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

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

#61

Nobody mentioning rock climbing? Come on, I bet half of Hacker News partakes in it

I climb, but I doubt 5% of hacker news does. In fact, among software engineers (few of whom rock climb in my experience), I suspect the ones who climb are less likely to be on HN

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

#62

It’s a bit cliche at this point thanks to people like Joe Rogan, but Jiu Jitsu is, imo, the best possible form of exercise. It’s not only physically exhausting, it’s also mentally very difficult. And not just because it requires deep levels of knowledge to be good, but it also resets any preconceived notions of strength. It’s not uncommon for a new white belt male that weighs 200lbs to get absolutely waxed by a 100lb…

Judo is even better, as you also learn how to throw people from your feet rather than starting on the ground all the time, and you pretty much have to lift weights off the mat to stay competitive.

An ideal combo is submission wrestling combined with BJJ, you'll find MMA gyms train this way.

As someone who used to train at an MMA gym, going to a pure BJJ gym is weird because yeah, I'll shrimp out, get up to my feet, and my training partner is sitting there on their knees waiting for me to re-engage and my first thought is "this would be a great time for a kick to that completely unprotected noggin right there..."

Of course once on the ground, the BJJ peeps dominate, which is what UFC spent 3 decades demonstrating!

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

#63
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…

> We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true...

We are RE-learning. Look at all the "new science" on psychedelics. Or gut bacteria. Etc.

I'm not sure what the bottleneck is...we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens. It really is *that* simple.

p.s. While nothing revolutionary new per se "The Comfort Crisis" by Michael Easter goes a solid job making the case for "this is where we came from, stop thinking where we are is compatible."

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

#64
post #37
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…

One of the most amazing comments I've seen on HN. Thank you for sharing this!

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

#65
post #37
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…

That sounds like a fascinating journey that I'd love to read; have you written anything about it? I'm a born-and-raised software engineer (read: meat mecha mindset), but I recently became interested in dance when I moved to Brazil as many people there have this unconscious connection with dance and their body that I envy. In my case, I'm dimly aware of that non-verbal channel you mentioned, but I struggle to comminicate on it and - if I'm being honest - doing so makes me feel vulnerable and awkward.

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

#66

I’d never seen “an overview of systematic reviews” before — I would have thought this was already common sense, but it should be now more than ever. I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I think it just meant diminishing returns with more exercise, but it says that less is actually better.

WHO recommends at least an hour of moderate+ activity per day which virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do. The notion that you could accidentally do too much exercise is ridiculous unless you go all-in-gym-bro.

According to https://www.who.int/initiatives/behealthy/physical-activity, the recommendation you mentioned is for children and teenagers up to 17 years old.

"Adults aged 18–64 years"

> Should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.

> For additional health benefits, adults should increase their moderate-intensity physical activity to 300 minutes per week, or equivalent.

> Muscle-strengthening activities should be done involving major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.

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

#67

It’s a bit cliche at this point thanks to people like Joe Rogan, but Jiu Jitsu is, imo, the best possible form of exercise. It’s not only physically exhausting, it’s also mentally very difficult. And not just because it requires deep levels of knowledge to be good, but it also resets any preconceived notions of strength. It’s not uncommon for a new white belt male that weighs 200lbs to get absolutely waxed by a 100lb…

Judo is even better, as you also learn how to throw people from your feet rather than starting on the ground all the time, and you pretty much have to lift weights off the mat to stay competitive.

> rather than starting on the ground all the time

BJJ does not start on the ground as standard, let alone "all the time". Matches start standing, and if you are only training from the ground you are missing out. That's not to say that stand-up and takedown training aren't much more in-depth in judo than in jiu-jitsu, though.

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

#68

I’d never seen “an overview of systematic reviews” before — I would have thought this was already common sense, but it should be now more than ever. I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I think it just meant diminishing returns with more exercise, but it says that less is actually better.

WHO recommends at least an hour of moderate+ activity per day which virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do. The notion that you could accidentally do too much exercise is ridiculous unless you go all-in-gym-bro.

Taking a walk might qualify. Any dog owner can easily meet this requirement.

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

#70
post #39

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!

A lot of people feel like “they” are somewhere inside their head. They look out at the world through eyes that are windows. The world is out there, “I” am in here. In this undefined black hole of “me”, mysterious, but definitely separate from the world and what’s “out there” past one’s eyes. They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of…

From my perspective, the belief that the soul and the body are totally separate and that the body is lesser is not actually a Christian belief, but rather a Gnostic one. Unfortunately a lot of the Christianity of America has a twinge of Gnosticism present. The "C.S. Lewis" quote that gets thrown around, "You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body," was never actually said by C.S. Lewis. I actually got a better connection with my body from listening to an Eastern Christian priest talking about how if you think you can separate your body, mind, and soul from each other, you've created a false sense of self.
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