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by pmoriarty 1837 days ago
You might want to take a serious look at your nutrition. Nutritional deficiencies or imbalances can cause all sorts of very serious issues, including mental issues.

Taking long walks in nature (as in 2 or more hours long) can help, as can unplugging from the internet and other media, and meditation.

Many of us hyper-stimulated, and are in a pavlovian loop of jumping from one source of instant gratification to another, without taking much time to reflect one's own life and the world. Quieting one's life might help.

3 comments

1000% agree about the hyper-stimulation. I see the signs of it in everyone around me. Very very few people take the time to "unplug" and ACTUALLY experience some quiet times, reflect on life and shut out the infinitely-noisy outside world.
The nutrition point is so difficult to evaluate - a lot of personal variation, many anecdotes, few good scientific studies, a lot of subjectivity and misattribution, people getting fired up online and turning it into ideology... it's very difficult to figure out what's true and what actually works for you.
I think it is mostly a case of scientific belief in a trial by error process: if you believe in trying a bunch of different ideas, you are likely to eventually hit on solutions that help or hinder. You do need some minimum set of ability and brain power to do this effectively. However, even prophylactic or placebo effects can be minor wins (so long as you can manage to avoid dangerous things, like too much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor ).
These are great tips. I do miss my days spent outdoors (took a few years off to run a flower planting crew at a landscaping company and run some long distance races).

As for nutrition, I do think I'm doing well there. Other than a sugar fix at night, I eat pretty good/healthy/whole food.

Unplugging is probably my short term answer. I'm also going through the stresses of resigning from my day job and ramping up my side work, so that's a source of intensity too.