
Exercise as a treatment for depression: a meta-analysis (2016) - Luc
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26978184/
======
iFred
Personal experience is that high intensity exercise mixed with a comforting
ritual was what broke me out of a couple bouts of severe depression. When the
streak was broken by an event or travel, and several days missing out on
exercise followed, I would fall back into the depressive mood.

The most recent depressive bout was probably the most extreme I've gone
through, and required a couple close friends to jump in, but again, routine
exercise with comfortable bits of a routine mixed in - like making a cup of
tea, making sure I have a podcast queued up, a book to read, and a handful of
songs I like - has seemed to help pull me from the brink.

Now that I have eclipsed thirty years and I still am over 300 lbs, and some of
the recent depression-like feelings, I am making a more of a cognisant action
to keep working at this and to journal how I feel before, during, and after
the routine.

I look forward to seeing this kind of work being taken a little more seriously
as a means to treat depression as opposed to only medication and therapy.

~~~
pfortuny
I only have to congratulate you for having "close friends" who "jump in". That
is a great part of my keeping my mood stable lately (I have also a couple of
friends who are not afraid to "jump in" and help me out).

Hope you keep them and keep safe!

~~~
hazz99
As someone who wants to be there for my friends, what does this mean? What
does "jumping in" entail?

I assume it means continuing to be social, helping out, and encouraging the
person in question to "get out of their bubble", so to speak.

I haven't had personal experience with the harsher side of depression, so I'm
not sure what is effective (on my part).

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
_social, helping out, and encouraging the person in question to "get out of
their bubble"_

Interestingly, it's often exactly the opposite that's needed: just be there
and listen.

~~~
wiz21c
I second this. What I expect from someone to help is : just listen and show
compassion. Compassion in its literal sense means : "suffer with". I don't ask
people to suffer, but just to be with me inside my suffering, ie, recognize
that I suffer, recognize that this suffering is true, and that staying in that
suffering for a while is ok. By not acting, one comfort the other in its own
view of the world, make him at peace with it.

Once that bond has been made, then one can start to work on improving things.

All of this requires time and a lot of energy.

------
tomhoward
My own experience attempting to use exercise to reverse moderate depression
was that it correlated with me crashing into more serious depression.

It didn't make sense to me as I'd always heard that exercise was a solid
remedy for mild depression.

It was when I read this 2005 article on Kuro5hin (RIP) called Demystifying
Depression [1], that it made sense.

The section "The Role of Sports", with its explanation of the physiology
behind the benefits and drawbacks of exercise for people with depression or
burnout, is consistent with my own experience.

These days, having done a huge amount of work over 10+ years, including
emotion-based treatments, diet/nutrition, and some pharmaceutical treatment, I
can and do often undertake intensive exercise without negative effects.

But I still have to be careful - as the article says, listen to your body.

As a general comment about this document:

Anyone experiencing depression should seek professional help and should not
make treatment decisions based on comments on internet discussion boards or
online articles.

But as a lay-person's summary of the mechanics underpinning depression, I've
not found anything better than this in the 14 years since it was first
published.

If someone can recommend a better one, I'd be pleased to hear about it and
will gladly start recommending it instead.

[1]
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/Print_...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/Print_version)

~~~
rygxqpbsngav
Ashwagandha works great. It is well studied too (check ksm-66). Prolonged use
is safe and has no side effects. Depression is a result of hormonal imbalance
which it corrects effectively along with aiding with deep sleep when taken at
nights.

Exercise raises few hormones like endorphin, serotonin and reduces cortisol
(depending on the kind of exercise, like long walks), but I am not convinced
if someone says it balances them.

~~~
kekebo
Depression correlates with hormonal changes, but saying it's a result of it is
reductionistic and inaccurate. Depression also highly correlates with changes
in inflammatory markers called cytokines[1], but reducing it to a single
biological factor never yields an accurate pathogenesis of the disease. Robert
Sapolskys Stanford Lecture gives a good overview of the interaction an
relationship of the main risk factors causing depression[2].

[1]
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=depression+cytokines+me...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=depression+cytokines+meta)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc)
[Robert Sapolsky On Depression]

~~~
rygxqpbsngav
Great. May be I am wrong. But just found that Ashwagandha regulates Cytokines
too.

[https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijmm/42/1/425](https://www.spandidos-
publications.com/ijmm/42/1/425)

I think its use for stress & anxiety reduction is studied too,

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573577/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573577/)

~~~
kekebo
It's not so much being wrong than just naming one piece of a more complex
puzzle. A wide range of things affect cytokines, nutrition and exercise are
central, but also cognitive stress and sleep, and lifestyle factors like
smoking, alcohol, certain drugs like amphetamines, to just name a few.

In general, expecting that the intake of some chemical will fix the multitude
of factors contributing to this complex disease seems short sighted and may
create false hopes in people suffering from it, so far no easy chemical fix
has been found or it would instantly replace SSRIs in their lacking efficacy.
For me personally the only things that helped over long were radical mental
discipline (daily mindfulness, cognitive behavior therapy), daily exercise,
nutritional changes and a willingness to be comfortable being uncomfortable to
make those changes.

~~~
rygxqpbsngav
I have to disagree with the false hopes part. Just went to find some
reviews(in 100s) on aswagandha products who gave 5 star reviews who claim it
helped them with their depression better than prescribed ones. I think we are
getting lost in the loop again - "I won't take it until it is well studied"
while rest of the people already befitting from it without any side effects
reported. Problem is no one wants to do it for other medicines like
"Metformin" which is proven to result in a person getting promoted to insulin
injections later. Strangely no one till date knows how it works! Diabetes is
similar too, it happens because of a multitude of factors, yet it all reduced
to one single medicine "Metformin". Did you ever question that? Why?

~~~
kekebo
It's nice that it works for you and others, it doesn't for me and most people
around me. Selling it as a magic cure leaves me and those people excluded.
While science has its pitfalls I think we should try to be more scientific
than giving out general recommendations based on (potentially faked) online
reviews for a marketed product. I can recommend checking out the Sapolsky
lecture i linked above which should quickly make clear that a single chemical
treatment approach is highly unlikely to ever become a general cure for all
cases of depression.

------
llamataboot
Exercise is probably one of the most robust treatments we have for a lot of
mental health issues. Personal experience: I dealt with recurrent MDD for over
a decade, and chronic fatigue/pain issues for many many years as well. There
were years were exercise was impossible (I'd literally pass out on the gym
floor after trying to work out).

However, after I got well enough to move, regular movement helped wonders (I
also think it helps get you into an embodied consciousness that contains less
interpretation and more direct experience/awareness - esp somatic practices of
moving meditation, yoga, contact improvisation)

Also, once I started getting /serious/ about exercise - like actual cardio and
weightlifting 5 days a week - my energy levels skyrocketed after about 2-3
months, but it did take a bit.

\--

Slightly off topic, but I'm convinced we'll also eventually have a lot of
robust data that shows that alcohol, even in minor but regular amounts (2-3
drinks most days of the week, say) has large negative effects on mood/energy
that build up over time.

\--

I don't have any problems with psychoactive drugs, SSRIs never helped me, nor
tricyclics, (stimulants help mood/energy a lot but have significant negative
effects)- but if someone wants to try them, by all means do!

However, if someone came to me struggling with depression, I'd nearly 100% of
the time encourage them to start exercising regularly, cut alcohol/eat better,
and see a talk therapist or work through a self-help workbook and see where
they are at in 3 months whether or not they also wanted to take anti-
depressants.

~~~
tom_mellior
> after I got well enough to move, regular movement helped wonders

Yeah, the "getting well enough to move" part is the crucial thing. Telling
people with depression to just get off their asses and exercise will usually
make things worse, not better. Even if you tell them they will feel better
after. Even if they really believe that this is the case.

Exercise is great, but it's not the one magic thing that you can _start_ with
to treat depression. At least not for most people.

~~~
llamataboot
Probably telling anyone with that attitude anything will not go well. Telling
an person struggling with addiction issues to just stop using, telling a
person struggling with health-issues related to obesity to just eat less food,
etc.

There is no one magic thing for depression usually...neither in a pill, nor in
an ECT or ketamine treatment (though those last two can come close for some
people), nor in exercise. But we don't need to approach exercise with the
attitude of strict parent telling the lazy depressed person to get off their
butt!

Instead, we can be examples of people that are living, embodied and active,
and tell what it has done for us, and encourage them to think of movement as
both a natural birthright and medicine.

------
verasio
Personal anecdote: During a bad depressive time I saw a psychiatrist who
enthusiastically prescribed serious antidepressant medications like they were
M&M's. One to lift me up, one to help me sleep, one to take the edge off, one
just in case an anxious episode occurred during the day, etc, etc. That kind
of thing. And he said to me "There is still nothing I can prescribe you that
is as effective as exercise."

Specifically, heavy weights.

~~~
scottious
I have a similar anecdote! Except mine ends with me becoming a marathon
runner. I'm kinda glad none of the pills worked or else I might not have
discovered the best natural anti-depressant.

The unfortunate thing is that often times when one is depressed, exercise is
the the last thing on one's mind. And it also doesn't help that it can take a
long time to have noticeable effects.

~~~
RankingMember
That's the most frustrating part of depression- You can have a nice protective
mindset and habits carefully constructed and working great and then depression
comes along and throws it all into darkness. You really have to work to keep
pushing ahead and through it. I literally visualize putting one foot in front
of the other to get through the hardest days.

~~~
philwelch
I had a similar mindset change the last time I had a prolonged depressive
episode. Usually, I would be either happy and productive and feel on top of
the world, or I would feel like shit and do nothing.

My recent epiphany is a lot like "putting one foot in front of the other".
It's mostly a change in values--instead of worrying so damn much about my own
happiness, I just kind of thought, "I don't have to ENJOY being a high-
functioning human being, but at least I can BE a high-functioning human
being." Grim determination isn't really that much fun, but at least it breaks
the part of the depressive spiral where you feel useless and your obligations
continue to pile up.

------
throwaway66523
During a depressive episode after the suicide of a friend I compiled a check
list of very basic things that I noticed had helped in everyday life. I wrote
it down when I noticed that I couldn't remember the items reliably (or when it
didn't occur to me to think of them). I carried it in my pocket for some
while.

It contained very basic things, like questions if I had eaten enough, slept
enough, whether I spent time outdoors (fresh air/sun), had met friends
recently or exercised recently and corrective actions for each item (and yes,
"eat something" was on it). Some items were accompanied by comments like
"exercise will only help for the next day or two, do not skip for longer than
that".

Another thing that helped surprisingly well was having a shower, shaving and
dressing up. Basically the opposite of letting oneself go.

And in really bad moments, jamming/DoS-ing my brain by some sort of
meaningless meditation (sitting, breathing and counting so that no other
thoughts appeared anymore) helped as well.

The best thing is that I haven't had to use the list in a long time now and
hopefully never will have to again.

~~~
RankingMember
Your list of things reminds me of this: [http://philome.la/jace_harr/you-feel-
like-shit-an-interactiv...](http://philome.la/jace_harr/you-feel-like-shit-an-
interactive-self-care-guide/play)

Otherwise, your mention of the mood implications of dressing up reminded me of
the many times I've noticed that, after waking up in the morning feeling
depressed and shitty, sometimes just pushing through and eating
breakfast/getting showered/dressed makes me feel significantly better.
Something about getting that last shoe on and standing up and suddenly my
brain flips a 180.

------
duopixel
Anecdota about depression and exercise:

 __*

It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in
itself. You generally feel better after exercise.

It becomes much easier to hit the gym after realizing the reason to go is
simply to feel better. Instead of thinking _I don't feel like going to the
gym_ the correct cognition is _my medicine is there_.

 __*

There's a variety of options to exercise. Don't stick to running if you don't
enjoy it (but you keep doing it because you feel better). There's a large menu
of activities, at first try what is convenient, deliberately try many things
and find what is more fulfilling to you.

 __*

With exercise nutrition follows quite naturally. It's difficult to navigate
all the BS in nutrition, but in general eating fresh things closer to nature
(leafs, fruit, veggies, nuts, lean meats) also has an impact on your
wellbeing.

 __*

Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially
isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire,
exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause.
Identify and work on the cause too.

~~~
bonesss
Heavy weights also make an exceptional therapist.

You can tell anything you want to a 200 pound loaded barbell, over and over
again...

~~~
IAmGraydon
I lifted weights 4 times per week for many years. It got me a lot of attention
from the opposite sex, but never helped my depression or anxiety. Then I
started running, and the effect was undeniable. It’s just one data point, but
we evolved to run. I’m convinced it’s something about using your body to do
what you were meant to do that helps alleviate anxiety and depression.

~~~
gameswithgo
we clearly evolved to lift weights too or it wouldn’t work.

~~~
IAmGraydon
Not quite. That's a bit like saying we evolved to play football or it wouldn't
work. Just because we can do it doesn't mean it was a fundamental part of our
evolution with a survival mechanism behind it. We evolved to be able to pick
things up, but we did not evolve to lift weights in the way one does in the
gym. Running, however, was our main mode of taking down prey. The animals we
hunted could run faster than us, but they could not sustain it. Humans evolved
to be able to sustain running for long enough that the faster prey would
eventually get tired and could no longer outpace their hunters. These hunts
would take DAYS in many cases. This running endurance was central to our
ability to survive, and as with all survival mechanisms, using that trait was
and still is hugely rewarding, releasing a flood of dopamine even in modern
humans.

------
bayesian_horse
In my opinion, motivational energy works a lot like financial investing.

It grows and shrinks exponentially. You have to spend energy, to get more
energy (or even conserve it) but the return is uncertain. The optimal strategy
is to invest an amount relative to the energy I have, to avoid draining my
reserves.

To escape the effects of depression [alongside medical treatment] I have to
invest my energy wisely, and ultimately I can (and have, in the past) achieve
motivational abundance again. And I must adjust the investment strategy to my
current capital. Exercise can be a very rewarding way of investing energy. But
it can also be really hard at first.

------
bufferout
For those of us who loathe excercise for the sake of excercise, may I suggest
metalworking? You get the distraction of a project / learning to make cool
things and it's a surprisingly physical process to inflict your will on such
dense objects.

~~~
gameswithgo
some other fun alternatives: mountain biking is amazing and there may bw great
places to do it in your town that you arent aware of yet. no cars to run you
over and modern bikes let you go anywhere in comfort.

rock climbing in an indoor gym is safe and low impact and programmers often
enjoy the mental aspect of it. it incentivizes you strongly to keep weight
down as well.

~~~
g45y45
climbing walls or being stuck in the wilderness with a bike don't sound like
fun at all. pointless. I don't think your suggestion is helpful for people
that have depression. The metal working suggestion from parent is far more
helpful, as you are actually making something.

~~~
maccam94
Rock climbing is like solving a puzzle with your body. You can't just go
straight up. You have to analyze all of the differently shaped holds and walls
and figure out how to position your body to maximize your grip while
minimizing the amount of energy you need to expend. There's also a difficulty
rating system, so you feel rewarded when you manage to finish a new level. But
if you're not motivated by leveling or puzzle solving, it's probably not for
you.

~~~
g45y45
I'm motivated by solving real problems, not artificial climbing wall problems,
sorry.

------
aszantu
my depression went away when I switched my diet from Standard German Diet to
Keto, the anxiety went away when I made the switch to carnivore. Observed
changes in mood and thought after consumtion of starch/plant food (The
occurence of these effects takes about 4 days): Frozen non processed Spinach:
Anxiety - Thoughts revolve around other people wanting to get me or steal from
me or my friends. About one tablespoon of mashed potato and sauerkraut:
depression - Suicidal wishes, low energy Thoughts and self talk are going in
the direction of "everything is my fault, I deserve this suffering, I should
be dead" A piece of apple without the skin every day for a week: Depression,
laziness, don't want to get up, move, walk the dog, everything is too much,
I'd rather just play games all day long.

These effects keep going for about two to three days and then vanish suddenly
and I can do my work and routine, workouts, clean my place, etc.

I did depression comics/art when I was trying to fix it with meds, therapy and
excercise, I'd be happy to cooperate if someone would like to help me market
the stuff [https://www.deviantart.com/aszantu/gallery/52706431/key-
proj...](https://www.deviantart.com/aszantu/gallery/52706431/key-project)

~~~
dan00
> Frozen non processed Spinach: Anxiety - Thoughts revolve around other people
> wanting to get me or steal from me or my friends. About one tablespoon of
> mashed potato and sauerkraut: depression

Have you thought about histamine intolerance?

~~~
aszantu
Yes, I should get tested, but haven't gotten to it yet. The only other person
I know who has Histamine Intolerance gets pimples all over his body

~~~
dan00
The symptoms of histamine intolerance can be quite different. I am not aware
of any test that really gives a definite answer. You can only keep a diet and
look if the symptoms get better and then after some time try again food rich
on histamines and look if the symptoms come back.

------
zimpenfish
Anecdotal counterpoint to the anecdotes posted here - I had a 200 day streak
of >1km runs in 2015 and it didn't help my depression.

~~~
alohomora2
In my also anecdotal experience 1 km is too short to have noticeable effects.
I do >5 km at least 3 times per week with very positive effects on mood.

~~~
zimpenfish
Note that I did say ">1km". The total distance for those 200 days was 672km
including one (1) marathon, six (6) halfs, seven (7) 10kms, etc.

(Anecdotally, your 15km a week is only going to get you 428km in 200 days.)

------
glastra
From personal experience, having dealt with MDD/bipolar^, I can attest that
exercise does help.

However, exercise alone is not always sufficient. Daily meditation sessions
help tremendously. But the icing on the cake (pun intended) is, in the end,
nutrition.

Our body (and thus our mind) works with what we put inside it. In fact, our
body is _made exclusively_ of what we, or our mother, ingested in the past.
There is no escaping that fact, and most people seem to ignore it every single
day.

Personally, switching to a zero-carb ketogenic diet has done wonders for my
overall health and well-being, including mental health. I am of course very
biased in affirming this, but I honestly think sugar and most other plant
substances (except perhaps some fruits and their oils) are there to harm us.
The phytotoxin defense hypothesis really resonates with my experience.

^: I have had recurrent depressive episodes throughout most of my life, and
antidepressants make me manic, but I otherwise experience no "natural" mania,
only a mild hypomania.

------
MatthiasP
That exercise (especially endurance sports) is as effective as your typical
SSRI is known for decades. The problem is getting a depressed person to
exercise five days a week and holding up to that schedule for months and
years.

~~~
throwaway66523
Absolutely. As I commented elsewhere here, I suffered from a depressive
episode after a close friend committed suicide.

The lack of energy is extraordinary and what I experienced must have been mild
compared to what others with severe depression suffer from.

Anecdote: a sliding door slipped from its rail because there was no stopper at
the end of the rail and it had to be moved back in place. It is neither heavy
nor difficult to do it.

I gave up after the first attempt to fix it.

Depression is nothing that I would ever wish on anyone, no matter how much I
might hate that person.

------
rofo1
From the summary:

Exercise has a large and significant antidepressant effect in people with
depression (including MDD _). Our data strongly support the claim that
exercise is an evidence-based treatment for depression.

_ MDD I assume it means major depressive disorder

From personal experience, being (extremely) fit made me feel better about
myself.

Just based on the fact that I can do a lot of things (sprint, hike, some cool
gymnastic moves, solid flexibility, can run good distances) makes me feel
better about myself.

Also, once you get in a good shape, it's really _not_ difficult to stay in it.
Contrary to what anyone says. But you have to do it "the right way": change
your approach to exercising, eating, sleeping, etc. There will be things that
you have to sacrifice. I recommend anyone struggling with "bad thoughts" to at
least consider this - give it a couple of months, see how it plays out.

~~~
diminoten
Eh, it's always hard to get in and stay in shape, just like it's always hard
to create and maintain any habit. Not all of us ever get "used" to a pattern
of behavior, so there's always a fight to maintain anything resembling a
pattern.

~~~
collyw
Personally I just cycle everywhere. It's the fastest way to get around the
city where I live (if you are willing to bend the traffic rules a bit). I am
aware that it won't work for everyone, but I am surprised at how few people
cycle.

There is a bit of a motivational hump to get over, but once you are over it
(forcing yourself to cycle half an hour for as week maybe?) then it doesn't
seem like a problem at all.

~~~
Insanity
Could be a regional thing. Where I live, cycling is for many people the
standard way to go around. But then, most people are students around this
city.

There are quite a few cities in Belgium and the Netherlands that promote
cycling though. :)

~~~
przmk
Only the northern part of Belgium though (Flanders). The rest of the country
has quite poor infrastructure for cycling, especially when compared to the
Netherlands.

I would love to cycle to work in Brussels but I do not feel comfortable doing
so.

~~~
a_imho
I don't know about Brussels specifically, but if you are worried about the
volume of the traffic you can probably try cycling in off hours, mainly at
night, and/or using the pavements liberally to build up the routine.

~~~
Insanity
I'd not like to cycle in Brussels either. Mostly cause of the (car) traffic
there. Neither would I feel that comfortable at night in certain parts of
Brussels :D

------
philwelch
Does exercise treat depression effectively? Yes, of course! The only problem
is when you're too depressed to work out. This is where SSRI's and other
first-line treatments can be valuable: they can lift you up just enough to go
get the rest of your life squared away.

~~~
larrywright
There's a quote I like from Jordan Peterson (yes, I know he's a mixed bag)
that goes something like: If you come to me to get help with serious
depression, the first thing I will do is prescribe an anti-depressant. Not
because it's the long-term solution to the problem, but because they work, and
I can't treat you if you're dead.

~~~
philwelch
Jordan Peterson is _very_ outspoken about lifestyle-centered treatments, i.e.
the whole "clean your room"/"sort yourself out" stuff, but you definitely need
to start somewhere and an anti-depressant can help.

------
qwsxyh
Any sort of excercise has never made me feel anything other than shit. High
intensity? I feel like shit instantly. Just miles of walking? I feel like shit
throughout the entire process. I don't get any sort of "high" after doing it -
everything aches, and I am tired, and I feel like shit. If a doctor told me to
get more excercise, I would tell them to fuck off.

~~~
om3n
I have had the exact opposite experience. Prior to 2012 I was in college and
was overweight/out of shape and always felt like crap. I decided to get into
shape: did intense cardio and HIIT workouts, lifted weights, and got into
excellent shape within a year. I lost 50 lbs, went from being able to do 0
pull ups to over 20, I ran a few Tough Mudders (12 mile obstacle course
races), etc.

I still run, lift weights, and keep my body fat % low, and if I can help it,
I'll never go back. If I go days without exercise I start to feel terrible,
foggy headed, lethargic. One 5 mile run will immediately make me feel great
for the rest of the day.

~~~
qwsxyh
Thanks for the reply that clearly could've been a top comment.

Also, if I was overweight I simply wouldn't bother with excercise for losing
it - it's so inefficient. I'd just skip a day of eating every other day.

------
exolymph
Exercise for depression was a total nonstarter for me because I didn't have
the energy or wherewithal to exercise when depressed.

------
mntmoss
My personal experiences go something like this:

* Strength training tends to be a long term benefit. It can be really draining if you put in a difficult workout every session. Copious logging matters to lock in the sweet spot of difficulty, and maximizing recovery rate matters just as much - I found that increasing vitamin D intake did the trick here. But I find that the strength isn't the beginning and end - it helps to have it as a barometer of progress, but it's only one thing.

* Cardio-intensive activity helps my mood throughout the day. Last year I trained judo, which rewards all-around athleticism(though my desire to compete is limited) and it pushed me to take cardio more seriously. I got gifted a Fitbit last Christmas, and took up a jogging routine first thing out of bed by way of pleasing the hourly activity monitor. By focusing mostly on the technique and habit instead of pace, I've improved my form quite a bit, gotten my sleep schedule under control and also hit on another supplement that seems to get my anxiety down(magnesium citrate). However, this led me to something else which I'm still working on:

* I would tend to finish my jog with a cup of coffee and I finally realized last week that I had been letting my caffeine consumption creep up, and this was throwing off a lot of other stuff. My gym numbers were still coming in, but my concentration was mostly shot, and finally at an event Thursday I had one of the free diet sodas and soon after found that I was unusually anxious and had developed an eye twitch. _This is too much,_ I told myself. I had gone through phases of overconsuming and cutting back before, but I was tired of the cycle.

So I decided later that night that I would cold turkey caffeined drinks. I'm
still consuming a little bit of chocolate, but it's been an eye-opener. I
started having bottled water instead of coffee so as to keep my other habits
in the same place. Day one was the most difficult, but my sleep improved
immediately and my focus already started getting better on the second day. By
the third I realized that I was smiling and engaging with activities better
than I had in a long time. My depressive spells never quite went away with the
other things, but they seem to be gone after dropping the caffeine(although
I'm still getting the eye twitch).

So, yes, it's a lot of things. Sobering up from coffee is something that's
helped by getting all my other habits together. If you're starting from a
"sodas every day/no exercise/no gym experience" standpoint, this is roughly
the path I've recommended to friends:

* Get some resistance bands and start a program with those. They're some of the simplest and most accessible strength training around. Focus on developing some technique and logging your progress.

* Get a fitness tracker and try to hit some of the goals. I like the hourly goals(even though they do not measure when I get up and do housework), others like daily steps.

* Switch either from sugar + caffeine to just sugar or just caffeine. I shifted away from soda about a year into my first job(by - surprise surprise - overconsuming until I felt ill). Then work your way down from there by getting bottled water more often.

* Research supplements. This is not easy with so many options, but there are usually common ones that come up with respect to certain sports and activities.

------
lifeformed
How common is depression? It feels like in every depression thread every
single comment is someone's experience with it.

~~~
sdinsn
Estimates range from 5% - 15% per year of people experiencing depression. It's
a hard thing to measure since most people hide it.

------
DanBC
A lot of people in this thread giving their personal experience, but failing
to realise they're doing _exactly_ the same as people who promote crystal
healing or homeopathy.

Depression is an umbrella term and it covers a wide range of experience. Some
people will recover even if you do nothing to treat them; others will recover
if you do anything (such as providing homeopathy) to treat them. Correcting
for this is difficult, which is why respected organisations disagree about
whether exercise works or not.

Felipe suggest that publication bias explains why other analyses don't show
benefit of exercise as a treatment, but that doesn't make much sense. The only
reason he sees such large effect sizes is because he includes huge amounts of
low quality research.

When you restrict the analysis to good quality research the effect reduces and
it's much harder to see any difference between no treatment and depression as
treatment.

It's not particularly suprising that physiotherapists and sports therapists
think what they do works. What is somewhat suprising is that HN routinely
falls for it.

~~~
EForEndeavour
> they're doing _exactly_ the same as people who promote crystal healing or
> homeopathy.

It's only _exactly_ the same if you consider their formal argument in a
vacuum, neglecting everything you know and reasonably believe about the world.

An intervention with a plausible mechanism has a greater chance of being
effective than an intervention with no conceivable scientific mechanism
(healing crystals; homeopathy). Anecdotal evidence isn't high-quality
scientific evidence, but it does work as a decision support method to think
about what to study more carefully -- or what to stick with because it works
for some reason and you don't have the resources to scientifically validate
the effect.

Furthermore, and this does overlap with the placebo effect as well as
fraudulent medicine: if a specific person tests a mood-elevating intervention
on themselves and perceives a benefit, nobody can contradict them. Not to
defend ardent believers of nonsensical cures, but if it's stupid and it works,
it's not stupid.

~~~
your-nanny
this is a reasonable point. we know exercise does lots of things. we don't
know that about homeopathy. hence it is more reasonable to suspect that
exercise has an effect on depression than it would be for crystals and
homeopathy.

------
harshulpandav
Vitamin D3 is essential to fight against depression. Low vitamin D levels is
one the major contributors toward depression.

Many of us work inside office with hardly any sunlight coming in. Going out
under sun in the morning for 30 minutes will be helpful.

~~~
callesgg
People say that but the drops and pills make zero difference. Sun sure does
feel good, but the vitamin additives does not have the same effects. Based on
that one could make the conclusion that it is not vitamin d but something else
with sunlight that is beneficial.

~~~
naasking
Yes, recent studies have shown that Vitamin D is the marker that's associated
with whatever process sun exposure induces. It's not the vitamin itself
causing the benefits. Get some sun, just not too much.

------
joantune
this needs to be upvoted a bit more

------
karpodiem
Looking good naked cures all ills. I know that won't play well among the Rain
Man comment section here, but the material you are woven out proves this to be
true.

Among nearly all western countries there has been a decrease in testosterone
levels, higher BMIs, and lower birthrates.

Go read Chateau Heartiste.

~~~
RankingMember
It's weird you felt you needed to make a nerdy straw man to rail against when
the comments here mostly agree with your general thesis. Why the acidic tone?

~~~
karpodiem
I wish someone would have impressed this upon me years ago like I'm doing now.

