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Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

If you suffer from anxiety, and haven't tried any of the following yet, worth giving a go: escitalopram (with medical supervision, also 10mg did nothing for me, 20mg was life changing), ingesting silexan / lavendar oil, L-Theanine with your coffee, less coffee, less alcohol, propanalol (see a dr) instead of benzos for break-through anxiety, ashwagandha.

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I personally have tried and agree with L-Theanine to reduce coffee anxiety without killing its alertness power, and anxiety certainly spikes a day after a night out drinking. But I think we are missing here the most important levers; 1) a steady regimen of well-scheduled exercises and injury-preventing recovery work, 2) a well-scheduled nutritionally balanced diet free of inflammatory products. Julia Ross’s The Mood Cure goes into specifics for the latter, for example sufficient L-Tryptophan is important for a feeling of well-being. I think scheduling is key because stress increases with energy unpredictability.

I think I'm not qualified to talk about other people's mental health, but I haven't noticed much of a difference between periods when I exercise consistently and those where I don't. I'd always recommend people throw everything they can at chronic anxiety though, and consistent exercise is a win in its own right.

The devil is in the details with exercise, just as it is for nutrition. There are so many ways to do exercise that ultimately increase anxiety; over the years I've had exercise regimens that made sleep difficult, or created increased inflammation (through oxidation, brief injuries or by being more careless with food/drink), or by increased muscle tightness, or lead to me not getting ahead at work because of time spent exercising. I find I have to be very clear on my exercise objective. Six Ironmen and many marathons later, I see I easily get caught up in athletic targets that are not helpful to my life goals.

I second escitalopram. 10mg changed my life.

It's really a roll of the dice. My mother was scared of me getting on Escitalopram because it gave her panic attacks but it was literally a silver bullet from me. 10mg a day turns me from a broken brain to a mostly normal human brain. It's such a lightswitch effect that sometimes I wonder if I'm overselling it to myself, and then I forget to get my prescription refilled for a couple days and I can feel that anxiety creeping back in from the edges, trying to make it's insidious way back into my life, and then I remember why I take it.

My understanding is that each SSRI type med has a roughly 30% chance of working for you, though the odds are slightly connected for SSRIs that are similar.

If only the ADHD was as easy.

Completely anecdotally it seems to be much, much more effective for GAD than depression. I did have a panic attack on the 3rd or 4th day of taking it (and interestingly the only one I've ever had), but I kept going. 10mg to 20mg was the light-switch for me: I was on 10mg for about 3 months with no noticeable difference, and then 15mg (climbing to 20mg) was exceptional. I have a graph from the time when I was recording my mood 10-30 times a day, and it goes from being all over the place to just being in a relaxed state.

Also: "Escitalopram was well tolerated and only 7% patients withdrew, due to adverse events in the escitalopram group, versus 8% in the placebo group" -- people with anxiety disorders have panic attacks when they start lexapro at about the same rate as people who think they're on lexapro but aren't!

Also I do recommend trying any/all of the others things I mentioned as an adjunct, they've all got some decent science behind them, and defense in depth seems like a good idea to me.

>L-Theanine

This with caffeine is amazing!

*Its whats in green tea that gives the calming effect

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