If you're like me who's read enough from enough sources, you'll have likely arrived at the same conclusion.
To be healthy (which can have many implications,including and not limited to better memory, thinking skills, lifespan etc.), You need to master a few basic principles in life.
Those basic principles seem to be
Body - adequate rest (sleep), regular exercise (activity) etc. & Mind - less stress/destress, positive mind, happiness etc.
I recently discovered the "holy trinity" of human energy and metabolism: regular sleep, regular meals and regular exercise. My previous chaotic approach caused chaotic (and very sub-optimal) energy levels.
I realized instead of working on my productivity directly, I need to work on stabilizing my energy level, because everything else ultimately depends on that.
Regular sleep, meals and exercise, practiced consistently, get your body into a pattern, where at each time of day it knows whether it should be releasing energy or resting, so it gets easier over time as the metabolism begins to work with your plans rather than against them.
I wonder if intermittent fasting has a place here. It has many health benefits; what is the optimum regularity of meals?
To expand - I generally fast from 7pm in the evening until 2pm the next day. This helps me with appetite/weight control, discipline, and I overall feel better this way. That said, I'm also a lot more productive later in the day. I chalk it up to not being a morning person, but maybe IF is working against me here. However, I notice when I eat in the morning, I feel off the rest of the day. Figuring out the right balance here is harrd, man.
Do you do this on certain days of the week, or every day?
I'd like to expand on the Holy Trinity by saying not only does chaotic sleep/meals/exercise lead to crap energy levels, but also chronic anxiety, because the body never knows what to expect, so it has to be ready for anything.
I think it's based on your body. Mine is very explicit: if I sleep less than 8 hours my stomach burns. If I sleep less than 7 my brain is useless. So, 8 for me (my wife needs 9!).
My general suggestion is that you should naturally wake up before the alarm rings. I set it to 9 hours and naturally wake up between 8 and 8:30 hours.
If I "naturally" wake up after 6/6.5 hours, does that mean that my body needs less sleep, or I should control more variables to sleep 8 hours (light, temperature, melatonin..) ?
(I do feel great some days when I sleep for longer..)
Experiment by going to bed sooner. Personally I figured out there's a certain time in the morning when I'll wake up which does not depend on the time spent sleeping. After some trials, I figured that less than ~7 hours of sleep will leave me in a bad mood, but only in the afternoon -- I seem to function quite well in the morning.
Do you feel well rested after that? Or do you feel run down? If the former, that's how much is required for you. Myself, I need nearly exactly 8 hours. More is fine, but anything less and I will feel like garbage for the whole day.
6-8 hours, depending on your body, unless people who say they're fine on 6 hours are just lying to themselves and others.
From what I've experienced, I think the time of day you go to bed matters as well, meaning even with a full fresh perfect feeling 8 hours, your body doesn't enter REM the same or produce the same amount of growth hormone or clean out the brain properly if you go to sleep everyday at say 6am vs sometime shortly after sun down. I guess it has to do with the light levels you experience.
As people have pointed out, it completely depends on your body. However, a good measure to see whether you're fully rested is to be aware of your energy levels after you wake up, and to be aware whether you feel sleepy/sleep deprived (not the I ate too much sleepy) during the middle of the day.
I've found them to be good indicators to whether i need to catch up on my sleep.
If you need more detail about healthy lifestyle, you're better off doing your own basic research than asking someone on HN to give you a few more words.
All these things.. I started exercising in May, my brain was working fine before and I see no difference now that I'm exercising. The improvements are my muscles (yay), my back pain is gone, and I can eat more. But that's it.
Oh and contrary to popular belief, I sleep worse when I exercise because overnight my body emits so much heat that I sweat myself (but if I don't cover myself I get woke up by cold), and the adrenaline is there and makes harder to fall asleep (even 4 hours after gym).
I still sleep better without sport. But I'm happy that backpain is gone and I can eat more, so I'm going to stick with it ;)
Not all exercise is the same when it comes to brain benefits. Moderate to hard endurance exercise makes your brain secrete BDNF. And you need to perform it at least 3 times a week for 20-30 min minimum to notice any benefits.
Strength training on the other hand does nothing for your brain.
Thanks for pointing this out! I've been only doing strength training for the last year and been wondering why I haven't felt as sharp as when I ran somewhat regularly.
As others say, you can't exercises too close to sleep time, so maybe that is the issue here.
Among runnners there is something called the two day lag rule, that if you go for a long run on Sunday then it is not Sunday night that you sleep, but instead it is Monday. Dunno why.
Yeah, I experience that same heat related exercise induced insomnia in the summer. Even in the summer though, I absolutely must have some blanket or something, or else I feel weird. Counter intuitively, I feel cooler wearing a shirt to bed in the summer as well, even with a blanket.
Right now though it's so cold where I live that I can just dress warm and cover up with the comforter, whilst saving money on heating.
It takes about an hour of moderate to intense cardio before the endorphins begin to kick in, and for me personally that is when the mental benefits kick in. Mood goes up, sleep improves, better focus etc. I target to have at least 2-3 sessions of an hour and a half of cardio throughout the week in order to keep my mood up.
While it may not be possible with your schedule, it sounds like you need to work out in the morning. Also, a cold shower will fix the overheating problem. Takes a while to get used to that though. I had to learn to tolerate that when I had work meetings on the same mornings I do long runs or I'd sweat through my clothes.
A tip that a sleep disorder specialist gave me years ago is to have a shower just before bed. Not too hot, and not too cold. It stabilises your body temperature apparently. Also, try sleeping with just a light linen or cotton sheet.
Disclaimer: none of this is expert advice, it just works for me, and may be worth trying!
Agreed. It's very difficult and definitely a learned skill to even be able to tell why or how your body/mind feels different day to day. You always feel the big things "I feel great!" "I feel like shit." but really digging down into "I am slightly annoyed right now" or "I am frustrated and cannot focus" is more nuanced.
As I have grown older and have been fortunate enough to increase stability in my life I have had more time to focus on my own health and state of mind. Only recently have I began to realize what is going on and possible causes (dehydration, lack of sleep, overtraining, etc). This is just happening now after two years of consistent (3-6 days a week) training (brazilian jiu jitsu, rock climbing, or powerlifting)
Title is pretty bad. The actual claim is "exercising twice a week may help preserve memory and thinking skills in people with mild cognitive impairment."
This just in, your brain is actually part of your body! Taking care of it might make you think better, stay tuned folks!
In all seriousness, if anybody here has a beer or glass of wine before you go to sleep, cut it out for a week or two. You'll notice a HUGE improvement in sleep quality.
My own anecdote is it seems to work, 20-30mins of high intensity bike riding followed by a shower and somehow I can sit and do 2-3 hours worth of focused work on a math text without my mind jumping around distracted in random thoughts or becoming bored.
It would be nice if the government came up with a basic calisthenics program for the average person to follow.
A lot of people cant afford a gym - or sometimes it's too cold.
There is so much info about exercise and health that it ends up being "non-information". People give up. If the public health system gave a consistent message about exercise when you can't afford a gym or if it's too cold out - people would be better off.
I found People's Republic of China 4-minute Exercise Plan[1] at a thrift store a little while back and have been trying to do the routine a few times a day. This is an exercise plan that was developed by the Chinese government and every morning everyone in China would do this exercise plan before getting their day started (back in Mao times).
The exercises are a little different than western exercises (there is some punching and kicking), but it's a great full-body workout and super-easy to fit in during a commercial break or while your npm packages install.
I don't go to a gym. I have serious physical limitations. Walking everywhere is my primary form of exercise. It has helped with myriad issues, including getting back lost cognitive function. Though, TBF, I have gone through periods where my daily routine involved 4 or more hours a day of walking.
I really doubt this information overload is the limiting factor. Everyone knows what a pushup is. Everyone had to take PE in public schooling (government already solved your problem) and knows many exercises that can be done indoors without needing the whole gym. But exercise sucks.
> I really doubt this information overload is the limiting factor.
It's definitely a factor. Even if you filter out the utter bullshit (which is a task in itself), there's a huge amount of stuff out there around the theme of "exercising wrong", most of which doesn't agree about anything outside a handful of basics (e.g. sit-ups aren't very good at engaging abs) and much of which warns of injury if you fail to heed the advice. Are crunches a good exercise, or will they wreck my spine? How deep should I squat? What are the tradeoffs between high weight/low reps versus low weight/high reps? Are resistance bands or dumbbells worthwhile, or is barbell training so superior that anything else is a waste of time? The answers all seem to depend on which "school" of exercise you subscribe to.
> Everyone knows what a pushup is.
I know what a pushup is, but I can't actually do one, and it's not obvious how to progress it in a practical way ("wall pushups" aren't challenging, but going down to chair level is too much). There are a lot of practical issues like this that are glossed over by mainstream exercise advice (most of which seems to be written for relatively young, fit people with no chronic health issues that might interfere).
> But exercise sucks.
There's a huge amount of disagreement on this as well. Statements like "your body wants to move" are a common refrain from fitness gurus, for example. The chemical and neurological responses to exercise seem to vary quite a bit throughout the population, all the way from exercise triggering euphoria to exercise triggering depression (but it's only socially accepted to advertise the former). It's also pretty common in exercise studies for a given outcome measure to get no better or even get worse in ~10% of subjects, even when the average response is a statistically significant improvement. Conversely, there's often a ~10% with a markedly above-average improvement; this has been spun by the popular press as some people being "superexercisers" and others being "non-responders", but it seems to be much more complicated than that (i.e. one can be a "superexerciser" on one axis but a "non-responder" on another).
I pretty much entirely agree with that, there is a lot of complexity and it can play a role in deciding to just avoid everything. Though in practice I think the complexity effect is overblown, and the role in deciding to do nothing is small (I'd bet the role is larger in deciding to do lots of different things unsuccessfully because one quits the current thing after it becomes difficult). Though if the complexity mattered all that much, this just sounds like the OP's desire for a government-approved 'average' outside of what exists in required PE is even more ludicrous.
I love to be out and about, but it's been really cold and dark lately and I've been struggling. At the very least I make myself run up and down the apartment stairwell a couple times to wake myself up.
I realized that unless I wake up my body, it stays half asleep, and my mind suffers too.
As an anecdote, I knew one old guy who swore by this program. He was in his 80s and could keep up with adults in their prime when filling sandbags all day.
He said it was the only exercise he got most days, but he did it every morning.
Hard to believe how sedentary people can get that such a program can makr a diff.
I moved to the NE US after living in the midwest most my life, and the amount of walking ube had over the last 6 years has done wonders for my daily health.
My anecdotal experience (5-10k run 3 lunchtimes a week, followed by productive afternoons) doesn't seem to back this up. Can you quote a source for those findings?
To be healthy (which can have many implications,including and not limited to better memory, thinking skills, lifespan etc.), You need to master a few basic principles in life.
Those basic principles seem to be
Body - adequate rest (sleep), regular exercise (activity) etc. & Mind - less stress/destress, positive mind, happiness etc.
Huh. Rocket science?