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Comment by aidepast | Hacker News Reader

Due to mental illness, I've spent 22-23 hours of my day for the last 4.5 years in bed on my smartphone. I only leave for food & bathroom. My BMI has been 17-19 for the entire period, but I worry whether I'm causing permanent damage. My body constantly aches and I tire easily. I feel like an old man, yet I'm 27. I began to have what I assume is Restless Leg Syndrome after a few months, with a constant desire to tense or move my legs. I hope that this horrible lifestyle will not burden me with lasting unforeseen health problems even when I begin to exercise and live again.

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If you look around, you may spot there's a decent number of people over 30 (and 40) who have turned around their lifestyles and become very physically healthy. I'm one of them, having experienced mental illness like you - and I keep noticing others who have done the same as me. It did take a change in my mental health to help me get the kick start, but then the exercise (especially moderate weight training) put me in a positive feedback loop and improved my mental wellbeing to the point where I'm shocked at how 'normal' I have managed to become.

Good luck with getting back to better health.

I was similarly mostly bed ridden when I had an onset of chronic pain.

Turned out, being so sedentary allows your muscles to shrink / weaken, and vexingly after a certain point the only thing to do from being in even worse pain was to power through some light exercise. It worked in so far as it staged off pain from atrophy.

As for restless legs, may I assume that your sleep schedule is very out of whack? I found that taking melatonin in an effort to get some more sleep was guaranteed to give me restless legs. I didn't put those two together until my wife tried some as well and suffered the same thing.

I know you adore when random people give you lifestyle advice, but I’ll take this chance to share an anecdote about screen use. My apologies.

I have a habit of spending most waking time on a screen. The other night I laid in bed without a screen for 5 hours trying to fall asleep. The next day I had significantly more energy. My conclusion is that laptop/smartphone use takes a lot of energy. And today, I read that the brain is 20% of energy usage. Maybe visual processing is a big slice of that 20%?

Try adding magnesium to your diet or with vitamins. Takes about 6 months, but seems to help, even after 25 years of shaking legs. Obviously there are other reasons why we might have an absence of magnesium, but in the between time, that seems to help. Just need patience.

Just a thought that might be related to both problems: I had a brain injury that causes me to have low testosterone. When it’s low, and especially if it’s dropping, I get restless leg syndrome. Also, low testosterone isn’t great, mentally speaking…to say the least. It might be worth checking out.

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