally all the same thing. I wake up. I do wake up stuff. If there's some disturbance, some emergency, I still have to go to the bathroom, drink, and yes take vitamins eventually.

It's insanely simple beyond all belief. You just need to form a habit, that's all. "Take vitamins when first drinking water in the morning", or coffee, or whatever. Done. Done forever.

I get that my above statements baffle some people. As I said before, I don't get why.

Habits do not have the internal, loud blaring horns of physical reminders for most people / anyone.

You gotta pee? You __know__ you have to pee, unless you automatically relieve yourself, and if that's the case, that's quite abnormal.

I feel like this is one of those situations where you need to realize that some people - and on this issue, the research says *most people* are not like you. They are different. It really, truly can be as simple as that. Recognizing that people are different and have different needs and struggles is difficult for a lot of people, but still very important.

Think of it like ADHD. The solution for a person with ADHD is not "just use more alarms" or "just get good".

Are you asking me specifically? Then yeah, I have executive functions issues, like a not insignificant number of tech people here. So the idea of "just form a habit" just doesn't apply the same way in that group.

If you're asking in general, then the statistics show this is a problem in general population. Regardless of the specific reasons for it, people can't take daily pills perfectly on schedule.

"Compliance to antihypertensive treatment was found in only 15% of the patients." (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15942423/)

"In the treatment of HIV and AIDS, adherence to antiretroviral agents varies between 37% and 83% depending on the drug under study (10, 11) and the demographic characteristics of patient populations" (https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/42682/9?sequence...)

When you look at this as a population overview and you say you're got a routine and have a 100% compliance rate - you are the anomaly! But that also means your "just do ..." does not generalise for multiple reasons.

> Jumping on you, bleeding, having a nightmare, making possibly-chocking-sounds, running away with your pills, vomiting on the floor, etc. will definitely take priority over whatever you thought you were going to do after waking up.

No, you're just desperately hoping to imagine a scenario that might make it difficult to take a pill with a one-minute take-it-now-or-die window. You're crazy, and you should try to refrain from arguing like that.

The only one of the things you mentioned that could even take priority over a scheduled pill is choking, though you should know that choking doesn't make a sound -- the whole problem with choking is that it blocks airflow -- so if the kid is making sounds, they're not choking. If your kid runs away with your pills, first, that implies that you keep them somewhere your kid can get them (?!), and second, catch them and take the pills back.

Most of what you mentioned is random nonsense that wouldn't even interfere with you. If a little kid jumps into you while you're swallowing a pill, you can just... keep swallowing. If they throw up on the floor, there's nothing time-sensitive about that in any way.

> I feel you don't have young kids then.

I don't, but then again, I have a brother and sister who were born when I was 16. I seem to have more relevant experience than you do. Learn to tell the difference between an emergency and a nothing.

This comment is dismissive and needlessly insulting. Calling people crazy is a surefire way to stop them from listening. But I get some amusement from imagining the look on my wife's face if she saw me leaving a vomit-covered rug to go and take some vitamin pills.
> But I get some amusement from imagining the look on my wife's face if she saw me leaving a vomit-covered rug to go and take some vitamin pills.

That is because you know and she knows that the vitamins are unimportant.

> there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that

There are plenty of things kids - especially young kids - will do that require you to push tasks back. Like a vomit, poo, or spillage situation needing immediate attention. Or throwing a tantrum if you try to bring them back upstairs where the pills are (thus waking everyone else up). Not to mention that it can be exhausting if they're not sleeping well - which can be half the time - and it's tough to remember every little thing when you're exhausted.

> If you drank so much that it rendered you unconscious ... that's not exactly an unavoidable necessity of life

You asked "how much time does it take to swallow a pill". The convenience of that depends on people's lifestyles. Lots of people will wake up at 7am in the week, go out and have a few drinks on Friday/Saturday, and wake up whenever/wherever they wake up the next day. That is not an extreme situation. It's a great freedom to dynamically adapt when you go to bed and when you wake up. Requiring a change to that lifestyle is hardly evidence that something is trivially simple.

As a diabetic that needs to take their insulin at the same time every day... set an alarm? It is inconvenient, sure? But if you value your health then it's worth it. And if you don't value your health, why do you care if the medicine is less effective?
Sure, but the question is...

  What's more convenient and likely to be followed: a 6-monthly jab or a daily pill?
not...

  Is it possible to remember to do something everyday?
That's fair, but that wasn't actually the question

> Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taking vitamins took a back seat?

What's being asked here was "do you have days where you won't bother to take your medicine". And my point was, as a diabetic... no, I don't. I do it every day at pretty much the same time. And I expect most people could do exactly the same. Having children or wanting to stay out late drinking doesn't change that.

That being said, I 100% that I would prefer one shot every 6 months, if that was an option (I take 2 shots per day at the same times, and then 2-8 more over the course of the day)