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I also question the universality of it. No amount of exercise changed my depression or made life any less miserable. Anti-depressants finally helped me get past

I also question the universality of it. No amount of exercise changed my depression or made life any less miserable. Anti-depressants finally helped me get past the trauma I was unable to properly process otherwise.

2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago
And you think the effects of drugs is universal? Exercise is a side effect free treatment that works for some people so it’s worth a shot because it sometimes works.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago
  I'd argue that depression kills and optimal therapy is: anti-depressants, exercise AND talking therapy and the time to start is NOW. I wouldn't knock the effectiveness of any of them with the caveats that: (1) you can get anti-depressants from you primary care doc, the best practice is to start on something, ramp up your dose and try something different if it is not working or you don't like the sides. I really thought Vanlafaxine was a comfortable ride but it raised my blood pressure to the "go to the ER" range. Call on the phone and lean in about adjusting your meds. (2) Getting an appointment for talk therapy can take a while these days. (3) In a hard case you can get a more complex medication cocktail from a psychiatrist but the wait could be worse than the talk therapy. (4) People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. 2 hours a day of cardio helped me deal with a business development process that went on for years before ultimately failing.
  - stuffn 9mo ago
    Or avoid medication for anything but treatment resistant depression. SSRIs are not well understood. Their side effects are not great. Getting off them is miserable. I had them. I felt dead inside. Mission accomplished. Depression was gone, so was my desire to eat, have sex, or do anything else. I wasn’t depressed, I was a zombie. 8 adjustments and medications later I got off them and realized they’re yet another pill to fix a problem 98% of people can fix other ways if they tried. I do not understand this intense desire to be medicated. Exercise, go outside, talk to people. Get good sleep. Once the rest of your life is squared away get some meds if necessary. Psychiatrists and psychologist walk the razors edge of quackery every single day. Talk therapy is a program to take tremendous amount of money from people and funnel it into their account. It’s absolutely nuts the average talk therapist bills at over 300 dollars an Hour. There is no reproducibility in mental health. in their “science”. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe their magical pills will fix problems they barely understand at a biological level. As a final note people in the military do a ton of cardio because running and rucking is hard work you train for. It is certainly not to “stay sane”.
    - PaulHoule 9mo ago
      yeah... i did forget to add meaningful community and spiritual activities to that list but people can have just as strong objections to them as they do to the other things on my list!
    - nineteen999 9mo ago
      100% I have found the same, SSRI's definitely make things worse and I stay away from them, and regular exercise has offered the biggest consistent/persistent improvement in mood.
    - wombatpm 9mo ago
      Medication is the fastest way to make some positive progress before you completely spiral and majorly fuck up your life. Would you rather take a pill and keep working while you sort things out or would you try to rebuild everything after you burn it all down? Talk therapy and exercise may be just as effective or more so long term, but may not be effective enough in the short term.
      - stuffn 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        dang 9mo ago
        Whoa, you can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do this, and I'm afraid you've been breaking the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) in other places as well, including other personal attacks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530967. It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is not something we allow here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations of this point). Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it. You're welcome here as long as you do that, but we really need commenters to stay respectful, avoid posting in the flamewar style, and (above all) use the site primarily for curiosity, not smiting enemies.
  - psunavy03 9mo ago
    > People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. This is giving the military way too much credit for organized stress management. If military people give the impression of doing "insane amounts of cardio" it's because that's what the physical fitness tests are biased towards. And we also won't talk about the fact that getting a psych diagnosis, especially in fields like aviation, can end your career, while managing stress via alcohol gets a wink and a nod as long as you don't have an alcohol-related incident.
  - bluGill 9mo ago
    The military does insane cardio because when the enemy knows where you are sometimes you have to run hard and fast in hopes you can get to safety before they can kill you. I've known people who likely would have died in Afghanistan without that insane cardio. it might help with stress too, but that isn't as clear
- mrgoldenbrown 9mo ago
  The poster you responded to didn't claim that drugs were universally helpful. I think the main point is that there is no universal that works for everyone. For some exercise works, for some drugs, for others therapy. And "works" isn't a yes/no, one might work a little for you, one might work super great.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago
    The poster questioned the universality of exercise. And the went on to say that drugs worked for them in the next sentence. Clearly the two statements are related.
    - HauntingPin 9mo ago
      Anecdotal data isn't sufficient to infer a universal rule. The point of my comment wasn't to argue for drugs. It was to push back against the idea that drugs like anti-depressants are unnecessary and bad, which I see all the time when this topic comes up. A common take is "why use or prescribe drugs when apparently exercise works fine against depression?"
- keeganpoppen 9mo ago
  i think they are merely saying what worked for them. it is working for me too, despite my misgivings about “just taking a pill”. YMMV.
abraxas 9mo ago
And I'm the counter anecdotal case of your anecdotal case. I have a page long list of failed psychiatric regimens that included drugs alone and drugs combined with talk therapy. None of them effective. I won't say that I'm cured of depression now or will ever be. But a strict and persistent exercise routine lessened it to the point where I can function day to day. This was never achieved with presrciption drugs or therapy (of which I have developed a dim opinion).
Jtsummers 9mo ago
> I also question the universality of it. The article doesn't claim exercise is a universally effective treatment, so whose statements are you questioning?
antonymoose 9mo ago
I don’t think depression is a universal root-cause diagnosis so I’m inclined to agree. I’ve been diagnosed clinically several times in life with depression and the pills never did anything for me. Sometimes exercise worked, sometimes it was of little or no use. With retrospect, all of my episodes of depression were a function of environment. As a child, growing up in a broken home situation and bad school environment, of course there is going to be depression. Life sucks. Further, no pill or weight lifting schedule is going to fix that either. Only breaking out of that situation will. As an adult, I’ve absolutely had and broken out of a long episode of depression with exercise. Bad breakup, startup failure, then introduce chronic drinking and subsequent weight gain. Guess what, cutting back on drinking, bicycling to work 30 minutes each way, doing martial arts in the evenings, it was a great fix. It enhanced self image, added a new community of positive people, and broke a cycle of depression.
- LorenPechtel 9mo ago
  I definitely agree, there are two fundamental forms of "depression"--internal and a reaction to a bad external situation. Very different causes, what works for one doesn't work for the other. And I don't even like the "depression" label for bad situations--as with the previous post about willpower. We have a limited ability to cope with bad, when it's exceeded (or our efforts are misapplied resulting in the same end) we get "depression". No, we get reality! That's why things like forcing rehab does nothing about addiction--it doesn't remove what drove the person to the drugs in the first place.
marcosdumay 9mo ago
There's no universality on anything linked to mental health.
cheald 9mo ago
Depression isn't monocausal so it'd be far too simple for it to have a single solution. But in general, humans just work better when we're regularly putting our bodies under reasonable physical load.
heavyset_go 9mo ago
I'm a non-competitive athlete, and yes exercise can help depression, but no, it will not be sufficient for anything but your mild to average case of it. Exercise is a crucial part of dealing with it, but it is not a panacea.
- burningChrome 9mo ago
  >> I'm a non-competitive athlete Honest question, but what do you mean by this? I've played competitive team sports my whole life and have a very competitive drive. If its not team sports, its rock climbing where I feel like I'm competing against myself or my brain trying to solve a route. If I'm hiking, I'm competing against the clock or how far I can go. If I'm lifting weights, its about how many sets I can do and what weight in order to push myself. So even in what most people deem "non-competitive" activities I'm still competing against a clock, or my body, or my brain. I'm just curious what you meant is all. EDIT: Typical HN. Ask a question and get downvoted. Logging off the day - thanks.
  - heavyset_go 9mo ago
    I'm not competing against anyone but myself, I'm not trying to meet any specific weight/size/etc cutoff for competition, the point is exercise and improvement and not any official or unofficial competition. Someone might train for marathons, body building, etc. I don't.
- genghisjahn 9mo ago
  True. I ran my but off in 2025 but it was mainly holding my anxiety over finding a job at bay.
- unparagoned 9mo ago
  Depression is an umbrella term that covers lots of underlying biological conditions. Exercise forms the foundation of a biologically healthy brain which is required for all conditions. For some conditions it’s all you need for others it’s not enough
resumenext 9mo ago
I hesitate to ask but what is your gender? I think there may be very gender specific effects in this comparison. I would also be very curious the type and intensity of exercise and whether you had comorbidities that impact ability to train (obesity, low testosterone, etc).
- HauntingPin 9mo ago
  I'm male. I've done everything from cycling to 5-10k running to heavy weightlifting. The only other thing I have is ADHD, no other comorbidities.
  - resumenext 9mo ago
    Thanks for the response and the useful (to me at least) data point. Glad the AD helped and sorry to hear you didn’t find all that exertion useful. Goes to show how individual we all are in terms of mental health.
skywhopper 9mo ago
Yeah, any of these studies that show “X works better than Y” are inevitably operating on averages. Not everyone will respond the same way. Not to mention that the very existence of the structure and human interaction required for these studies makes a huge difference in their outcomes.

2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago

And you think the effects of drugs is universal? Exercise is a side effect free treatment that works for some people so it’s worth a shot because it sometimes works.

PaulHoule 9mo ago
I'd argue that depression kills and optimal therapy is: anti-depressants, exercise AND talking therapy and the time to start is NOW. I wouldn't knock the effectiveness of any of them with the caveats that: (1) you can get anti-depressants from you primary care doc, the best practice is to start on something, ramp up your dose and try something different if it is not working or you don't like the sides. I really thought Vanlafaxine was a comfortable ride but it raised my blood pressure to the "go to the ER" range. Call on the phone and lean in about adjusting your meds. (2) Getting an appointment for talk therapy can take a while these days. (3) In a hard case you can get a more complex medication cocktail from a psychiatrist but the wait could be worse than the talk therapy. (4) People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. 2 hours a day of cardio helped me deal with a business development process that went on for years before ultimately failing.
- stuffn 9mo ago
  Or avoid medication for anything but treatment resistant depression. SSRIs are not well understood. Their side effects are not great. Getting off them is miserable. I had them. I felt dead inside. Mission accomplished. Depression was gone, so was my desire to eat, have sex, or do anything else. I wasn’t depressed, I was a zombie. 8 adjustments and medications later I got off them and realized they’re yet another pill to fix a problem 98% of people can fix other ways if they tried. I do not understand this intense desire to be medicated. Exercise, go outside, talk to people. Get good sleep. Once the rest of your life is squared away get some meds if necessary. Psychiatrists and psychologist walk the razors edge of quackery every single day. Talk therapy is a program to take tremendous amount of money from people and funnel it into their account. It’s absolutely nuts the average talk therapist bills at over 300 dollars an Hour. There is no reproducibility in mental health. in their “science”. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe their magical pills will fix problems they barely understand at a biological level. As a final note people in the military do a ton of cardio because running and rucking is hard work you train for. It is certainly not to “stay sane”.
  - PaulHoule 9mo ago
    yeah... i did forget to add meaningful community and spiritual activities to that list but people can have just as strong objections to them as they do to the other things on my list!
  - nineteen999 9mo ago
    100% I have found the same, SSRI's definitely make things worse and I stay away from them, and regular exercise has offered the biggest consistent/persistent improvement in mood.
  - wombatpm 9mo ago
    Medication is the fastest way to make some positive progress before you completely spiral and majorly fuck up your life. Would you rather take a pill and keep working while you sort things out or would you try to rebuild everything after you burn it all down? Talk therapy and exercise may be just as effective or more so long term, but may not be effective enough in the short term.
    - stuffn 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 9mo ago
        Whoa, you can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do this, and I'm afraid you've been breaking the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) in other places as well, including other personal attacks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530967. It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is not something we allow here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations of this point). Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it. You're welcome here as long as you do that, but we really need commenters to stay respectful, avoid posting in the flamewar style, and (above all) use the site primarily for curiosity, not smiting enemies.
- psunavy03 9mo ago
  > People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. This is giving the military way too much credit for organized stress management. If military people give the impression of doing "insane amounts of cardio" it's because that's what the physical fitness tests are biased towards. And we also won't talk about the fact that getting a psych diagnosis, especially in fields like aviation, can end your career, while managing stress via alcohol gets a wink and a nod as long as you don't have an alcohol-related incident.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  The military does insane cardio because when the enemy knows where you are sometimes you have to run hard and fast in hopes you can get to safety before they can kill you. I've known people who likely would have died in Afghanistan without that insane cardio. it might help with stress too, but that isn't as clear
mrgoldenbrown 9mo ago
The poster you responded to didn't claim that drugs were universally helpful. I think the main point is that there is no universal that works for everyone. For some exercise works, for some drugs, for others therapy. And "works" isn't a yes/no, one might work a little for you, one might work super great.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago
  The poster questioned the universality of exercise. And the went on to say that drugs worked for them in the next sentence. Clearly the two statements are related.
  - HauntingPin 9mo ago
    Anecdotal data isn't sufficient to infer a universal rule. The point of my comment wasn't to argue for drugs. It was to push back against the idea that drugs like anti-depressants are unnecessary and bad, which I see all the time when this topic comes up. A common take is "why use or prescribe drugs when apparently exercise works fine against depression?"
keeganpoppen 9mo ago
i think they are merely saying what worked for them. it is working for me too, despite my misgivings about “just taking a pill”. YMMV.

abraxas 9mo ago

And I'm the counter anecdotal case of your anecdotal case. I have a page long list of failed psychiatric regimens that included drugs alone and drugs combined with talk therapy. None of them effective. I won't say that I'm cured of depression now or will ever be. But a strict and persistent exercise routine lessened it to the point where I can function day to day. This was never achieved with presrciption drugs or therapy (of which I have developed a dim opinion).

Jtsummers 9mo ago

> I also question the universality of it. The article doesn't claim exercise is a universally effective treatment, so whose statements are you questioning?

antonymoose 9mo ago

I don’t think depression is a universal root-cause diagnosis so I’m inclined to agree. I’ve been diagnosed clinically several times in life with depression and the pills never did anything for me. Sometimes exercise worked, sometimes it was of little or no use. With retrospect, all of my episodes of depression were a function of environment. As a child, growing up in a broken home situation and bad school environment, of course there is going to be depression. Life sucks. Further, no pill or weight lifting schedule is going to fix that either. Only breaking out of that situation will. As an adult, I’ve absolutely had and broken out of a long episode of depression with exercise. Bad breakup, startup failure, then introduce chronic drinking and subsequent weight gain. Guess what, cutting back on drinking, bicycling to work 30 minutes each way, doing martial arts in the evenings, it was a great fix. It enhanced self image, added a new community of positive people, and broke a cycle of depression.

LorenPechtel 9mo ago
I definitely agree, there are two fundamental forms of "depression"--internal and a reaction to a bad external situation. Very different causes, what works for one doesn't work for the other. And I don't even like the "depression" label for bad situations--as with the previous post about willpower. We have a limited ability to cope with bad, when it's exceeded (or our efforts are misapplied resulting in the same end) we get "depression". No, we get reality! That's why things like forcing rehab does nothing about addiction--it doesn't remove what drove the person to the drugs in the first place.

marcosdumay 9mo ago

There's no universality on anything linked to mental health.

cheald 9mo ago

Depression isn't monocausal so it'd be far too simple for it to have a single solution. But in general, humans just work better when we're regularly putting our bodies under reasonable physical load.

heavyset_go 9mo ago

I'm a non-competitive athlete, and yes exercise can help depression, but no, it will not be sufficient for anything but your mild to average case of it. Exercise is a crucial part of dealing with it, but it is not a panacea.

burningChrome 9mo ago
>> I'm a non-competitive athlete Honest question, but what do you mean by this? I've played competitive team sports my whole life and have a very competitive drive. If its not team sports, its rock climbing where I feel like I'm competing against myself or my brain trying to solve a route. If I'm hiking, I'm competing against the clock or how far I can go. If I'm lifting weights, its about how many sets I can do and what weight in order to push myself. So even in what most people deem "non-competitive" activities I'm still competing against a clock, or my body, or my brain. I'm just curious what you meant is all. EDIT: Typical HN. Ask a question and get downvoted. Logging off the day - thanks.
- heavyset_go 9mo ago
  I'm not competing against anyone but myself, I'm not trying to meet any specific weight/size/etc cutoff for competition, the point is exercise and improvement and not any official or unofficial competition. Someone might train for marathons, body building, etc. I don't.
genghisjahn 9mo ago
True. I ran my but off in 2025 but it was mainly holding my anxiety over finding a job at bay.
unparagoned 9mo ago
Depression is an umbrella term that covers lots of underlying biological conditions. Exercise forms the foundation of a biologically healthy brain which is required for all conditions. For some conditions it’s all you need for others it’s not enough

resumenext 9mo ago

I hesitate to ask but what is your gender? I think there may be very gender specific effects in this comparison. I would also be very curious the type and intensity of exercise and whether you had comorbidities that impact ability to train (obesity, low testosterone, etc).

HauntingPin 9mo ago
I'm male. I've done everything from cycling to 5-10k running to heavy weightlifting. The only other thing I have is ADHD, no other comorbidities.
- resumenext 9mo ago
  Thanks for the response and the useful (to me at least) data point. Glad the AD helped and sorry to hear you didn’t find all that exertion useful. Goes to show how individual we all are in terms of mental health.

skywhopper 9mo ago

Yeah, any of these studies that show “X works better than Y” are inevitably operating on averages. Not everyone will respond the same way. Not to mention that the very existence of the structure and human interaction required for these studies makes a huge difference in their outcomes.