Give that 33 year old a beautiful woman, money, and an executive level role at a tech firm and watch him suddenly only need 6 hours a day of sleep.
Mystery solved.
Please post civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all.
At least be honest about your criticism and say something like: "I'm uncomfortable by how out of step your comment is with my obligation to displace personal responsibility away from anyone who has a claim to victimhood."
Sure, they are heavily interrelated. They are vastly different models of the same thing. While we can understand some processes simply by chemistry, we don't get too far with that when trying to understand social behavior. On the other hand psychology can model processes and behaviors on another level. Sometimes they overlap well but far too seldom.
They will probably not converge well in our lifetime because we are really slow in understanding of complex interrelated systems and cannot make all the experiments we need to quickly advance scientifically.
I wonder if you were speaking generally here, or if you were referring specifically to the Chemical Imbalance theory of depression/anxiety.
Often espoused by the marketing departments of Big Pharma, and by now firmly lodged in the public consciousness, the idea that abnormal monoamine levels (e.g. serotonin, noradrenaline) in the brain causes depression, is (to say the least) highly controversial. Some might even call it "debunked". Or, more charitably perhaps, just a highly persistent meme that's never really had much to do with science from the get-go.
BTW, I say this as someone who saw successful results using SSRIs (Citalopram) as a treatment for depression some years ago. Given that the relationship between serotonin and depression seems subtle, indirect, and poorly understood at best, I don't pretend to be able to explain why SSRI treatment "worked" for me! Placebo? Coincidence? Genuine effect which empirically exists but we do not yet understand the mechanism (a bit like lithium)?
But the strange fact is that SSRI therapy does seem to help with depression in many people, just as lithium seems to help with mood even though we don't completely understand why.
With the example of serotonin, even though the SSRI effects serotonin levels almost immediately, it can take several weeks for depressive symptoms to improve. Therefore it is unlikely that inhibiting serotonin transport alone accounts for the anti-depressive effect. It has more recently been theorised that the strong anti-inflammatory effect of SSRIs may be involved, as depression is increasingly known to be related to chronic inflammation.
Lastly I'm pretty skeptical about "imbalances" altogether (though I took it for granted at the time). For example, when I and others have been prescribed SSRIs, there have generally been no medical tests given first which might detect or confirm any such imbalance. In fact I'm not even sure such a test is possible. Instead, they give the pills out solely on the basis of a personal report from the patient, which the physician interprets to indicate depression.
I know that science is now saying that "decision fatigue" doesn't exist, but I think they measured the wrong thing. It's straight up "give a fuck fatigue". It isn't work that does it to me; I can go to work, enjoy work, get enough shit done that the money keeps coming in and my customers are happy with the service I provide.
You know what drains me? The boringness of being an adult and having nothing to actually really look forwards to.
Sometimes I'll sleep 10 hours straight and get up tired. Sometimes I have to do the mental equivalent of grinding my transmission gears because I'm not paying attention to the clutch, so the flow state never, well, flows. The mindless activities are hard to concentrate on, but they need to be done, so I exert far more give-a-fuck-ium than I should have to.
And the thing is, I've always been this way. I didn't become this way, I didn't slowly turn into this, I didn't become burned out. It's part of me.
I mean, I'm most certainly an introvert, so are a lot of the HN community; being with people in social situations are extremely taxing at times... it, too, burns a lot of my precious give-a-fuck-ium.
You know what recharges me? Having a good time with someone I know, where we both enjoy each other's company, where its a nice relaxed thing where neither of us have anything to prove to the other.
Problem is, women are people too. I mean, we're a male-centric community here, we work in male-centric environments, sometimes people like us forget... women have all the same problems we do. They have just as many problems connecting as we do., and we keep circling around in these holding patterns and just grinding their gears because they never find that one person to connect with just as we can't.
You can't just give someone that beautiful woman. They need the right beautiful woman. I think the problem that keeps happening for a lot of us is we keep finding the wrong women... not bad women, just wrong for us. It really throws a wrench in things because humans seem to need those close relationships with others to function properly, and we're not making them... and it's sapping our ability to regenerate our give-a-fuck-ium.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is also a very bad name, because many patients don't have fatigue, but they have very high exercise intolerance (jogging for a few mins leaves you bedridden). That's why the current discussion is to rename it to S.E.I.D (Systemic Exercise Intolerance Disease).
Yours sounds like a mild depression, which can be easily treated through therapy or anti-depressants if needed. But I would see a doctor before of course.
Exercise didn't cause pain for me, but was mentally and physically draining to the point that I just didn't do it. It wasn't until I radically modified my diet (hello Paleo) until that slowly lifted and now I'm at least mostly functional there. See my story (somewhere in my comments history on here) about when I used to weigh 340 pounds and then via changing what I ate, not how much, I hit 184, and exercise suddenly wasn't this insanely fatiguing bullshit. Notice: being overweight isn't what caused it, I wasn't nearly that fat when I was a kid, and you couldn't get me to do shit when I was a kid.
I don't disagree with what I said being a form mild depression, but it doesn't really fit the definition of it. Antidepressants are also a really bad way of treating depression and ignore your brain's own mechanisms to alleviate depression.
Problem is, it seems CFS and depression go hand in hand.
Anti-depressant and psycho-therapy are the two best treatments for depression though, everything else is just experimental.
Why do you think that mild depression does not fit the symptoms? In its early stages, you only have lack of drive and 2 more of its 7 side symptoms. (these are the diagnosis criteria for mild depression, look it up)
Do you have any references? I'm only aware of studies falsifying the model of it as a consequence of "ego depletion" or linking it specifically to glucose, not debunking the phenomenon altogether.
As for the latest research, it is a dysfunction of all mitochondria in the body. More specifically, when ATP is reduced to ADP to produce energy, N+ and O+ radicals are created. Usually, those are eaten up by killer cells. However, in CFS patients, this mechanism is damaged, so that way too much N+ and O+ are created or, they are not eaten up fast enough after only very little exertion. That is why, CFS patients are bedridden for weeks and months after only running for the bus for 2 mins, because their body becomes overloaded with free radicals.
Those damage your cell membranes and create all sorts of pain, fatigue, brain fog, and many more symptoms.
I've been suffering from CFS for almost 3 years now. I went from building my own startup to massive pain and other symptoms within 24h. Over the years, I managed to reduce the symptoms by staying in bed completely for 1 year and paying a lot of attention to not exert myself for the remainder. I can do small things now without having "crashes" and am taking a lot of anti-oxidants after having found a doctor (Prof. Huber) in Germany who has specialized in CFS and developed a therapy. He said there are only 10 more doctors in Germany who know about CFS.
Before him, I went to see 30 other doctors who didn't give a damn about finding out what's wrong with me. They also will not do more than the usual testing, because they don't want to exceed their per patient budget. You need to find a private insurance doctor.
So for 2 years all doctors have told me it's all psychological. I went to see psychiatrists who prescribed me heavy anti-depressant. They told me I have heavy depression. When I asked them why they would say that, because I don't fulfill the depression criteria they became angry. In order to be diagnosed with depression, you need a minimum of symptoms including suicidal thoughts, sleep disturbances, change in appetite etc. I did not have any of those, I just had massive pins and needle pains all over body, blurred vision and muscle twitching.
I told that to the psychiatrists and became angry, because I questioned their authority. They are the expert and not me. Then they tried to gaslight me by saying that I feel depressed multiple times even though I told them that I don't. Then they told me I am a narcissist, manic, anti-social etc. and that is why I have these symptoms.
After 2 years I finally found a doctor who was not like this and who did more tests. He found elevated S100B protein (the CRP of the nervous system), MDA-LDL (free radicals) and low killer cells.
So, this is what you can expect when having CFS, doctors become angry, they try to actually gaslight you. Doctors vigorously say that CFS doesn't exist even though it is described specifically in the ICD.
Apart from that l, your parents will desperately try to convince you that you're mentally ill and that it's all in your head, because that's what the doctors say and become desperately angry to try to convince you and maybe also cut contact with you, because they can't see their child withering away in bed, while he/she refuses to "listen to the doctors".
There are also other examples of recovery, so it is possible. However, most patients do not recover ever, because they have kids or need to work a job. If someone with CFS has kids or a they need to work, it's almost a death sentence, because you cannot do anything for years if you want to recover and you should not have more than 5 or so crashes in total, because the recovery time increases by several months for every crash, at least at the current state of therapy.
So, it's hard, but I've now had a 2 out of 5 main symptoms disappear after 2 years of avoidance of exertion and hope the other ones clear in the next few months.