How Has Betting Changed Your Body?

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DublinDegen

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weird one but hear me out...

lost about eight kilos over the last two years... not trying to... just forget to eat when im in a betting spiral... whole day goes past... realise at 9pm i havent eaten since breakfast... grab whatever's closest...

sleep is completely wrecked... checking scores at 3am... american sports finishing at 4am... lying awake after a loss running through what i did wrong...

looked in the mirror last month and genuinely didnt recognise myself for a second...

betting did that... not directly... but it did it...

anyone else notice physical changes?
 
Yeah mate.

Drinking more than I used to.

Pub betting means pub drinking.

Wasn't always like that.

Also sleep. Six Nations period I'm a wreck. Late European kickoffs, checking scores, lying awake after Wales lose.

Wife says I look tired constantly between February and April.

She's right.
 
Sleep is the main one for me.

NFL Sunday nights bleed into Monday. Late West Coast games finishing at 1am. Then lying there processing what happened.

Win or lose doesn't matter much. Brain won't shut off either way.

Started tracking my sleep with an app two years ago. Average sleep Sunday night during NFL season: 5.1 hours.

Rest of year: 7.3 hours.

Two hours of sleep every Sunday night for eighteen weeks. That's not nothing.
 
The tension is the thing for me.

I carry it in my shoulders and neck. My wife notices before I do.

She'll put her hand on my shoulder during a game and say "you're like a rock."

That's cortisol. Sustained stress response over hours.

I'm a coach. I tell my players about recovery and sleep hygiene and stress management.

My body during NFL season contradicts everything I teach.
 
Oh wow I never thought about this.

But yeah actually.

When I have a parlay going I get this knot in my stomach that doesn't go away until it settles.

Sometimes that's four or five hours of low-level anxiety.

Every Sunday during football season.

Multiply that out... that's a lot of hours of my body being stressed.
 
Have noticed the following over fourteen years:

Resting heart rate elevated on Bundesliga matchdays compared to non-matchdays. Tracked via fitness watch. Difference approximately 8-11 beats per minute.

Sleep quality measurably worse on days with significant bets. Data confirms this, not just subjective feeling.

Headaches correlate with losing periods. Noticed pattern three years ago.

Had not connected these things to betting until reading Conor's post just now.
 
Posture.

Spend approximately four hours daily hunched over laptop analyzing matches.

Developed chronic upper back problem two years ago. Physio asked about desk habits.

I described betting analysis sessions. She said the posture during focused screen work was the issue.

Betting gave me a bad back. Had not framed it that way before.
 
The cortisol thing is real and I think most bettors massively underestimate it.

Your body doesn't know the difference between "genuine threat" stress and "financial outcome uncertainty" stress.

Same hormonal response. Same physical cost.

I've had sustained cortisol exposure for probably fifteen years of serious betting.

That has cardiovascular implications. Immune system implications. Nobody talks about this.
 
Fade that's genuinely important and you're right that nobody talks about it.

The health content around gambling focuses entirely on mental health and financial health.

The physical health angle is ignored.
 
Also eating.

Match days I don't eat properly.

Too focused. Then hungry at weird times. Then eating garbage late at night.

Do that enough Saturdays and it adds up.
 
the not eating thing is bad for me...

also the opposite sometimes... stress eating after losses...

so either nothing all day or half a packet of biscuits at midnight...

neither is great...
 
Exercise dropped off during heavy betting periods.

Used to run regularly. During NFL season I tell myself I'll go after the games finish.

Games finish late. Skip the run. Do it tomorrow.

Do this for eighteen weeks and fitness takes a real hit.

Then I tell myself I'll get back to it in the offseason.
 
The anxiety stomach thing for me is more than I realised now that I'm thinking about it.

Like I've just normalised feeling nervous on Sundays.

That's just what Sundays feel like now.

But before I bet it wasn't like that.

Sundays were relaxed.

Now there's always this background hum of tension.
 
Sleep has been significantly affected and has worsened since Margaret died, when we bet together she would insist we stop watching at a reasonable hour regardless of whether matches were still in play, without that boundary I now routinely watch until one or two in the morning during European competition weeks, the insomnia after significant losses is the worst part, not because the money matters desperately at this point in my life but because my mind rehearses the analysis looking for the error, this can continue for two or three hours, I have had periods where I averaged perhaps five hours of sleep for a week during heavy betting periods, at fifty-eight that takes considerably longer to recover from than it did at thirty-eight, my doctor has mentioned my blood pressure without knowing the cause, I have not told him.
 
Prof "my doctor has mentioned my blood pressure without knowing the cause. I have not told him."

That's a bit worrying mate.

Maybe tell him.
 
Yeah Prof that's worth being honest with your doctor about.

Elevated blood pressure over sustained periods is serious at any age.
 
The blood pressure thing is underreported in betting communities.

Sustained cortisol response, poor sleep, irregular eating, reduced exercise.

That's a cardiovascular risk profile.

And we're all building it voluntarily for the privilege of having action on sporting events.
 
Fade correct.

Cumulative physical cost of serious betting likely significant and largely unacknowledged.

We track ROI obsessively. We do not track resting heart rate, sleep quality, cortisol markers.

If we tracked physical health the way we track betting performance the data would probably be alarming.
 
Klaus's point important.

We measure what we value.

We value betting outcomes. We measure those.

We don't value physical health enough to measure it in relation to betting.

The measurement gap reveals the priority gap.
 

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