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Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Why is this such a big news? Its logical, any other result with moderate exercise wouldn't make much sense. Hard/long effort will tire you also mentally for some time, again makes complete sense. Deep breathing will also wake you up, to certain point, after that you become dizzy with too much O2 in your blood. Meditation or mindfulness exercise will slower your heart rate and make you feel cold. I could go on and on like this whole day.

Its nice if there is a scientific proof for logical behavior of reality but it shouldn't make big news for anybody here. If there is some proven discovery of at-first-glance-illogical behavior of our bodies or reality, now that's something newsworthy.

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"It's common sense that the sun revolves around the earth".

Logic is only helpful if you have the right premises. You might well have that, but they could also be too simplistic. Case in point, meditating tends to make me feel not cold but warmer (specifically, if I have cold hands and feet, that goes away).

Then you're doing something different (not claiming wrong if it works for you) than what meditation generally is supposed to achieve. There can be various reasons, but its definitely not the standard output nor in me nor any person I know is meditating.

I am guessing you are not suggesting that the goal with meditation is to achieve cold hands, so maybe you are assuming that my heart rate goes up or something similar. However, I can assure you that is not the case.

There are theories that Raynaud's syndrome (unreasonably cold hands and feet) can be triggered by stress and so one could hypothesize that the opposite holds true as well. That may be related, or it may not be. I am just pointing out that such a simplistic view of something so extremely complex like our bodies can be misleading.

I am not writing about cold hands, feet or Raynaud's syndrome or any other health issues, don't know where you did take it from. I am talking about slowing heart rate, and subsequently the body will slightly cool down, depending on how much you slow down the heart rate. Of course extremities is where cooling down is felt first, but this is normal for any healthy human.

This is a normal reaction of any healthy body (lower heart rate -> lower temperature), ask any doctor or consult any relevant medical book. This experience also comes from my fiancee who is a doctor, with same reasoning. Something they use sometimes at their work (or reverse effect).

You might be doing something during your meditation that counters this natural effect (physically or mentally), I don't know and frankly it's not much relevant to the discussion. Or do you have any scientific resource that proves the opposite effect is true?

> you become dizzy with too much O2 in your blood

I've never heard of this, can you elaborate?

This may be hyperventilation [1], which is too little CO2 in the blood, not too much O2. Symptoms include dizziness and loss of consciousness.

I discovered this in 7th grade by doing about 30 seconds of rapid breathing followed by holding my breath. Reliably passed out in 5-10 seconds, regained consciousness in <15 seconds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperventilation

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