site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2015 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 15, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can't google anything useful about my issue and Claude is largely unhelpful, the doctors try to diagnose me with depression (I have a very well managed SAD, so I technically might qualify but this is not the main root cause), sports medicine physicians just don't exist where I am, so I want to dump the list of the symptoms I have and see whether you guys can help me come up with a direction to dig.

The main issue: when I do sports, whether it's cardio or weightlifting, I find it really hard to sleep. Fundamentally, my sleep is more fragile. I fall asleep easily all of the time, but when I work out it's easier for me to wake up during the night (for any reason, e.g. noise, wanting to go pee, being too hot, being too cold) and harder to fall back asleep after I wake up.

  • I've had those problems regardless of whether I'm depressed or not. But in general, I'm not depressed. I get depressed when I don't get enough sleep consistently.
  • Given the allotted time slot of 7 hours 40 minutes, when working out, I sleep 5-6 hours, when I'm not I sleep around 7+ hours.
  • I've worked out consistently for over a year and during all of that time my sleep quality was in the dumpster. As soon as I stopped, it improved drastically. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night as much and I have no trouble falling back asleep almost entirely. I thought that if I power through sleep issues, they are going to go away, but they didn't.
  • I tried to start working out again and bad sleep quality was back after the first session.
  • If I engage in a physically demanding activity (for example a hike) bad quality returns the same day.
  • I have a restless leg syndrome and drink magnesium for it. Magnesium removes the feeling in my shins almost entirely, but it seems like it flares up more when I work out. Rolling out the shins doesn't help.
  • When I work out, I am constantly thirsty, regardless of how much I drink. Due to that, I wake up to go pee 2 or 3 times a night. I tried to stop drinking 1-2 hours before going to bed, but it just feels really uncomfortable.
  • I was working out both when I restricted calories and when I was supporting my current weight. When restricting calories, I woke up due to being hungry sometimes (I attribute that to the sleep being fragile).
  • Working from the assumption that this might be related to the restless legs syndrome, I tried to refrain from targeting legs in my workouts, but it doesn't really matter which muscle group I target.
  • I maintain strict sleep hygiene, so we can rule out external factors.
  • Room where I sleep is cool, dark and (reasonably) quiet.
  • I tried working out in the morning and it doesn't matter when I do it.
  • I thoroughly stretched after the work out (when I did work out) and I also stretch before going to bed.
  • I tried adding more electrolytes (i.e. Gatorade), but I don't know what the hell I'm doing or what I'm measuring. In any case, I eat a lot of salt as is and I didn't notice any difference when adding additional electrolytes in my diet.

I desperately want to see a doctor, but they are trying to diagnose me with a mental health problem rather than a chemical imbalance. Feel free to ignore my complaints about doctors and suggest me to see a doctor, but I'd be grateful if you could spell out what I should say to him.

Hey I don’t have a solution but just wanted to say for the past two years I’ve had this very same problem. It all started after a very stressful series of events and seems tied to anxiety for me as well (which worsens with exercise). It’s possibly mental health related - I would take that possibility seriously. I haven’t found a fix yet, if you ever do please remember this comment and let me know

For sure! I noticed I never got "the rush" many get after a cardio workout, I'm just more on the edge, not less

Yeah I often feel irritable after workouts instead of euphoric (which used to happen but not anymore or not as much anyway)

Do you by any chance have Gilbert's syndrome? My pet theory is that it could be related although there's literally zero evidence that it is

Not that I’m aware of. I have ADHD, hyper mobile joints but that’s about it. Google tells me Gilbert’s is genetic and often asymptomatic, so I’ll have to check my 23andMe data later to know for sure…if it comes up I’ll get back to you

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats