A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression • Hacker News Board

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#291

Post by antonvs » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

ChatGTP wrote: post #281

antonvs wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard. Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.

Are you the spirituality police? You seem worried people have found a deeper connection to their bodies and then, for some reason label it as “spiritual” or “mumbo jumbo” and go on trying to diminish their experience, why ? Personally, the more I see of this anti-spiritual enforcement, the more I see intellectualism and science becoming the dogmatic religion of the Catholic Church when it was illegal to have unorthod…

I'm not enforcing or policing anything, or worried about anything, how did you get that from my comment? Please read it again.

> "It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?"

Could you please explain where, in my previous comment, I wasn't being respectful?

I was simply observing that the way people often talk about these ideas, including in this thread, resembles spirituality and religion. Which is true.

> "Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise."

This subthread started with you saying "This is why I think all the 'meatbags' and 'hardware running on software;' analogies are actually really primitive and silly."

So, in your own words, "if people like to think [that,] what's it to you? Why go on the internet..." blah blah blah.

You can dish it but not take it, apparently? You're making a much stronger attempt at policing than anything I said. Perhaps you're projecting something onto me?

In any case, you seem to be having a problem with a false dichotomy. It's not as though any of us are saying our bodies don't exist, or that there's no interaction between our bodies and minds. There's lots of well-established science on that. See the last line of the comment by TeMPOraL that I originally replied to.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#292

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

c0nsumer wrote: post #241

hinkley wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Endurance exercise baby. The hours roll by. Probably closer to 16 during the high season. 25 was event weeks.

I get that, but that's like 3-5 hour days most of the day of the week. I ride a lot myself, but those numbers would start interfering with normal life stuff for me.

More like 10-14 hours on the weekend and 90 minutes a couple of weeknights (plus prep time, like riding across town to meet your club).

"Bicycle widows" is the term for spouses of cyclists who disappear at 7 am on weekends and don't reappear until after 1 pm, at which point they're stinky and exhausted, so they're useless until about 3 pm.

The thing with casual cyclists of a certain age (my club's demographic) is that they like to eat long lunches. So you might be making a respectable 16 mph for hours at a time and then a trip to a diner tanks your average mph. Club riders tend to go for distance, not speed. On a good day those guys would average 11+ mph door to door. Most days was closer to 10.

If you're prepping for a century, I believe the protocol we used for new cyclists was to ride more than 75% of the target distance on the previous Saturday and more than 65% miles on Sunday. And a lot of that is just ensuring your body can handle the amount of friction you're going to deal with in 100 miles. If it was just the serious members, it was more like 80/70. You're likely going to go slower on day 2, so however long it takes you to do 80 miles, it takes about that long to do 70 the next day.

I would not suggest anyone try to go much more than 100 miles (my longest day was 112, and my dad went out after to round up to 115). After I went to college my dad got into 24 hour challenges, which seemed properly nuts to me, and it turns out actually is. Ultra-endurance athletes can damage their heart, leading to atrial fibrillation, which he got. He's been living post-stroke for about 8 years now. He was volunteering some place and was fortunate the guy standing behind him when he went down was a retired EMT.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#293

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #269

Noumenon72 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brain is still "me" more than the meat sack I use to to ice skate, lift weights, and ski. I just think of my body more like a mech I can learn to pilot via telepathic control interface that gains sensitivity over time. I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory, but I've really enjoyed learning enough about my body that I can use it the way it was designed. It f…

> I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory A lot of people feel this way, but the reality is that we already do almost everything without conscious control, we just don’t tend to notice. Not to mention the majority of the systems in our body are also beyond conscious control, and for many, beyond awareness completely (e.g. the nervous system). The book “Flow” is…

There's a whole sub-discipline in UX that talks about the difference between looking at the available information and making the wrong choice, versus making the correct choice but then performing the wrong action anyway. One is a failure of cognition, the other is a failure of the motor cortex.

It's reaching for the green button and hitting the red one instead. It's driving to the store near your office and ending up driving to your office instead. It's forgetting to drop your kid off at daycare.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#294

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

austinjp wrote: post #96

jalino23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get it. what do you mean by “ brain being carried around as a meat sack”? >> Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” what does it mean to think of my body as me? and can you provide examples of these exercises? thank you!

Perhaps there's a typo. I interpreted it as "brain being carried around _in_ a meat sack".

Yeah, but people had already quoted me by then so I didn't bother to fix it.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#295

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

cgb223 wrote: post #87

hinkley wrote: post #2

I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfun…

> the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse What are some examples of this?

Late reply, but I have a friend with panic disorder who has had attacks from her heart fluttering, or even just eating food that makes her gassy. It's a straight shot from the vagus to your adrenal glands. I heard a term for this somewhere but Google is failing me utterly today.

She's in some sort of program now that if I understand what they're actually doing, they're trying to manage the vagus response.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#296

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 6:45 PM UTC

antonvs wrote: post #273

zachkatz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens What I love about Apple Vision Pro is that it has the potential to solve this!

Yes, carrying your PC around on your head sounds like the perfect solution!

Bro, look at that guy's splenius muscles. He is so ripped. Must be using the gen 1 model.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#297

Post by rats » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

miklosz wrote: post #230

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #156

For anyone looking to start exercising, try a rowing machine. It’s practically a shortcut to getting in shape and building muscle (when done with proper form and pushing yourself). Even 5 minutes of HARD rowing a day and you’ll see amazing results.

Exactly! The best purchase of 2020 was the Concept2 after I was certain I'm will not go back to the gym for another winter due to covid. It's very convenient, weather independent, joint-stress free, measurable with an app and multitasking-friendly! I just attach an iPad there, get the noise-cancelling headphones and row for an hour with my YouTube playlist that I fill regularly. For Concept2, be sure to add additiona…

Agreed - with the start of Covid I manage to buy a Concept 2 (which wasn't easy - they were all sold out and you had to pay premium for used ones on Marketplace) but this is the best purchase ever. Since 2020, I managed to lower my hr, improve overall fitness for other sports I do and in general much happier. On my way to sub-20 min 5k, yay

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#298

Post by kpennell » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #2

I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfun…

Kevin Kelly has a great essay on this called 'thinkism' : https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-thinkism-fallacy/

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#299

Post by kpennell » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

mudita wrote: post #37

hinkley wrote: post #2

I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfun…

The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation. This was surprising to me. Before I tried it, I thought of meditation as a purely mental thing, I didn’t expect that the first really noticeable effect of regular meditation would be a changed relationship to my body, Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became…

This is a great comment and describes why a lot of people don't like 'tech people' and why SF has changed so much for the worse.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#300

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #290

TeMPOraL wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's flip this around: once you learn to drive, and then drive enough for it to become something you do unconsciously, is the car now part of "you" too? If not, then I wouldn't use the embodiment/integration argument to define where "you" is, as the brain can learn to turn just about anything into extra limbs or senses, if you use it frequently enough.

Some would argue that we are deeply and intrinsically interconnected to the world around us in ways we seldom consider, and the idea that a vehicle could become part of “us” is not so farfetched. If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find. Going deeper still…

> If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find.

I'm in agreement with that; in a way, it's a superset of the point I was making. What is or isn't "you" feels variable, fluid. An experienced driver might find that, when driving, their sense of self extends to encompass the car. I definitely felt this when getting into "state of flow" while playing some first-person videogames. The ideas of "state of flow", "immersion", "becoming one with something", all seem to point to, or in some cases be a case of, the fluidity of the sense of self.

> Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.

Useful illusions is all we have. As for "just another feeling", I can entertain that thought, and I find it curious, but I haven't really experienced this frame of mind/perception yet. Or maybe I did, but I didn't realize it, so I don't have the memory associated with the phrases you used?

> This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.

I appreciate you going for the more "materialistic"/non-spiritual take. I'm not denying the variety and richness of experiencing the world and one's self in it. I was just taken aback at both broad dismissal of "brain / body separation" and it being justified entirely by spiritual and experiential reasons. My point about driving meshes with my other comments (including this one) like this: we know the "sense of you" can be extended to and beyond the body. But if, instead of extending it, you try to contract it, then without crossing into metaphysics, you'll stop at the brain. This is what I believe makes the brain/body distinction meaningful: not what you can make part of yourself, but that which you can't take away.