Health Thread🤸‍♂️

[Narz]

This is my problem. I’ve never found a form of exercise I liked. I’ve tried all manner of cardio exercise and I did some weight lifting for a while, but I hate it all. At the moment I’m forcing myself to go cycling every morning before breakfast because I’ve found that cycling is probably the activity I find least objectionable, and getting it done early means the prospect of exercise isn’t hanging over my day, but this is a long way from enjoying it.

I have quite severe chronic mental health issues and I find that, contrary to what everyone says, exercise makes me more depressed, at least in the short term. I think that in the longer term it has no discernible effect on my general mood. The only way I can do it long-term is by forcing myself into the habit of doing it every day, because if I miss a day I feel noticeably less miserable, and that means I have negative motivation to do it the next day.

What about sports? I hated sports as a kid as I had a very negative self-image about my ability & thus avoided them. But now I really don't care, I don't mind playing basketball & being the worst player.

When I visited the States I played pickleball with a friend, it's like tennis but with different rackets & a type of ball with holes that goes very slow.

It makes me think of a cross between ping-pong & proper tennis with a lot less cardio needed than tennis and because the ball is slower it's more social as you don't have to stand way back anticipating long, fast shots.

I find social, not super competitive but a little bit competitive sports hit the spot in a way that running on a treadmill does not.

From my understanding three things affect the endocanabanoid system, first obviously exogenous canabanoids, but secondly exercise & thirdly social interaction. So with casual sport with friends you can get two of three systems hit (or three depending on your friends).

 

[Plotinus]

I appreciate the suggestions, so I'm sorry to seem so negative about them! I honestly don't think my brain works the same way as other people's (I suspect I have extremely low dopamine levels) because exercise really doesn't improve my mood, no matter what kind it is, and I don't think social interaction does much either (after about ten minutes I just want to get away). This is one reason my mood is always especially low in the summer, because it's the school holidays and I therefore have no time to myself at all. Even as I'm typing this it's to a background whine of "I'm bored" over and over again.

I truly loathe almost all sport and particularly any kind of sport that involves other people. Oddly, despite this, the only sport I've ever enjoyed was badminton, which I played many years ago when I lived in London, and which does resemble pickleball in a way. But I don't have anyone to play it with now - all my friends live on the other side of the country and are even less sporty than me anyway! Plus I lack both the time (because I'm always either working, housekeeping, or parenting) and, more importantly, emotional energy to try anything new, especially anything involving other people.

 

[Narz]

Even as I'm typing this it's to a background whine of "I'm bored" over and over again.

My condolences. How old are the kids?

Summer break is rough! I'm counting the days before school starts up again!

 

[Plotinus]

Just one, who's nine. Unfortunately, unlike me, he is an extravert who needs company literally all the time and cannot entertain himself (and wants to play football constantly), so it's pretty tough. I'm sure school holidays are far longer than they were when I was at school!

 

[Moriarte]

I hated sports as a kid

Funny, I have the opposite experience. Loved to lose myself in sports and games as a kid, can't bear a second of it now. I do take long walks to think and energise. Some basic stretching and own weight exercises half an hour every day. Anything, but sports! I just don’t want to waste time on competitive/social aspect of it. I feel my energy is better maintained quickly doing health routine then switching to reading new book or working, spending time with kids, lurking here, on occasion, etc.

 

[Plotinus]

Honestly, when I become world dictator, competitive sports in schools will be one of the first things to go. It gave me a lifelong hatred of sport that I've never been able to shake off. I really don't understand the rationale: many things in life are competitive, but exercise isn't. So why teach it to children in a competitive context in which the only thing they learn is that if they don't stand a chance of winning, there's no point trying?

 

[Narz]

Just one, who's nine. Unfortunately, unlike me, he is an extravert who needs company literally all the time and cannot entertain himself (and wants to play football constantly), so it's pretty tough. I'm sure school holidays are far longer than they were when I was at school!

Yeah alone time is tough as a parent.

 

[Narz]

Honestly, when I become world dictator, competitive sports in schools will be one of the first things to go. It gave me a lifelong hatred of sport that I've never been able to shake off. I really don't understand the rationale: many things in life are competitive, but exercise isn't. So why teach it to children in a competitive context in which the only thing they learn is that if they don't stand a chance of winning, there's no point trying?

I get it. It put a negative spin on athletics for me that lasted decades.

 

[warpus]

Some sports are just naturally competitive activities though, aren't they? Soccer, basketball, football, hockey, volleyball, handball.. You are trying to beat the other team in some way, usually by scoring more points than them. I don't see a way to make that a non-competitive activity. Am I misunderstanding the objection?

Maybe the problem is the way some coaches, teachers, and schools approach the events, making them more competitive than they need to be? Something can be competitive and fun at the same time, there doesn't need to be a crazy amount of pressure to win. When we had Canadian football in high school gym class, I remember it being more as learning the basics of the sport, how to throw the ball, how to hold it properly, the rules of the game, how to work well as a team, etc. rather than just "win at all costs". But maybe that's just my personal memory of things, since the sport was new to me? Our teacher/coach split us up into 2 groups - those who were better at the sport and those who weren't. I was thrown into the "not as good" camp, which I didn't mind, since I knew nothing about the sport at the time really.. so it made sense. I did not see a crazy amount of competitiveness in the "better" camp of students either, though. They were competing to win, but each time I glanced over to the other pitch, I saw them mainly having fun. I went out to watch a couple Canadian football matches against other high schools as well, and those were definitely more competitive, but it didn't seem negative to me either - i.e. I seemed to see a healthy amount of competitiveness. Is the problem that in some American schools this is taken to the extreme?

 

[Plotinus]

What I mean is, making most of the sport in school competitive sport such as football, hockey, netball etc is a bad idea. We seemed to do almost nothing else in our PE lessons, and I don’t remember ever being taught the actual rules of these activities or how to play them - I was just thrown onto a cold field with a stick and told off if I didn’t seem enthusiastic about beating the other team. I was never given any motivation for wanting to do that, so I quickly learned not to bother as I didn’t have a chance of beating anyone, there was no reward for trying, and I didn’t fancy getting hurt.

What schools ought to be doing is teaching children how to exercise in a way that keeps them fit and healthy, and you don’t need competitive sports for that. Indeed when we were forced to play cricket in the summer that was actively *unhealthy* since it involved standing motionless in the sun for an hour without anything to drink! What’s the benefit of that? If people want to play that, and indeed any other competitive sport, in their spare time, then all power to them, but I don’t believe it has any place on a school curriculum.

(I hope you can tell that I’m processing my anger about all this…)

 

[warpus]

What I mean is, making most of the sport in school competitive sport such as football, hockey, netball etc is a bad idea. We seemed to do almost nothing else in our PE lessons, and I don’t remember ever being taught the actual rules of these activities or how to play them - I was just thrown onto a cold field with a stick and told off if I didn’t seem enthusiastic about beating the other team. I was never given any motivation for wanting to do that, so I quickly learned not to bother as I didn’t have a chance of beating anyone, there was no reward for trying, and I didn’t fancy getting hurt.

That sounds like a badly thought out gym/PE class more than an inherent problem with competitive sports being a part of such a class though. It seems to me that there is a right and a wrong way to include these activities in such a class, and your teachers were doing it wrong in that particular case. For instance, I seem to remember all sorts of activities in gym class in elementary and highschool and it wasn't dominated by competitive team sports. We did some athletics, long jump, running around a track, rope climbing, and honestly I can't really remember more details than that, but team sports like soccer and football did not dominate from what I remember.

I definitely agree that overloading such a class with competitive team sports and forcing kids to be overly competitive is not the way to go. You want the kids engaged, and not everyone likes a particular sport.. Making it too competitive and focusing on that over the athletic and team building aspect of the sport sounds like a bad idea too, something thought up by teachers who don't really know how to teach effectively.

What schools ought to be doing is teaching children how to exercise in a way that keeps them fit and healthy, and you don’t need competitive sports for that. Indeed when we were forced to play cricket in the summer that was actively *unhealthy* since it involved standing motionless in the sun for an hour without anything to drink! What’s the benefit of that? If people want to play that, and indeed any other competitive sport, in their spare time, then all power to them, but I don’t believe it has any place on a school curriculum.

I agree that something like cricket or baseball might not be the best competitive sports to include. If my memories are to be trusted we only played baseball occasionally.. maybe a couple times a year? I remember it as a fun distraction from the other stuff.

I also agree that you don't NEED competitive sports in that setting, but would argue that they can be beneficial if incorporated properly into the curriculum. A focus on the competitive aspect of these sports is just not the way to go about that. You want the focus to be on the athletic and team-building elements. From the sounds of it your teachers were mainly interested in identifying players for their football teams that would represent the school and funneling everyone in that direction, to see who would pan out and who was good enough to go in that direction. That's not gym class, that's more like a football academy where you only care to shake out those who don't belong - which does not at all belong in that setting and is more suited to a football academy sort of place where kids sign up voluntarily with a goal of perhaps playing the sport professinaly later in life.

 

[Plotinus]

I’m not sure - I don’t remember any mention of school teams in our PE lessons, or anyone in my class ever being on such teams. Of course perhaps it just never got mentioned to me, which under the circumstances is understandable! I don’t know what our teachers were thinking, though since they were PE teachers there probably wasn’t a whole lot of thought of any kind going on…

 

[warpus]

I’m not sure - I don’t remember any mention of school teams in our PE lessons, or anyone in my class ever being on such teams. Of course perhaps it just never got mentioned to me, which under the circumstances is understandable! I don’t know what our teachers were thinking, though since they were PE teachers there probably wasn’t a whole lot of thought of any kind going on…

I know that in some cases coaches of the school's football & other teams were often put in charge of these gym/pe lessons. We had a football coach for grade 9 gym class IIRC.. He didn't seem to really care all that much about the competitive nature of sports, at least in that class, from what I remember, but I could imagine some coaches being really gung ho about whipping the kids into shape the same way they might during football practice. Could this have been a part of the problem?

 

[Plotinus]

No, we don’t have “coaches” in the UK. There isn’t the same semi-professional ethos about school sports teams as in the US, I think - they’re a much less prominent feature of school life. Outside the annual prize day we would never hear about them at all.

 

[Hygro]

I use blue screens all the time before bed and sleep like a baby. I also sometimes work out for an hour and shower before bed. I think it's more anxiety people have around sleep performance that causes them restlessness and a "sleep routine" or "sleep hygiene" just provides an illusion of control over your sleep performance, thereby lowering anxiety and improving sleep. That's why sooooo many different sleep hygiene things work for so many different people with little overlap.

Redshifting monitors makes a huge difference.

 

[Narz]

I just make my whole world red after 7pm


Blue block glasses, stop eating 5pm, wifi off 9pm or ideally before has made a positive difference in last couple weeks.

 

[Plains-Cow]

WiFi off? What does Wifi do to affect sleep?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Bleeps from WhatsApp I presume.

 

[Hygro]

WiFi off? What does Wifi do to affect sleep?

Creating obstacles to slipping into distraction presumably.

 

[thetrooper]

Narz, you’re too radical bro.