I went through a frankly terrible few months on my current meds because they removed the emotional numbness before removing the bad feelings. However, once that was over they effectively gave me my life back after 10+ years of continual exhaustion and brain fog.

Inflammation and depression are linked. Infection causes inflammation. It doesn’t follow that depression is caused by infection.

It’s caused by inflammation,

one of the causes being: detox inefficiency.

No, it’s not. Depression can be influenced by inflammation.

This thread is a good example of the GIGO pitfalls that researching with chatbots entails.

Not often this kind of thing comes up on HN, so I was replying in haste at a stoplight!

I’ll ignore the slight, which you should know better than.

== === Why the Sick Get Sicker Most people think illness progresses because of pathogens, toxins, or genetics — but the deeper truth is that tension, stress, and breathing patterns control the trajectory of health more than anything else.

When the body is stressed, the breath changes.

When the breath changes, the lymph stagnates.

When the lymph stagnates, toxins accumulate.

When toxins accumulate, inflammation accelerates.

And that is how sick becomes sicker.

Here’s the breakdown:

1. Stress Immediately Changes Your Breathing Pattern

When the nervous system senses stress — emotional, physical, mental, or energetic — breathing becomes:

• shallow

• rapid

• high in the chest

• tight in the ribs

• limited in diaphragm expansion

This cuts oxygen supply, raises cortisol, and signals the body to brace.

Bracing = stagnation.

2. Your Breath Controls Your Lymphatic System

The lymphatic system is the body’s drainage system, and it has no pump of its own.

It relies entirely on: • diaphragmatic breathing

• muscle movement

• fascia softness

• a calm nervous system

Shallow breathing = no diaphragm movement.

No diaphragm movement = lymph stagnation.

When lymph stagnates:

• waste can’t drain

• toxins recirculate

• inflammation builds

• swelling increases

• the immune system gets overwhelmed

This is why people in long-term stress decline rapidly.

3. Chronic Tension Physically Constricts Detox Pathways

Tension in the shoulders, neck, jaw, abdomen, and ribs acts like a clamp on the lymphatic system.

Chronic tightness:

• blocks lymph nodes

• stiffens fascia

• shuts down circulation

• compresses nerves

• restricts oxygen

• slows detox

The body becomes a closed loop where waste can’t leave — so it begins leaking into tissues, joints, and organs.

This accelerates aging, pain, brain fog, and inflammation.

4. This Is the Progression From Sick → Sicker

When breath + lymph + fascia are blocked:

Phase 1 — Shallow breathing

Fatigue, anxiety, tight chest, poor digestion.

Phase 2 — Lymph stagnation

Swelling, puffiness, inflammatory symptoms, chronic infections.

Phase 3 — Detox recirculation

Migrating symptoms, rashes, headaches, histamine issues, chemical sensitivity.

Phase 4 — Systemic overload

Autoimmune symptoms, mold sensitivity, debilitating fatigue, hormone disruption.

It appears “mysterious,” but physiologically it is predictable.

You've contributed nothing curious to this thread whatsoever, just threw some doubt in, then buggered off during the replies – more or less communicating "stuff I can't directly or completely refute is AI slop".

That's....disappointing.

I saw this textpost made by someone else, and literally thought of you, JumpCrisscross.

And at least mention terms you used.

Do you often require people you’re chatting with to have three copies of the same conversation?

I’m not sure if it has a technical name or if it’s been rigorously studied, but it’s a common observation which even I’ve seen (and reported to growers I work for).

A casual mention here: http://www.sheep101.info/201/behavior.html

It's one explanation of the phenomenon. I'm not remotely convinced by it, but that doesn't mean I think it's untrue.

What I do think we can conclude is that we have no evidence depression is caused by infection. (Singularly and universally, as OP implies.) With higher confidence I believe I can conclude that interrogating chatbots designed to keep your attention is a poor way to resolve this.

Besides talking to patients and reading case files.

You can wait another decade or three for someone to spend the money on a specific study that meets your individual criteria (I'm sure very high), for doing obvious things like:

1.) Treating known infections, testing for others,

and

2.) Addressing nutritional gaps, as well as tracking circadian/endocrine, and nervous symptoms (which often intertwine with depression symptoms!)

but I will not wait.

I'd prefer to no longer be depressed, and/or unwell.

So I'll do the obvious things – even if they're not obvious to you, yet.

It’s a description of a persistent set of symptoms not necessarily any specific biological process.

including adaptive evolutionary procreative success

and one of the leading causes is what I described.

And at least mention terms you used.

it turns out toxins (environmental, die-off and waste of cells from infection, dietary, lifestyle) are important to everyone,

not just vegans in Sandler movies.

Impairment sounds too permanent, when this is often an intermittent, “on average” sort of issue - not a complete freeze.

EDIT - I ask because the only results I get when searching are a Harvard article debunking it. I'd rather hear the opinion of someone that actually believes in it before I read about why it's all malarky. I believe in arguing against the best version of someones argument.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-dubious-p...

PS Thanks for keeping this a good place to be!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

More for the avid reader:

1.) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7698404/

2.) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40012567/

3.) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36498538/

It was just the best “every man” link I could provide for understanding how efficacy of toxin-clearing (toxicity) could be related to depression, other struggles with homeostasis.

Did you grasp the connection?

Furthermore, if the latter were true, it would be an indication that depression was a symptom rather than a cause and the psychiatrist misdiagnosed and improperly treated the patient.