Comment by _ywdj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ywdj | Hacker News Reader

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_...

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.

> Ashwagandha works great

I've used that at times, and it's been somewhat beneficial some of the time.

But there's no silver bullet and no one-size-fits-all approach.

The causes are complex and different from one person to another, so a complete recovery will require multiple forms of treatment and a tailored approach.

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...

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

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

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/

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.

Agree. I am a strong believer of treating things without medicines at all. Although I do take herbal supplements proven through centuries to be safe. One thing I can be sure is, there is no negative effect using ashwagandha.

> A wide range of things affect cytokines, nutrition and exercise are central, but also cognitive stress and sleep

If that is true, you get best sleep when using Ashwagandha and its effect on stress, like I said previously is well studied.

https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/

it is there for centuries and affects in a multitude of ways for a body to bring it into balance in every front. In ayurveda, if a practitioner or doctor was unable to diagnose a disease properly, they simply give them Ashwagandha, as it will work or fail to but never works adversely. I still strongly recommend trying it with any other interventions you mentioned like exercise, etc. I never discouraged any other interventions. It helped me personally, so I am inclined to suggest it to others who are hopeless at the moment. Like I said, zero harm. I never suggested it as a one shot solution. People with depression need more caring than any other.

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?

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.

Doesn't ashwagandha interfere with thyroid hormones?

I've used it occasionally before bed and it did seem to reduce stress, but I'm not sure how much it was placebo.

Yes. It does. It is an adaptogenic. It lowers if you have high thyroid, and raises if you have low.

The problem is it doesn’t address the underlying reason why your hormones are high or low.

It might be for some important reason to keep your body in homeostasis while dealing with a different problem.

Other literature I’ve read suggests that, for this very reason, prolonged use of adaptogens (including maca, rhodiola, ginseng) is inadvisable.

In my own case, I suspect it may have led to problems (e.g., caused HPA axis to slow down further) after a while, having shown benefits in the beginning.

Long story short: the body always fights back.

This is spot on. if there is something in the body already messed up, fixing the root cause is the only way. The body always fight back.

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