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How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

prashants.in

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Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#81

Post by baal80spam »

watwut wrote: post #53
digitalsushi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading this book, "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker, and it says the half-life of caffeine is like up to 8 hours ... so having a 3pm coffee means going to bed at midnight with half of it still active. I've cut coffee out of my diet after noon lunchtime, and I think it's helping ... tough to be sure but as long as I believe it, it's pretty good

I don't think that book is generally considered scientific. It contains a bunch of opinions, but it is not peer reviewed article and not everything in it is backed by good studies.

Correct, it's been blasted several times in the past even here on HN. I'm sure you can find the threads if it interests you.

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#83

Post by smn1234 »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #76

I've found the single best measure of my stress and anxiety levels (as at their worst, my subjective perception can't be trusted) is HRV during sleep. My Garmin watch tracks it, and when I actively try to manage stress and anxiety during the day, it goes from red (for weeks) to immediately recovering into the green that night. I like a good dataset and the correlation with my stress (backed up by papers on causation)…

HRV = heart rate variability

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#85

Post by denvaar »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #76

I've found the single best measure of my stress and anxiety levels (as at their worst, my subjective perception can't be trusted) is HRV during sleep. My Garmin watch tracks it, and when I actively try to manage stress and anxiety during the day, it goes from red (for weeks) to immediately recovering into the green that night. I like a good dataset and the correlation with my stress (backed up by papers on causation)…

which garmin watch do you use?

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#86

Post by fragmede »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #77
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do hard physical exercise (weight lifting, forget running), until you are dead tired, and stop drinking stimulants (coffee et al) then you will have good sleep. So simple.

Running properly is just as tiring as a good weight session.

but it doesn't build muscle the same way, which you'll want as age starts to remove muscle

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#87

Post by spot5010 »

pokler wrote: post #10
robg wrote: post #4

1. Establish good sleep habits. Sleep is how the body recovers from stress. 2. Exercise daily. Movement is how the body puts the stress hormones to work. 3. Eat well. The gut-brain connection drives how we feel as we digest.

To point 1, this almost feels like catch-22. While sleep may be a way to recover from stress, stress is probably the single thing that impacts my sleep the most (aside from alcohol consumption, which is much easier to control). Does anyone have any help or tips here?

The tip that helped me the most was to get exposure to sun when I wake up. Highly recommend this podcast from huberman lab: https://hubermanlab.com/using-light-sunlight-blue-light-and-...

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#88

Post by WhitneyLand »

I would rate this post highly. It’s clearly written, pragmatic, accessible, and seemed useful so I’d recommend reading it.

Lately I find myself asking, is the article “better” than what AI could produce?

In this case, the article intuitively seems a grade above similar GPT 3.5 output.

But why so? Is it just my opinion it’s better?

How should “better” be defined? Readability, persuasion, effectiveness as a call to action? Truthfulness seems like it’s own can of worms.

Are there any objective measures of AI vs human output quality to date? Which human? Yikes a new can of worms…

Subjectively, it sometimes seems like the more I read known AI content the more I get a feel for its style. Oops - forgot we’re dealing with a master style chameleon. I think it’s more likely this perception is wrong and it’s easy to overestimate one’s ability to discern generated content.

Apologies for the tangent. I hope it doesn’t detract too much from the more important point that the post is good and I’ve found some of the techniques very helpful.

Re: How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

#89

Post by kansface »

glass3 wrote: post #27

It's difficult to trust a source that fights fire with fire. If stress and anxiety is handled by beating it, where does the entropy leave the system?

I'd suggest you read though a book on Cognitive Behavior Therapy if you are actually interested. Evidence suggests working through a book to be around as effective as any other intervention. I just did the same[1] and found the solutions extraordinarily useful, highly practical, and totally obvious in retrospect. Additionally, the approach itself deeply appeals to me an intellectual level - like what you'd arrive at if you attempted to turn Stoicism into contemporary practice.

1. Doing CBT by David F Tolin

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