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Personal anecdote: I'm around the same age as OP and until recently also felt like my thinking was slowing down over the years. I went for many years without a

• FPGAhacker 4y ago
  I’ve had a very successful similar experience with regard to excercise.
  • dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Hmm. Do you think we will ever get a pill to replace exercise?
    • safety1st 4y ago
      While we don't have this we do have two simple technologies which massively amplify the benefits of whatever exercise you do: whey protein and creatine (plus a whole host of others where the risk/reward profile is less straightforward)
    • lvturner 4y ago
      We already have many, the side effects however are... problematic.
    • jb1991 4y ago
      Exercise is a source of enjoyment, why would you want to replace that?
      • oneplane 4y ago
        Perhaps the pill we'd need is one to make everyone enjoy exercise at some minimum base level. Plenty of people I've talked to were either not enjoying exercise at all, or did enjoy it while they were doing it, but have a lot of resistance to getting started every time they plan to do something.
        • dr_dshiv 4y ago
          Love this idea. As I’m on the couch in my running outfit, avoiding running, I clearly need to pop a Motimove.
      • Karunamon 4y ago
        The trick is it's not a source of enjoyment for everyone; if it were there probably wouldn't be such an obesity/heart disease problem in this country. This is kind of where I always have been, I find exercise to be a loathsome and boring chore, a necessary evil that gets in the way of things I would rather be doing.
        • antod 4y ago
          Same for me, I hate exercise for exercises sake. I always have to make it a side effect of something necessary or fun I'd rather be doing - commuting by bike, mountain biking, standup paddling or windsurfing etc.
      • NineStarPoint 4y ago
        I exercise on a strict schedule, both weight lifting and cardio. It is never enjoyable for me. I don’t get runners high, or pleasure from the exertion. I just make myself tired, sweaty, and add on temporary pain to my muscles. It’s worth it for the global effect on my energy levels and health. But it remains true that for some of us, exercise is never a source of enjoyment, and I understand why many people can’t get through that to do it anyway.
        • travisporter 4y ago
    • FPGAhacker 4y ago
      Probably not to replace excercise, although who can say with gene editing. Reducing, stopping, counteracting mental decline is a holy grail in medicine. I think there has been some progress here. And on the general mental acuity note there are things like modafinil. The best things known work are do what you need to do to get good sleep, and find some way to exercise routinely.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Maybe centuries from now we will be able to replace movement with a bunch of chemicals that confuse the muscles to think they moved, but movement actually causes a lot of hydraulic pumping effects throughout the lymphatic system that physically diffuses toxins into a waste stream. It’s probably not possible from a physics standpoint to replace motion induced pumping/diffusion with pure chemistry.
      • spoonfeeder006 4y ago
        You don't necessarily want to mimick muscles moving, but rather the brain effects of said muscles moving Its possibly people may isolate the two effects separately
        • theFco 4y ago
          I suspect the brain alone cannot do it. At a some point the chemistry needs to happen, and it has to be in the right place (so the physics of moving liquids inside your body is also required).
    • bentcorner 4y ago
      Maybe not a pill but hopefully we'll have advanced technology that can determine what kind of exercise is exactly right for your goals, take into account any injuries, and tailor your Travelator(tm) Mech Suit to provide you enough resistance for maximum gain with lowest effort as you complete your daily outdoor cobalt mining gathering allotment for LikeCoins.
    • MattSayar 4y ago
      I like the joke "If exercise were a pill, every doctor would prescribe to everyone."
• ixtli 4y ago
  My girlfriend got sick and now I have a part time caring responsibility that’s mostly about doing chores and errands. I’m in better physical shape now and oddly feel more capable at my engineering job.
  • DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago
    While the chores isn't as fun as a hike, active rest is better than passive rest. Helps that it seems like you have a positive attitude to the chores.
    • ixtli 4y ago
      I've never had an issue doing small chores but in the past i'd basically organized my life such that i avoided having to do as much ancillary stuff as possible. Now, whatever reservations i had before about repetitive shit like washing dishes by hand or running errands are gone because its for an immediate, greater purpose. And she really appreciates it :)
  • bcrosby95 4y ago
    This happened to me with kids. I've always been a lazy slob who plays video games in their spare time. By my late 30s I was starting to feel like a bag of garbage. But when I had kids it forced me to move and do things. Now I feel better in my '40s than I did in my '30s.
• hagmonk 4y ago
  Sharing my own anecdata: my Oura ring shows that on days I drink, RHR is 10bpm higher and HRV about 15ms lower. Exercise has a huge impact on sleep quality too. My theory is that when you're young, your body has a much wider margin for error. A few drinks or sloppy exercise routines never seemed to impact my work. As I've aged, the margin has shrunk, and now there's a measurable effect that I can no longer ignore. Aging is in itself a handicap, but now after too many drinks, the next day both my cognitive sharpness and motivation to even care about shoveling bits around a network have declined. Now I need to actively stack the deck in my favor, rather that engaging in behaviors that further handicap myself. So that means exercise, a sleep routine, zero alcohol most days of the week, reducing stress, all that goddamn stuff I never had to worry about ;) Another way to think of it is this: at 40 or 50, can you afford to be lugging around a 20% RHR penalty all day? That will surely come home to roost, probably in the form of atherosclerosis. Remember the most common clinical presentation for a heart attack sufferer is not chest pain, but being dead on arrival. I bring this up because it's worth nothing that our bodies and minds are remarkably good at covering up problems until far too late. When you get those early warning signals (high RHR, feeling of cognitive decline, etc) trust your body, be proactive, and employ countermeasures.
  • jghn 4y ago
    My having an Apple Watch opened my eyes on how much alcohol affects my sleep, and thus everything else. Even as little as a single drink can have a disruptive effect that night. A real bender might take a couple of days for the effects to completely wear off. Last year for unrelated reasons I wound up not drinking at all for a few weeks. All of my heart & sleep metrics were improved by large amounts. When I zoom out for the full year view it's obvious immediately when that was in the aggregate data. In terms of how this knowledge affects my behavior? I'll still tie one on at about the same frequency. But the casual "sure why not, I'll have a beer" is gone. Whenever I'm about to consume alcohol I think about if the amount of enjoyment I'll be receiving is worth the downside & act accordingly.
    • hagmonk 4y ago
      Yeah that's a great point, the data really makes you pause and say "is this worth the cost?" The other wearable that has had an extreme impact on my lifestyle has been a Dexcom CGM through Levels. I could write pages about this, but in some ways it has been more impactful than anything else. Knowing how your body reacts to particular foods, and seeing the immediate feedback is super eye opening. And it extends into sleep as well, looking at what your blood glucose does overnight based on stress, exercise, what you ate, when you ate it, it's quite amazing to see how this subsystem in your body is reacting. I'll never forget the first time I ate sushi (which mentally I thought of as a "light" food, even a snack) only to see my blood glucose rocket past 200 mg/dLf. You can also see the effect of alcohol here. Not just with carbohydrate heavy beers, but with the fact alcohol itself suppresses your blood glucose levels, since it causes your pancreas to spike insulin, which disposes of glucose. So it's yet another way alcohol causes a disturbance in your body's attempts at homeostasis. Alas, a CGM through levels is quite pricey because of US healthcare bullshit about giving CGMs to people without a diabetes diagnosis, but doing a month or two of CGM once per year I think it's a great investment (approx $200 for three sensors which last a total of 30 days)
• diydsp 4y ago
  > lifting weights. In this recent survey of nootropics [1], weightlifting was better than dozens of chemicals. In fact, it was third only to Dexedrine and Adderall. It scored better than Ritalin! And its variance is tighter than most substances, meaning it's one of the most likely means to improve results for anyone who takes it on. Personally, I agree. After covid sapped some of my energy, it took about 2-3 months to get back to my average gym sessions and now I feel so much better. Happier, tougher, etc. When I am in shape, the geometry of the world around me changes. A distance or effort I might consider looks, feels, and is more in reach after a few weeks of rows, lunges, pushups, hanging, swinging, light cardio, biking, etc. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/link-troof-on-nootropics https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/link-troof-on-nootropi...
• vogt 4y ago
  Would you mind sharing the routine, or a general outline of how you approached weight lifting from “zero” to “one”? I’m approaching 36 and haven’t lifted anything in 10+ years. But reading sentiments like this is motivating me to start again. I’m just scared honestly - my body has atrophied quite a bit the last 4-5 years at minimum
  • theptip 4y ago
    Typical good advice is to do some simple barbell compound lifts like Rippetoe’s Starting Strength. Deadlift, squat, pull-ups, hard to go wrong with that base. Make sure you ramp load gradually if you have lifted in the past, your muscle memory can return faster than your connective tissue strength leading to injury risk if you stack the weight aggressively.
    • ryanwaggoner 4y ago
      Make sure you ramp load gradually if you have lifted in the past, your muscle memory can return faster than your connective tissue strength leading to injury risk if you stack the weight aggressively. This! Dealing with this right now :(
  • patch_collector 4y ago
    You might look into a trainer for a few sessions. I'm in a similar situation, and just getting back into lifting with a set of at-home weights. Thankfully, one of my company benefits is an in-house trainer who you can sign up with for a few remote sessions. She's putting together a plan for me, then will do a few zoom calls to make sure I'm doing the exercises right, and hopefully that'll take care of things. Years ago, I used a trainer in a gym to kickstart a plan, and I found it very useful.
    • wobbly_bush 4y ago
      +1, I highly recommend getting a personal trainer for a few sessions. They can even do remote video sessions outside of signing up for a gym. A good trainer can recommend exercises that provide just the right amount of challenge - not too low that benefits aren't there, and not too high that the difficulty makes you quit (this is a problem with gym group classes).
• curioussavage 4y ago
  This. My thinking was getting so bad that I went to a neurologist. At the same time I started walking daily. A month or two later and I feel like a totally different person. Mental clarity has sharply increased. Haven’t even fixed my sleep yet either. Can’t wait to see how much more improvement I can get.
• djtango 4y ago
  Anyone have experience comparing weight lifting vs other forms of exercise? Curious of how cardio vs weightlifting compares for example. I have heard a lot of podcasts talking about some psychological benefits from low heart rate cardio that are difficult to replace with other forms of exercise, for example. Call me a wimp but I find DOMS can be a little distracting haha.
  • balex 4y ago
    I find DOMS kicks in after taking a week off from my lifting routine or when I switch the routine altogether. As long as I keep a week between working the muscle group, DOMS isn't a thing. When I do expect DOMS to kick in, I drop weights to 50% my max sets (usually dropping weight vs reps). This makes me "somewhat sore" the following day but no more than that. I also put an emphasis on sleep, "clean" nutrition and supplement with electrolytes. Works really well for me. As for low intensity cardio, I feel it's good for me, but I have to say it can be a struggle to keep it low. The feeling of "I want to push harder" can sometimes be overwhelming.