I honestly believe the whole “adults require less sleep” thing is honest to god probably a myth created by capitalism
It is.
i honestly believe that sleep deprivation is the biggest ignored/neglected root cause of health dangers that prematurely kill adults
ask me sometime about the role of sleep in the leptin ghrelin cycle and how its interruption destabilizes weight homeostasis
or about the new research showing that heart disease is not caused by fat, like we thought for years, but by inflammation in the circulatory system whose root cause is unknown but one of the prime suspects is, you guessed it, sleep deprivation
but nobody wants to hear that lack of sleep is killing people. employers don’t want to hear it. and god knows that having sold their waking hours to capitalism to survive workers don’t want to lose the only time they have left to them to live their lives, mostly stolen from sleep
i mean even i don’t want to do anything about it and i love sleep, i just love overwatch more
this this this this this
our society places almost zero value on sleep
on enough sleep
on uninterrupted sleep
on regular, predictable, cycling sleep
all the evidence we have suggests sleep is really, really, really important to the processes of the human body, including both mental and physical health, and yet when was the last time you heard somebody suggest that people had a *right* to sufficient, regular sleep?
Reminder that
– Humans are not meant to sleep for extended periods of uninterrupted sleep.
By this I don’t mean “humans shouldn’t have 8+ hours of sleep a night”; I mean that we are supposed to sleep for four to five hours (ish), then get up and do something relaxing like reading for a half hour to an hour, then get another bout of four to five hours. This is what our bodies were designed for.
Sleeping the whole night through was a fad started with the advent of the lightbulb. Sleeping the whole night through is so recent (and artificial) that First Sleep and Second Sleep are mentioned in Dickens’ novels.
– Lack of sleep for even a single night severely compromises your immune system.
If you’re planning on getting little sleep or pulling an all-nighter, make sure to eat lots of fruit and veggies/take vitamins that day. Or even better, get yourself some bee propolis. It’s a natural remedy used for thousands of years in Latin America and is insanely good for boosting up compromised immune systems (if you get the drop kind, put 3 to 4 drops in a spoonful of honey and mix well with a 2nd spoon to mask the strong taste). It has no side effects and is all but impossible to overdose on.
– According to several government bodies around the world, chronic lack of sleep is literally tied for 1st place as the worst kind of torture (the other is solitary isolation)
– Expecting a teen to get up for 8:30 classes is the equivalent of expecting an adult to be at work at 4 am.
After babies, teens are the age group that needs the most amount of sleep. Puberty is exhausting, and the body needs time to recharge. Ideally, a teen should be getting between 10 to 12 hours of sleep at the bare minimum. Most teens are lucky if they manage to get 8. And that’s a gigantic problem; not only does lack of sleep affect mood (which is extra significant when your hormones are already riding a rollercoaster to begin with), but also has massive effects on growth, which is kinda what the whole puberty thing is supposed to be about.
– Humans were not designed to have the same sleep cycle across the species. Much the opposite in fact.
Night owls and morning people are an actual thing. Because we’re pack creatures, Nature came up with a clever way for our ancestors to always have someone on the lookout for predators and threats: make people naturally alert at varying times so that there’s always someone alert to keep watch.
Forcing night owls to follow morning people’s sleep cycle means night owls live with what researchers have referred to as “permanent jetlag”.
(points my shaking fist at high school) WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME
Fucking hell
I like how im permanently jetlagged
This is super interesting to me bc I’m SUCH a morning person. Like…the first three minutes of consciousness at 6 am is torture but then I’m wide awake and energetic…until like 3 PM…then I’m exhausted until 8…then awake until midnight…my cycle is sooooo fucked
i fucking hate self care posts made by neurotypicals so here’s one from someone who Actually Gets It
-can’t shower or take a bath? me either. dry shampoo can make your hair look and feel cleaner, and baby wipes or makeup wipes work great to get the top layer of grime off your skin.
-can’t wash your sheets and make your bed? i feel you. push your blankets out of the way and shake the crumbs off your sheet. it will at least be a bit more comfortable.
-can’t even change out of your dirty pajamas? been there. hit yourself with some febreeze and a lint roller. if you can, brush your hair. if you can’t, hair ties and bobby pins are fantastic.
-can’t make anything to eat? same. if you can, there’s no shame in ordering food. in fact, it’s probably better you eat something rather than go hungry. if you can’t, try and find something that comes pre-made or takes minimal effort to make. at the very least, drink some water.
can’t respond to messages or reach out for help? yeah, i get that. set an alarm for a few hours from now and respond to any messages you need to once you’ve given yourself time to prepare. if they’re Important Messages that need Professional Responses, you can find fill-in-the-blank format rough drafts on google. as far as personal messages go, don’t feel bad for sending a mass “I’m sorry, I’m in a personal emergency right now. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” response to everyone.
-can’t even sleep because it’s so bad? asmr videos always knock me out, personally, but i also watch a lot of bob ross. just try to find something quiet and soothing to use as background noise and take your mind off it, or at least give you a more peaceful environment to think about it.
-can’t go for a walk/drive? try opening the blinds or curtains. you’re still exposing yourself to the outside world. baby steps. (i also play animal crossing or sims; it may be virtual but fuck it. i went on a walk.)
-can’t go into work/school? let people know. let your coworkers or classmates know it’s an emergency and you can’t make it. give yourself up to two days, but then you have to go back. ask to have your work emailed to you so you know what you missed.
-can’t brush your teeth and wash your face? makeup or baby wipes and gum or mouthwash. don’t let yourself physically rot bc you’re rotting emotionally.
-remember that you’ve been here before. if you survived then you can survive now. that’s what this is about- survival. you don’t have to be living your Best Life. right now, it’s more than enough that you’re alive.
This is the only self car masterpost I’ve ever seen that is feasible for severe depressive episodes
Wwwwwoooowww needed this
Look. Someone that gets it. Rather than just someone who’s never been there “gently reminding you” to shower and eat and drink.
This is so real, honestly I’m just trying to make it to play Kingdom Hearts III
Years ago when my PTSD/depression was really bad I always made sure I had some kind of cookie dough or cookie dough mix in the house. And then if it escalated and I got the impulse to kill myself, I’d start baking cookies instead. And then I couldn’t do it because the cookies were baking. And once the whole process of preparing the dough, preheating the oven, baking the cookies, and letting them cool was over usually at least half and hour had passed and my meds had kicked in and I’d be like “well I guess I have to live now because I have freshly baked delicious cookies.” And then I’d just snack on suicide cookies a little bit at a time for the rest of the week and weirdly enough it helped.
This is brilliant. I need to do this. I love baking so much. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. I should make a fuckton of cookie dough and freeze it. I also need a recipe for perfect freezable “suicide cookies” because that’s just the perfect dark millennial humor that tickles me.
I’m glad you like this idea because I always want to tell people about the concept of “suicide cookies” (or really any kind of physical self harm cookies) but not everyone has my fucked up sense of humor and I worry about offending people by accident.
College me was like this with cupcakes. I’d bake cupcakes. All the cupcakes. I’d have so many cupcakes I’d be giving them away, and it was always lovely to see how happy people were when I have them cupcakes, because something nice came out of some of my darkest moments.
‘How is it, as a woman, to lose your hair? What is it like to compulsively harm yourself – inside and out? These are questions that I investigate in my project ‘I can’t help it’ which is about Trichotillomania, a compulsive hair pulling disorder – causing the patient to obsessively pull out their own hair. Through this project I wish to bring awareness of Trichotillomania as a condition which is not often talked about due to the shame of hair loss but also because of the self-inflicted action. Combining my own experiences with interviews and photoshoots with other women’s stories about the condition – I got an overview of feelings and thoughts that come along with Trichotillomania. I visualise the unconsciousness of the act of pulling hair which comes with the condition, as you do the act of harming yourself often without even noticing it.’
I was talking to my mom the other day, and she said she was going to start going to the gym, because its important care for your body. I’m disabled w/ multiple chronic illnesses, so going to the gym is impossible for me. She seemed to realize this, and started to backtrack, saying like – its part of taking care of herself, and I interrupted and said, “Its okay mom. You and I taking care of ourselves look very different”. And thats what I would like you to know.
Taking care of yourself looks different.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like fruit smoothies and gym visits, cutting out sugar and weight training.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like hospital visits, feeding tubes and ports. Needles and tests.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like taking medication and lying down in a cool dark room.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like getting any calories in their body that they can.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like adding in more vegetables and trying to go outside to get sun more often.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like seeing a therapist, keeping symptom journals, and practicing mindfulness, meds, or grounding techniques.
We all have different needs. Please don’t feel bad about how you care for yourself just because someone else is able to do “more”, or their care is more performative or obvious. Please don’t look down on someone for caring for themselves in a way that you do not. Medication and rest are just as important as exercise and vegetables.
Keep doing your best to care for yourself, the best way you know how. Your self care and health is important, no matter what it looks like.
Here’s a really simple thing a lot of messy people never learned: clean people are clean people because they do little household tasks as soon as they need to be done. Messy people? We leave it for some undefined future time, which often ends up being never. It’s much, much easier to wash one meal’s worth of dishes, or put away one load of laundry, or clean off a countertop with only a day’s mess on it than it is to handle those things that have been left for days or weeks or months.
Becoming a less messy person is about doing the little stuff more often. Put everything away when you get home from the store. Clear off the coffee table once a day instead of every few weeks. Over time, those little tasks and habits will become instinctive, and you’ll be on your way to being a recovered messy person. You’ll also find you have no need for intense, whole-house marathon cleans.
If you’re a messy person, you can change. You’ll probably never be an effortlessly neat person, but that’s fine! You’ll be a kinda messy person who cleans up after yourself, and who has a not-messy home. And that’s a great goal to have.
And spare us the comments like, “Who doesn’t know this already?” Lots of us, so hush. If you already know and do this, congratulations on your immaculate home. This advice isn’t meant for you, so feel free to take a seat on the nearest (undoubtedly spotless) chair or couch.
Create a mess 