When you wake up, do you sense you've had vivid dreams? Or do you just have a blank mind and headache?
Do your teeth bite together normally? Can you breathe clearly through both sides of your nose throughout the night?
Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
11–20 of 62 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#12What you describe (specially the "mental fog" part) sounds like what happened to me right before being diagnosed with a gluten allergy. Most days I wasn't able to think straight/work &c, and I felt into a sleepy state.
If paired with some other symptoms like bone pain, insomnia &c, I'd recommend trying out living on no wheat, lactose &c. for some days and note if the mental fog goes away. If it does => doctor. If it doesn't => doctor anyway, since it seems you do have some allergy related condition.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#13You need to figure out what is actually causing the problem. Start by keeping a journal. Include details about your diet in it, plus note when you are having a good day, etc. Also, read up on sick building syndrome, regional air quality issues, etc. But first you need to pinpoint a cause. You can't just randomly try health tricks and hope they will work. If you don't know why you are lethargic and lack focus, you can…
You can, actually, just try randomly try health tricks and hope they will work. But if you don't keep a log, you won't be able to get help from others if/when you run out of ideas to throw darts at.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#14Be more specific. EDIT: Answering these questions will help you help yourself. I don't necessarily have any guidance to offer, specifically, but you should collect this information until it reveals something or nothing, and log that along with what you've already logged. IANAD but you knew that posting to HN.
What vitamins have you tried, at what dosages?
Does caffeine have any effect on you whatsoever?
If you drink a cup of tea right before bed, do you lose a night of sleep?
What habitual pattern did you maintain with 'exercise' and 'meditation' and for how long?
How soon during the day do you know it'll be an energy or a foggy day?
Can you read fiction on the foggy days? Non-fiction? Arxiv papers?
Do you consume added sugar in your everyday diet? Artificial sweeteners? "0g sugar, 20g fruit juice sugars" sweeteners (I'm looking at you, Whole Foods)?
Do you drink sweetened soda – sugar, fructose, glucose, fruit juice, all artificial sweeteners, cactus juice, what the fuck ever is new this year? (If so, stop. Quit smoking cigarettes, stop drinking diluted sweetener, and get some exercise, or else you'll die of problems worse than feeling foggy!)
Do you snooze your alarm?
Have you researched the ebb and flow of cortisol throughout the day, beginning at wakeup?
What happens if you drink a half cup of 100% fruit juice (NOT orange, pineapple, or papaya!) the instant your eyes open?
How does a steak breakfast make you feel for the rest of the day? Or a steak dinner, the next morning?
Do you eat one large meal, two small meals, and some snacks each day? Do you eat around the same time every day? Do you eat every day at all?
Do you suffer weird problems that could be loosely classified as 'inflamed' or similar? Allergies, recurring ear-nose-threat issues, joint or muscle issues, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#15You need to figure out what is actually causing the problem. Start by keeping a journal. Include details about your diet in it, plus note when you are having a good day, etc. Also, read up on sick building syndrome, regional air quality issues, etc. But first you need to pinpoint a cause. You can't just randomly try health tricks and hope they will work. If you don't know why you are lethargic and lack focus, you can…
You can, actually, just try randomly try health tricks and hope they will work. But if you don't keep a log, you won't be able to get help from others if/when you run out of ideas to throw darts at.
One of the problems with randomly trying stuff is that if something works, you may not realize it and may not know what specific thing actually worked. Keeping a journal helps pinpoint patterns.
There is a lot more to it than that, but it is a place to start, which is all I am really hoping to give this person. I have spent a lot of time resolving my own health issues, and it started with finally getting the right diagnosis. Then I spent a lot of time on alternative med lists and pursuing a diet and lifestyle approach and blah blah blah. I could say tons more on this topic, but I tend to treat lightly, in part because that often gets ugly reactions. I actually know a lot about this space, but it is not a space that is easy to discuss on HN and it is a space rife with pitfalls. I pursued carefully researched options, but there are genuinely a lot of nightmarish stories about people who were desperate and did things like fly to third world countries to get stem cell treatments or whatever and ended up seriously screwed over by it. So it's a hard thing to talk about at all. It is very hard to put out solid information on this type approach and doing so risks getting one lumped in with charlatans and the like.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#16Definitely get some help if possible. But in terms of better planning, here's what worked for me:
1. Set a goal or two for your week on Monday. 2. Then each morning over coffee each day, list out a few tasks (max of six, but even two or three is ok) that help you progress towards those weekly goals. 3. Do them one at a time, in order of priority. (If you still feel you can't take these on, break them down into smaller tasks if you can)
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#17Be more specific. EDIT: Answering these questions will help you help yourself. I don't necessarily have any guidance to offer, specifically, but you should collect this information until it reveals something or nothing, and log that along with what you've already logged. IANAD but you knew that posting to HN. What vitamins have you tried, at what dosages? Does caffeine have any effect on you whatsoever? If you drink…
The point here is to get you thinking of data to collect, because that's how I think, so that's how I'm thinking about it. Each of these questions potentially decreases the search space you have to consider. If you're not sure, skip that question for now and collect the information at your leisure. If one question is obviously "well yes of course", remember that "of course" is an human invention, and means nothing whatsoever in the field of medicine, no matter how much doctors may wish it was otherwise sometimes.
EDIT: Also, each question might be coincidentally 'yes' or 'no' and not meaningful. Consider them 'avenues of investigations', not 'the answer to life, the universe, and everything'. But if eating a steak breakfast makes you happy every day, it's critical to know how to soften cheap steak with salt and time, because you'll be eating a lot steak until you figure out what the actual deal is :)
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can, actually, just try randomly try health tricks and hope they will work. But if you don't keep a log, you won't be able to get help from others if/when you run out of ideas to throw darts at.
One of the problems with randomly trying stuff is that if something works, you may not realize it and may not know what specific thing actually worked. Keeping a journal helps pinpoint patterns. There is a lot more to it than that, but it is a place to start, which is all I am really hoping to give this person. I have spent a lot of time resolving my own health issues, and it started with finally getting the right di…
A thousand times yes to journaling.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#19Medication may ultimately be the answer for you (I know you said you can't go there right now). For me personally, getting the correct medication was literally life changing.
That being said, I'd suggest being really, really specific in what you want to accomplish. Forget all the grand plans, just nail down one very small thing you want to get done and post it here (gives accountability) Also post the very first thing you need to do to get started on that thing. It may be something as simple as "open up my IDE on my laptop and create class Foo"
Get into a loop of tiny improvements. Make each loop only take a few seconds. If you are making a web page, get the simplest possible page up and running and then add just one more tiny thing to it and refresh the page. If it's something you can't see, create the simplest possible unit test and then code against that.
When you have so much stuff you want to accomplish, it feels overwhelming and distracting. Boil it down to one thing, anything, and start there. The same approach works for all kinds of stuff by the way - writing a novel? Just open your saved draft and add a single sentence. Exercising? Do nothing but put your running shoes on and step outside, even if you come back in right away. Trying to mentally plan the entire thing in advance is exhausting so don't do it, only do the simplest thing that you can possibly do to start - usually it's enough to do one more extremely simple thing, and another, but don't get ahead of yourself - you don't need to worry about any of that stuff right now, only the very first step.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems?
#20Definitely get some help if possible. But in terms of better planning, here's what worked for me: 1. Set a goal or two for your week on Monday. 2. Then each morning over coffee each day, list out a few tasks (max of six, but even two or three is ok) that help you progress towards those weekly goals. 3. Do them one at a time, in order of priority. (If you still feel you can't take these on, break them down into smalle…
"each morning over coffee each day" here is worth calling out especially as a useful habit in support of maintaining stable circadian rhythms. If you wake up at the same time each day (or sunrise +/- a fixed interval) and perform a focus-intensive ritual while consuming a stimulant drug each morning, your brain may simply learn to wake up each morning to prepare for the task ahead, synchronize your morning cortisol spike with your recurring wakeup time, and have you ready to get out of bed each morning without any urging from your alarm.
This isn't obvious because the rigor of fixed sleep/wake times is harsh on modern souls. You have to go lay in the bed in the dark and quiet at the same time (or sunset +/- fixed interval) each night, with your phone screen down, DND'd, and charging. If you like to read at night, you may be able to prepend bed with reading as long as you always begin at the same time, and in the same place, and especially with the same lighting.
This stuff isn't guaranteed to work without more investigation along cortisol and circadian lines, but it appears to work by default for something like 50-80% of humanity, so you might be one of the lucky ones.