"How To Lose 155 Pounds Happily."

I have been thinking a lot about my body, and my weight, and my necessary weigh-loss (for longevity and not dying before my father did).

Currently listening to How To Lose 155 Pounds Happily from How to! With Charles Duhigg.

Ashley thought by now she’d be on top of the world. Once severely overweight, Ashley lost 155 pounds and recently ran her first half-marathon. But when she looks in the mirror all she sees are the imperfections. In this episode of How To!, we bring in Brittany O’Neill, the real-life inspiration for the hit movie Brittany Runs a Marathon. Having undergone a major transformation herself, Brittany knows what it’s like to feel unhappy after you’ve crossed the finish line. Constant self-improvement doesn’t necessarily lead to self-acceptance, Brittany says. Instead, learn to view yourself through your loved ones’ eyes—even say their praises aloud—and soon, you’ll see what they see.

I mean, the podcast showcases a lot of my fears. There's this feeling that I already ruined my body, and there's not much to do about it. There's the pre-exhaustion of knowing how much work it is - I know how hard I worked to weigh 150 pounds - it was an eating disorder and daily exercise. 

It's also just emotional to hear something I already know, which is that the weight loss doesn't somehow placate existentialism, or living in a misogynist world. It won't make me love myself, or my body. 

It just will address certain aspects of my health, and the reality of having to live in a fatphobic world. 

I'll always be a "big girl."

Exercises to "bust" your depression.

I don't love the title to this. It's click-batey. I get that it's the joke, but it bugs me.

Depression-Busting Exercise Tips For People Too Depressed To Exercise by Sarah Kurchak. 

Her piece is good though. She talks about the infuriating reality of being told to exercise when you're going through a depression.

When it comes to having a mental illness, the G.I. Joe doctrine is meaningless: Knowing what will help you isn't close to half the battle. It’s a tenth of the battle, at best. Most people with depression are already aware—often too aware—of all the things we could or should be doing to combat our condition. But where the well-meaning mentally healthy person sees a straightforward progression toward improvement, we see the paradox: yes, if we could do those things, it might help our depression, but not being able to do those things is a major part of being depressed.

I think neurotypical people just don't get that. How ambition and energy just evaporate. It takes all of your energy to just do the most "routine" of things.

When you’re depressed (you're navigating) a labyrinth of garbage fires fuelled by physical and mental exhaustion, self-loathing, defeat, and frustration.

Well, balls. This is me right now. I'm going to bed at 9 pm and am just exhausted most of the day. One of the pieces pull quotes just got it and fucking nailed it to the wall.

If you’re staying alive, you’re already doing the hardest workout imaginable.

Preach.

I can't sleep on a treadmill.

I'm trying to figure out an exercise routine I can commit to with my schedule / exhaustion. I'm so so tired, thinking about it just seems impossible. I also have to think about budget, location (if it's a class or gym) and where I would go. I understand the need to exercise, and I miss it, I really do. I'm just so tired.

This is pretty much me right now. I'm getting sleepy , just thinking about it. I want to rest as much as I can this weekend.

The great gif illustrations are by Sydni Gregg's Comfort Zone. The above one is called melon-choly.

Sleep and depression.

So VanWinkle (?) has two articles up about depression and sleep. The first talks about hypersomnia as a symptom of depression. The article quotes a Dr. Trivedi:

Hypersomnia, as well as insomnia, have been linked in the development, treatment and recurrence of depression. Sleep disturbances are also some of the most persistent symptoms in depression. Identifying these biomarkers, combined with new understanding of the important role of exercise in reducing hypersomnia, have potential implications in the treatment of major depressive disorder.

First of all, I think it's highly likely I'm living with hypersomnia. At any time during the day I can fall asleep, easily. Just let me rest my head, and I can fall asleep. I've fallen asleep while driving once in the last year, and it's a threat, and I have to keep it in the back of my mind when planning a trip or drive. I just can't seem to get enough sleep, and I could sleep most of the day away. I feel like I would need two naps a day. I'm like a fucking cat. 

I took a look at the actual article Van Winkle (seriously guys, try harder) is sourcing, a study coming out of the South Western Medical Centre, and stopped at this bit:

People with hypersomnia are compelled to nap repeatedly during the day, often at inappropriate times such as at work, during a meal, or in conversation. They often have difficulty waking from a long sleep, and may feel disoriented upon waking, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke... Other symptoms may include anxiety, increased irritation, decreased energy, restlessness, slow thinking, slow speech, loss of appetite, hallucinations, and memory difficulty. Some patients lose the ability to function in family, social, occupational, or other settings.

Wait, are you all up in my life? I can't nap. I legit fall asleep for 2-3 hours, dream, and wake-up like I've been hibernating - I don't know what year it is and I don't remember who I am. 

Researchers had previously found a negative loop in which sleep, inflammation and depression interact and progressively worsen. The results of the current and previous research on insomnia suggest that exercise may be resetting this negative feedback loop.

I guess the good news is that exercise can help. The difficulty these articles fail to mention is how it's difficult to exercise if you're perma-exhausted.  Another article points to the opposite of hypersomnia, insomnia as a major factor in depression and suicide.

At least three-quarters of clinically depressed people struggle with sleep, and insomnia is a well-proven risk factor for suicide across different cultures and age groups.

So whether hypersomnia or insomnia, sleep is a major symptom of, or indicator of something being wrong. It's currently about 2.30 pm and I indeed could fall asleep here. The office is quiet, my work is done for the day, and we're only 4 or 5 active bodies in the place. I want to curl up under my desk. I want to cover my head with my shall and go elsewhere.

All I want to do now (and any day really) is go home and go to bed. It's Thursday. This weekend I'm planning on going out to the Eastern Townships with S. Can't wait. She's basically the only person I can be brutally honest with about my mental health. We'll be in the country, and we can sleep and take it easy. It'll be nice.

Depressed! Incensed! Inflamed!

My buddy J sent me an article about the link between inflammation and depression. The article is pretty revolutionary for me. The article over on Feel Guide, New Research Discovers That Depression Is An Allergic Reaction To Inflammation points to, well, you can probably tell by the title of the article. They kind of let the cat out of the bag while announcing, "We're letting this cat out of this bag!"

The article also re-directs to the following articles:

Depression May Be Caused by Inflammation over on Nova. Nova's Tim De Chant
 starts by contextualizing inflammation and depression.

Inflammation is our immune system’s natural response to injuries, infections, or foreign compounds. When triggered, the body pumps various cells and proteins to the site through the blood stream, including cytokines, a class of proteins that facilitate inter-cellular communication. It also happens that people suffering from depression are loaded with cytokines. Which has some scientists thinking that depression may be a side effect of inflammation.

Is Your Diet Making You Anxious or Depressed? over at Kripalu points to inflammation as a key ingredient to well-being, and fingers processed food as a major culprit to said inflammation and anxiety.

Could Depression Actually Be Nothing More Than an Allergic Reaction? over at Vice:

The thesis is simple: Everyone feels like shit when they're sick. That ennui we feel when we're unwell—listlessness, lack of enthusiasm, troubled sleep, tearfulness, and a general feeling of wading through tar—is apparently known among psychologists as "sickness behavior." Our bodies are pretty intelligent, see—they behave this way so that we stop, lie still, and let our system fight whatever infection of virus has us croaking for Gatorade on the couch. 

These kinds of emotional responses are also typical of depression, though. So, scientists are asking: If sick people feel and act a lot like depressed people, might there be a link?

The majority of the heavy lifting was done by Caroline Williams in Is depression a kind of allergic reaction? over at The Guardian UK. She quotes George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles early on:

"I don’t even talk about it as a psychiatric condition any more,” he says. “It does involve psychology, but it also involves equal parts of biology and physical health.”

This could absolutely change the way depression is treated. The following bit was especially poignant for me:

Add this to the fact that stress, particularly the kind that follows social rejection or loneliness, also causes inflammation, and it starts to look as if depression is a kind of allergy to modern life – which might explain its spiralling prevalence all over the world as we increasingly eat, sloth and isolate ourselves into a state of chronic inflammation.

I've often thought of depression as an allergy to modern life.  Especially when paired with anxiety. It seems generations are increasingly depressed and anxious. This is no doubt correlated to something.

Though some in these articles focus on inflammation as a body-based reaction, there's still the issue of diet that can't be ignored:

A diet rich in trans fats and sugar has been shown to promote inflammation, while a healthy one full of fruit, veg and oily fish helps keep it at bay. Obesity is another risk factor, probably because body fat, particularly around the belly, stores large quantities of cytokines.

This speaks to me, my being fat, and my less than stellar diet. It doesn't paint a whole picture though. I've also gone through period of being very healthy and being terribly depressed.

The good news is that the few clinical trials done so far have found that adding anti-inflammatory medicines to antidepressants not only improves symptoms, it also increases the proportion of people who respond to treatment, although more trials will be needed to confirm this. There is also some evidence that omega 3and curcumin, an extract of the spice turmeric, might have similar effects. Both are available over the counter and might be worth a try, although as an add-on to any prescribed treatment – there’s definitely not enough evidence to use them as a replacement.

This will be interesting to discuss with my Dr. I'm going to mail him a copy of the article (snail mail because he's at a weird old-school office! What fun!).

I think the most promising bit of all this (other than my projecting to a future where I'm not in so much psychological pain) is that Carine Pariante, a psychiatrist from Kings College London estimates we're 5 to 10 years away from a blood test that could measure inflammation in depressed folks. This could help so many people, so easily.

There's more to it, we'll know more eventually - if there's such thing as a cure, does it make it easier to hang on? I think so.