Skip to main content

Exercise Deficiency Syndrome

I've found myself frequently depressed over the past several weeks. It helped to think of it as my brain being depressed and that everyone gets sad sometimes and it passes. Thinking this way helped me start looking for causes and solutions.

I haven't been dancing as much over the past few months: it's too discouraging when there are two or three followers for every lead. So much for Denver being "Menver," a term used by men who evidently look for women under the seat cushions. (Maybe I exaggerate, but Denver County is half women according to the last census and we leave the house a lot more according to my observations.)

I've decided to quit being like the proverbial drunk who looks for his keys under a street light just because he can see there. I'm giving up dancing to resume martial arts because I need the physical exertion. (You didn't think it was to meet men, did you?)

I noticed going to a difficult yoga class (with a bunch of women) improved my mood for days. In my early 20s, I didn't know why I kept going to taekwondo, but now I know that it probably did the same thing for me. And the school just felt right. Twenty years on, I still consider how the founder of my old school (Master Sang Lee) would act in circumstances I find myself in. Since I'm too far away from my old school, I'm going to visit a traditional martial arts school this week and hope that I find a new home away from home there.
Labels:

Comments

tess said…
the right group makes ALL the difference -- good luck in finding it!
January 16, 2014
Lowcarb team member said…
Winter is often the season when we can all feel a little down. I find walking helps, some prefer swimming. Whatever suits you and lifts your mood is the best solution. It is so easy to sit back and do nothing - that is not the answer.

Looking forward to hearing how the traditional martial arts school goes.

All the best Jan
January 16, 2014
Lori Miller said…
Thanks. I met some great people dancing, but there's an element there that's a snooty as any Gilded Age plutocrat and comes up with a thousand excuses for their rudeness. OTOH, the school I called has a page on their website devoted to good manners.
January 16, 2014
Lori Miller said…
Doing too much of nothing really is depressing, and meditating doesn't suit me. I'm more of a physical person.
January 16, 2014
Galina L. said…
Probably, I am addicted to the excitement which is caused by exercising, especially dancing. For my dancing fix I go to a Zumba class in a sport club. Breaking more sweat makes the mood-uplifting effect even stronger. Actually, I do many pleasant things which could be called exercising, but I do it because my life is happier this way. At least it is not a chemical substance, but I had some sport injuries to treat and one foot surgery.
January 16, 2014
Lori Miller said…
I can do the charleston well enough by myself, but it's not as much fun or as physically and mentally demanding as lindy.
January 16, 2014
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Why I've stopped eating fermented foods

I'm finally getting answers about weird health problems that have kept coming and going over the years for no reason I could ever explain: pounding heart, bloating, insomnia, heat intolerance, intolerance of high-fat meals, and getting winded easily even though I'm physically fit. These health problems all came roaring in at once this spring when I did a huge landscape project, pushing through it even while I had a cold. The yard looks fabulous, but I ended up with A three-week cold Post-viral syndrome for another few weeks An ongoing cough  Insomnia (tired but wired late at night) A puffy face, especially in the morning and after eating foods I’d previously tolerated (including SIBO yogurt) 6 pound weight gain TATT (tired all the time) Being easily winded Having a hard time cooling off Being sensitive to sunlight Grok (X’s AI feature) said this could be mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). Mast cells are immune system cells that put out pathogen-fighting and other substances ...
Post a Comment
Read more