Today I want to talk about why so many people are depressed
Today I want to talk about why so many people are depressed. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chef? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman, cycling podcast, this idea of mental health depression, it's been center stage for I suppose the better part of the last 12 months and it's common more and more to the fore around the topic of lockdown and mental health is lockdowns, jeopardizing mental health, etc. I wanted to dig in a little bit today and talk about why depression is so prevalent. And like, look, this is a real man boy's podcast. So it's by no means going to be an exhaust of debate on depression, but I know I have a bunch of friends who suffer from depression. And I wanted to kind of give my take on it because it's something that I am always asked in my Instagram DMS if I have any experience with it. I've suffered from myself. I haven't suffered from the clinical tag of depression myself, but my humble take on it is that the depression isn't this destination, that it's a continuum, and that we're all on this continuum at some place and it gravitates from, or it changes from day to day. You know, we're all on the continuum from mildly stressed because I have a work deadline or I have a little bit of relationship stress or I'm stuck in traffic to I'm really in a dark, dark place and we're all in that continuum at some different place in that continuum at different parts of the week and some of us experience the very far ends of that continuum. When I say I've never been depressed what I'm really referring to is that far end of the continuum where it's the dark holes, I haven't luckily experienced that. I want to dive in and talk a little bit more in detail about this today because it's so I'm going to go tight up with one of the main reasons we ride our bike and it's to feel good and to feel happy and to feel healthy. Before I dive into it all, let me remind you about Patreon. Patreon is the way this podcast continues. It's how we fund the podcast. Small businesses all around you. They're going under every single day of the week. The podcast, it's small, but it's grown. And we have a small, but loyal listener base on the podcast and it's grown week on week, month on month. And I have you guys to thank for that. I have you guys for subscribing on the Patreon. And if you can't afford to subscribe on the Patreon for going out and telling a friend, telling a teammate, sharing an episode in WhatsApp groups and every little bit like that is appreciated. So if you can't afford to make a donation of the price of beer once a month, please do so by following the link in the description down below, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz. If you can't, you can do your part by sharing an episode, telling a friend, tagging me on Instagram, all those good things. So let's dive in and talk about this. Why are so many people depressed and what can we do to alleviate it a little bit if anything? So we've are two real driving variants in what make up depression. And it's our genotype and phenotype and without resorting to techno-babel straight off the bat. That's how much of the disease is inherited, hereditary, built in, baked into our genetics or DNA on how much of it is phenotype, environmental based.
I'm in a bad work situation, I'm in a bad relationship, I'm in a bad…
I'm in a bad work situation, I'm in a bad relationship, I'm in a bad living situation. Largely, the genotype side, that it baked into my DNA, that's a medical prognosis you need. That's, and I'm not gonna try and substitute my, you know, raving lunatic opinions in for that of medical professionals. If you're suffering from that sort of hereditary, depression that you need to see a clinical person about that, but what I want to talk about is how much of Depression mental health can you alleviate but change in environmental factors? And if you do have that other version of talking about the you know genetic version the genotype version Can that be eased a little that's not gonna be alleviated, but cannot be eased a little boy environmental factors. So let's break this down and the question I suppose to frame is that you can judge the podcast boy because I always think when you leave it open ended and you don't know what I'm trying to achieve in the podcast you'll end up walking away going well that was a bit shit and I didn't get the answers I was hoping for. Like we're calibrating expectations it's a romance boy's podcast we're not going to unpack exactly what depression is and how to solve it in the next 10 minutes. But what I would like to do is answer the question is to how much environmental factors can affect mood. And there's some stuff that's just absolutely agreed on by scientists and my opinion is you should be including this into your routine. It's at very best going to completely alleviate your depression and mood problems and it's at very worst going to have a small improvement. You're not going to get worse and you're not going to be in a darker, sadder place by introducing some of this stuff. Like, it's peer-reviewed grade upon the effects of sunlight. There's like, there's over 500 on-off switches on a genetic level that are controlled by sunlight. We're in this era of governments lock it down, you can't go outside, you have to stay inside, do your zoom calls, work remotely. You need to get out on the sunlight. You need to get out because 500 on-off genetic switches are affected every single day by your taking sunlight on the surface area of your skin. Like you need to be barefoot, you need to be walking in the ocean as much as you can. Scientists can't always put a label on what this stuff is. They can't nail down the precise benefit of walking barefoot, grounding or the precise benefit and positive ions of work walking in the ocean. They don't know which one of those 500 genetic switches exactly has been switched on by that, but there's almost no disagreement that there is benefits to that type of stuff. So, integrate it into your daily routine as much as you can, get into the water, get onto the ground, reconnect with nature, and most importantly, get sunlight into you. So, it's how much of a truth is there to that idea of a healthy body equal to healthy mind? Some of it is marketing bullshit, like a key to diet is not going to solve all your problems, especially if you're suffering from the dark genotype form of depression. But at the same time diodes does massively affect mood and we know this because gut bacteria and the way we get put gut bacteria in it's true or mild it's true that mild pleasure and getting food in there gut bacteria it affects memory it affects recall and effect mood we know that so the effect of eating shit food, drinking alcohol, it's not just going to be an extra four or five pounds body weight at the end of the month. That's going to have a knock on effect on your mood as well.
Something else that we just know helps
Something else that we just know helps. And it's again documented peer reviewed. It's unpacking the source of trauma at the developmental stages in your life really affects mood. This could be be working with a therapist, this could be meditation, these things work. Healthy habits, they're going to improve or they're going to completely eradicate your depression depending on where you are on that scale. If you're the dude like me who's mildly stressed because he's caught in traffic and you add in these healthy habits, for me that has the ability to completely eradicate any of my poor mood or depression. If you're at the far end and your chronic sufferer from this stuff, add in these healthy habits. It's not going eradicate your depression. It's not going to get rid of it, but it's going to move you a little bit forwarder along the continuum and make you a little bit happier. That's my take on it anyway, folks. It's a complicated topic to unpack and it's a topic that very few people actually want to have go at unpacking because they're scared to offend anyone and I have the same fears and insecurities that I have some really good friends who suffer from depression and there's always a fear that if you tackle a topic like this, you'll trivialize or somehow downplay something that's a huge part of time to time in their lives. But also, but me not tackling it, I don't further my understanding of it. And it's a topic that I do wish to further my understanding of. And that's why I've attempted it's do you ever try to explain something to somebody else? you don't understand the topic. You can say conceptually I have an idea of what the blockchain is, but then when you go to explain the blockchain to a friend, give a deeper level of understanding if you can adequately articulate to him what the blockchain is. For me the podcast is like the next level of that. If I can start to understand what depression is then I can explain to one friend and then if I can start a podcast on it, it just brings me in sort of a layer deeper a my understanding and I'm very very far from where I want to get to and understanding it at but it's a topic that will flash up and down every now and then because I think it's so central to why so many of us cycle it's happiness we want to be happier and cycling has the potential to do that in a lot of cases for those extreme cases you know again it's not going to completely alleviate it but can we just move ourselves a little bit further along that continuum. Row man thanks for listening for tomorrow's somewhat confusing rambling's on a complex topic and I will chat here again real soon. Hey everybody it's Anthony again, really quick I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that's roadmancycling.com slash 14 day