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Comment by hevi_jos | Hacker News Reader

As a programmer my experience is that I get "depressed" if I do not get out and exercise every single day. I get angry at other people or at things like clients or taxes or whatever. I start getting lazy at stuff to do.

Just getting out for 30-40 every day minutes and sleeping and eating well does wonders for me. I get energized and life becomes full of opportunities, I see the bright side of people...

I am almost certain that is the circulation of the lymphatic system. For people working in front of a computer for hours a day it is very important.

Spain(most of it) is sunny most of the year and it is rare when I could not exercise outside, but in central Europe I notice it a lot with the dark winter.

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I’m convinced this is a special case of the more general “success begets success”. There’s likely a physical aspect of it as well but just feeling like you’re doing well drives you do better. It’s a virtuous cycle.

In most of Spain there are 3 months a year in which there is so hot you can not do intellectual work without external aids like aid conditioners.

This is something well proven, that over certain temperature, mathematical work drops enormously.

Having experienced that I have the hypothesis that the body regulates the temperature of the brain and if it is too high it will make it to slow down, just like a computer does and make you lazy so you do not generate more heat.

In the same way, it makes sense that if your lymphatic circulation is blocked, as it works only with movement, it will make you lazy so your cells do not generate more waste that can not be cleaned.

I get the exact same results as you. As long as I exercise I feel much better also because I do it in the morning its easier to make it part of a good routine however it doesn't seem to help with the anxiety that underpins the depression.

Not feeling depressed is good for a while until it starts to feel like you're not fixing the real issue. Tackling all those routine tasks like exercise, sleep, diet is really easy compared to doing the things that are really important to you where there is much more uncertainty, risk, and discomfort that cause me to feel very anxious which is very discouraging.

Doing things like exercise to help with depression is like trying to repair a cracked stone wall by painting over it so you can't see the crack anymore.

> Just getting out for 30-40 every day minutes and sleeping and eating well does wonders for me.

This is great. I think self-discipline is the underlying thread among all these items. When we have self-discipline and eat well, sleep right, and exercise it starts to spill over into work and personal relationships. And yes, it is a type of success begets success situation.

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