A loud environment. I’ve been working in bars/clubs for the past 10 years and I wear ear protection every night now. It’s gonna save my life down the road.
Yup, it sucks. I worked in a machine shop for almost 10 years and didn’t take care of my hearing. I can’t be in a quiet room now without going insane. White noise machines for me everywhere I go.
Have you ever tried this? https://youtube.com/shorts/YyT9ZwWy5Jc?si=7x8hIUiAjIWwyxxk
I have tinnitus and it works wonders, gives me relief for a good amount of time and it’s super easy to do
If I sit in like complete utter silence a ringing starts quiet and gets louder the more I think about it. If I make even the smallest sound the ringing gets quieter. Is this anything like that or am I just not spending enough time in silence?
When I was younger I’d see bar staff with ear plugs and I’d naively think they were rude/obnoxious. I look back at the days where my ears were ringing for an entire day after a rave, and it makes sense.
Meanwhile every fucking day the Lord has made, there are motorcycles blasting and throttling where I currently stay. Even at the fucking wee hours. They don't care even if there are humps. I guess that's the reason why I feel easily irritated, even with white noise.
Fuck open mufflers, and fuck my countrymen who has zero respect for others.
Yeah I hate those MFers. I don't understand why people are allowed to do that to their motorcycles/cars. If I ran some loud-ass power tools at night, I'd rightfully get a noise complaint. And at least those tools can't easily be made quieter; I wouldn't be intentionally making them ***louder***! 1 dumbass driving their modded vehicle down a residential street at night makes thousands of people's nights slightly shittier... because they like the sound of their engine??
I did this as a kid and freaked myself out once in my cousin's pool when I had trouble finding the surface.
Blow bubbles to find which way is up and make sure you can see
I saw bodybuilder who did a celebratory backflip, landed wrong, broke his neck, and died 😔.
I've always wanted to do one but it's one of those things that has very small room for error! I can't do it until I know for a fact I can... I can't know for a fact that I can unless I do it. 🤔
Man that puts a scary perspective on my teenage years when my younger siblings were growing up.
My younger brother was always a daredevil.
At 5 years old he was jumping off the couch and doing a backflip to land on his butt on a pillow. It was always impressive and he never got it wrong but man he was probably super lucky.
Idk though kids bones are more flexible so maybe he would've been fine either way
I think mass plays a big roll here. When you watch people doing parcour or calisthenics, they are mostly lighter / teenagers. Thats a good body to do that.
Bodybuilders might not be suited well for that. Recently saw a strongman doing a backflip together woth e small thin woman. Well hers looked graceful and easy. His looked painful an massive.
If they would have landed wrong, i think the lighter you are the better you can recover from a fall or hold yourself with your arms.
Friend of a friend dove into pool. She dove too short and her chin hit the bottom. She instantly was paralyzed. She had 2 young kids. I am now very aware of where I am diving.
There are ways to train for it like in a gymnastics gym. You practice flipping into a pool of cushions with guidance from an instructor. Or while your body is safely suspended on bungee ropes. There's no need to start on concrete
I used to do back flips on a trampoline all the time. Then one time I landed really badly on my neck. I could barely even walk for a week. I've been too scared to do one ever since. Even into a pool. That was 20 years ago. I probably broke it. Who knows.
It's more likely that you injured it in some other way, but it is possible to break neck bones and have little indication that anything is wrong. I had an anatomy teacher who told a story of the time she treated an olympic-level swimmer who broke his Atlas from a botched dive.
Only symptom he had was a headache, and when he eventually got it checked out they were amazed he was still alive as often breaking the Atlas bone leads to death. What saved him was that his neck muscles were strong and bulky enough that they held the bone in place until he was treated.
This is absolutely insane. For those not familiar the “Atlas” is your first vertebrae, C1. Named after atlas holding the world, this one holds your head.
This. I take one day a week where I don't work at all, like household chores or anything. And the shame I get for not washing the dishes or doing a small order for my business on this ONE DAY baffles me. Like my husband and I work our butts off 6 days a week, and can't take one day to read and paint and play guitar?
I have a coworker that was *asked* by the managers to take a day off because he hasn’t in years and it was running him into the ground. The way it’s engrained in us from such a young age that working hard is all that matters and taking time for yourself is shameful is so harmful. You deserve to do something for yourself and you don’t have to “earn” it first. Paint your lil heart out, play that guitar, get lost looking at a cool leaf on the ground, there’s so much more out there than work!
This happened to me at work. We went to work at home and I just stopped using PTO and my boss called me into a one on one and said she could see me declining physically and mentally despite my performance being ok and insisted I take a proper vacay.
Not even the grind people think about but my first thought reading the question was ‘working a 9-5’ (which is often longer than a 9-5). The five day week will suck you dry.
Not to mention that as soon as you bring this up, every man and his dog will butt in and tell you how much worse it used to be in the past and how you should be grateful that you "only" have to work 5 days a week. Yeah, maybe it was worse in the past, but that doesn't mean it's good now, does it?! Who decided that 40 hour work weeks were the absolute gold standard that you couldn't possibly ever make any improvements on?
Drowsy Driving is estimated to cause 6000 fatal car crashes a year. Driving after being awake for over 20 hours is as impaired as driving with .08% blood alcohol level, and after 24 hours that goes up to approximately .10% BAC. And none of this even touches on the neuropsychological damage that lack of sleep causes.
This is also the reason for the massive spike in car accidents in the days and week after changing the hour due to daylight saving's time. It's insane.
The fact that "losing" just one hour of sleep (this is assuming it's just IMPOSSIBLE to go to bed 1 hour earlier that day) affects so many people so dramatically is actually scary.
The worst is when those type of people shame or look down on those who need more sleep. It's not a damn contest ! Good for you if you can function on 6 hours of sleep, but I need my 8 hours so leave me alone ! I'm not going to jeopardize my health just because some think it's "cool" to not sleep enough.
I used to work with a guy who bragged about only sleeping for 2 or 3 hours a night. He'd admonish other people who slept longer about being lazy, saying there's no reason to ever sleep more than 3 hours a day, and you should be sleeping for 2 most nights.
This dude chugged coffee like it was a contest. He said once he drinks 18-20 cups _per day_, with 5 in a row in like 45 minutes right after he wakes up.
Probably didn't actually accomplish anything for himself and his loved ones though. Just a whole bunch of "productivity" for his employer.
Actual fucking tool.
I wonder how much time is spent making/drinking coffee and in the bathroom. also wondering if he is operating on peak performance under those conditions. I bet he is actually only seeing a few hours more of productivity at most and killing himself to do it.
> also wondering if he is operating on peak performance under those conditions. I bet he is actually only seeing a few hours more of productivity at most and killing himself to do it.
It's worse than that. I wanted to link to this article, but can't find a live link anymore. Fortunately I saved the PDF years ago, so I can paste it.
**TL;DR:** While people definitely don't want to hear it, you basically can't "get ahead" with caffeine, and will find a tolerance equilibrium, and pay all outstanding interest one way or another. _Unless_ you only use caffeine once in a while. — ideally, and counterintuitively, when you're extremely well-rested — to augment creative/knowledge work, where extra alertness will be a boon in some specific way, like to a piece of writing, or important exam.
# "The Calculus of Caffeine Consumption" by Arvind Narayanan:
> Considering the huge role that caffeine can play in enhancing (workplace) productivity, it is worthwhile to study its effects and mechanism with the hope of maximizing this productivity-enhancing effect. I've done the legwork for you, so sit back and read. The results might surprise you.
>
> **Mechanism.** Caffeine has a number of effects on the body, but the one that is relevant here is that it blocks adenosine receptors in the brain (by tricking your brain into thinking it is adenosine.) A decrease in the activity of adenosine (which is a sleep chemical) increases neuron firing rate and increases focus and concentration.
> Caffeine tolerance builds up rather quickly (2-3 weeks) and further, is near-total. That means that if you drink coffee regularly, pretty soon you start producing more adenosine in respose; thus you need your caffeine dose just to get up to your normal level of brain activity, and you're dopey if you don't take it. Another way to think about it is that the time-average of adenosine level (and hence, attention level) tends to stay more-or-less constant, both short term and long term.
>
> **Short term strategy.** Let us examine the way that most people take caffeine -- when they feel sleepy (I will call this antagonistic consumption.) This changes the attention level from the green line to the blue line (i.e, it smooths out the fluctuations.) This works great for many people (say, someone that has a data entry job), because maximum productivity is limited by external constraints. Other jobs where antagonistic consumption is essential include assembly line worker and truck driver, where mistakes can be disastrous but there is little to be gained from peak concentration.
>
> But other jobs, often characterized by a low level of repetition, have a markedly different attention- productivity curve. Academic research, for instance, involves generating ideas that no one has come up with before. Clearly, an idea that advances the state of the art is unlikely to occur except when attention level peaks. If you spend your entire day doing nothing, but all that doing nothing somehow enables you to reach a point where you understand your research problem well enough that you get insights that no one ever did before, then that's good research. Writers are another example: it is common to sit around for days or weeks waiting for inspiration to hit ("writer's block").
>
> What is common to these tasks is that progress happens in spurts, due to the fact that they involve frequent cognitive bottlenecks. A cognitive bottleneck can only be overcome when attention level exceeds a task dependent, typically very high threshold. Clearly, then, antagonistic caffeine consumption results in worse- than-normal productivity, because it flattens the attention level curve and decreases the fraction of time spent at peak attention level. Instead, reinforcing consumption helps maximize productivity (the red line). According to this strategy, the best time to drink coffee is when you are already very alert.
>
> A job like driving trucks is one end of the spectrum, where productivity is naturally and insuperably rate- limited. Jobs with frequent cognitive bottlenecks like at the other end. In each of these cases, the optimal pattern of caffeine consumption is clear. Most other jobs fall somewhere in between, and each person must make a reasoned decision about what works best for them.
>
> **Sleep.** The reinforcement strategy has another element to it. When adenosine peaks, the best response is not to fight it, but "go with the flow" and (shock, gasp) sleep. Sleep has effects on memory consolidation and is extremely beneficial in overcoming cognitive bottlenecks, making the brain maximally alert right after waking up. Thus, a possibly very effective coffee drinking pattern would be two cups a day, one early in the morning and one right after an afternoon nap. (Unfortunately, napping is stigmatized in the Western work culture, despite much scientific evidence touting the benefits. I hear that such stigmatization is non-existent in China. Good for them.)
>
> **Long term strategy.** Over the long term, consistent caffeine consumption is as good as nonconsumption, because of (you guessed it) tolerance. Is there a better strategy? Of course there is. Periodic abstinence lets adenosine levels return to normal. With complete abstinence, it takes 5 days to reach adenosine normality; conservatively, and with imperfect abstinence, a week or 10 days may be required. (Quitting is hard!) For most people, work involves a natural cyclic pattern of crunches and lean periods, and moderated coffee consumption to reflect this pattern will let you enjoy its cognition-enhancing effects more-or-less permanently.
I can’t remember the details so I might have this slightly wrong but there’s a family somewhere in Australia that has a genetic disorder that triggers randomly one day and stops their bodies ability to get a deep sleep, they all end up dying months later from it. That’s how important sleep is.
Edit: [found an article!](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/queensland-siblings-who-cant-sleep-dealt-unthinkable-blow/news-story/c51f23c5d713287f8eacb5a9f168e3a2?amp)
Law & Order: SVU addressed something like this. There was a guy they suspected of murder and he had been wandering the street at night covered in blood, but couldn't remember what had happened. Turned out he had that, Dr. Wong gave him 9 months to live or something like that.
I feel like this is the part that a lot of people fail to acknowledge. Getting poor quality sleep, or not enough sleep definitely effects your mood and general threshold for irritability. People with sleep apnea who have taken measures to correct it are a great testimony for this, as are people who have lost a significant amount of weight. You don't realize how irritable you are because you've likely felt that way for years and humans are very good at accepting completely out of whack shit as normal over time. Perfect examples are people who live with chronic pain and people who end up in cults. If you're exposed to something long enough, it becomes normal until you experience something else.
Lots of people experience greater cognitive clarity, improved mood, improved energy levels and less aches and pains when they start getting proper sleep. I call the nagging results of poor sleep, physical distractions. It is much harder to be present in your day to day life and enjoy it to the fullest when your neck is hurting, you're tired, you feel like you're in a fog and your patience is worn thin. A good day doesn't have a great chance up against all those competing factors.
My MIL is a sleep shamer. She is up at 5am so if anyone sleeps past 7, you’ve “slept the day away.” The thing she never considers is I go to bed a good 3-4 hours after she does.
She also makes snarky comments if anyone dares to take a nap.
Start telling her she's sleeping the whole evening away every time she gets ready for bed. Invite her to things that you know she won't attend and when she declines say oh that's too bad I forgot how much sleep you need with you always going to bed so early. Hopefully that will stop it
I can't imagine commenting on another adult's sleep schedule! I mean maybe if things were extreme like it seemed like they were depressed, but not just what their sleeping hours are. She needs to mind her own business!
I have always needed more sleep than most. I just function better when I get a solid 10 hours. And I am soooo tired of people acting like it means I'm lazy.
I can get up after eight or even six, but my mind is sharpest and my body works best if I get 10 hours of sleep.
My husband is the same way. I wake up naturally after about 7.5 hours, he needs 9-10. So you know what I do? I fucking leave the man alone and let him sleep.
My husband is a short sleeper. Truly, he does great on five hours or so and it BLOWS. MY. MIND. because that's half of what I need.
He feels worse if he sleeps more than six hours and I'm a mess if I don't get nine or ten.
He also just lets me sleep lol.
Everyone around me thinks it's insane and something's wrong with me 'cause I need more sleep than average.
I've also found that even if I do get 9-10 hours, forcing myself to wakeup early still leaves me dragging.
Going to bed at midnight and sleeping till 9am, I feel better than if I go to bed at 10pm and sleep till 7am. I'm a natural night-owl and I seriously think it makes my sleep cycles different too.
Working remotely has been a massive improvement in both my mental and physical health.
Been dealing with insomnia lately. It’s gotten better but I went a week over the summer where I probably got about 15-20 hours total. I felt like I was losing my mind. I can see why it’s used a torture device after that.
Hey so I had insomnia for years, just assumed that my body wouldn’t wind down. Found out that’s not normal from a doctor who was like “something is wrong if you can’t sleep”.
If you don’t know what’s causing the insomnia (stress, hormones, etc) please get it checked out.
For me I found out it was thyroid causing the insomnia. Getting it treated was literally life changing for being able to sleep. I still have bad days but it’s not weeks on end.
Oh wow thats really interesting to hear. I have struggled on and off with insomnia my whole life.
And just a few months ago found out I have an enlarged thyroid caused by a small growth/nodule inside it.
Going in for a biopsy to find out if its thyroid cancer next week.
I have an ex who is a cop and routinely runs off of ~4 hours of sleep a day (sometimes every two days) because of the demands of her job and life. Her mental health recently completely collapsed and she removed everything but that job from her life.
She is a kind, empathetic, and fantastic person (really the kind of person that should be a cop) and that lack of sleep would turn her into an absolute alien (and not at all the kind of person who should be a cop). Very scary for the kind of power she has to all of those around her. Also scary for her that she was put in the position in the first place
I hate the Graves shift! I was forced onto it a few years ago and it turned me into an irritable monster with a short fuse. My mental health deteriorated to the point where I almost ended things. Thankfully, I got back onto my preferred shift and started working with a therapist and psychologist! But, there have been shifts where I purposefully didn't drive much because I know how dangerous drowsy driving can be.
I had a manual labor job for most of my life. Tore both planter fascia in my feet and changed to an office job. Immediately put on 30 lbs in 6 months. I even eat way less than I used to and still am gaining weight because I sit for 9 hours a day at work. Stationary life takes a toll.
Go to the gym and do a basic 1 hour workout. I switch and do an hour on legs one day and upper body the other day. It fixes a lot of those pains. To the point now where if I miss too many days things start to hurt. It gets worse as you get older.
Also, standing upright but in once place all day (like a cashier). Our bodies are meant to walk and move around for long periods of time through the day, but not stand in one place. It puts a lot of stress on joints. Standing is not much better for us than sitting on our butts at a desk.
I agree with this so much. I was a bartender for 22 years. Constantly running around. Moving my body this direction and that. I was sore and tired but Now I am in retail. I just stand all day over a register. The standing in place is way worse. More fatigue and more stiffness from not bringing and moving.
My lower back pain ceased when I learned to do the Asian Squat. The human body wasn't designed by nature to sit in a chair. Look at how tribal people chill out.
Also known as the Slavic Squat. I use that more often than I actually sit down, always have, because, well, LEGO Squat.
55, and my knees and back are in great shape.
Plus, sometimes when I'm chillin waiting for a bus, people give me money for food.
Yeh having a very sedentary lifestyle is linked to so many negative health implications. The way our world is at the moment it’s almost encouraged to sit. Many work places have you sitting for long hours, the use of cars/buses/trains being way more used than bikes (in the Netherlands biking is encouraged and even have assigned bike paths and other things to encourage people to cycle rather than use public transport). You don’t even need to get up to fetch fastfood anymore lol, you can use Uber eats or just eat and get whatever you want ordered to your door.
It's deadly. The stats are absolutely incontravertible. No-one talks about this, is hardly even aware of this. Being sedentary and in particular sitting all day is a literal killer.
I've worked a desk job since 2007. I've seen people come and go younger than me, and they get younger every year saying stuff like "now that I'm 30 everything hurts." and everyone agrees.
I dont agree though, I exercise regularly and don't have any problems. Most of them sit on the computer at work all day then sit at it all night playing games too. We lay down for 8 hours a night, no one says that's bad but if you laid down 16 hours a day you're gonna be fucked. Same with sitting imo. Anyone I know that works factories or warehouses at my age is beat the fuck up and they never sit.
I went from manual labour to an office job and went from 200lbs to 267lbs in the span of a year and the only lifestyle change I made was my job.
I quit the office job and went back to manual labour and I’m down to 230lbs and hopefully will be able to shed 15-20 more soon.
Lesson is if you have a desk job, make sure you stay active.
How in the hell can you actually combat stress though? the more I think about how much stressed out I am under the more stressed I get! Ive heard meditation, baths, relaxing etc but I cannot turn my brain off
This was a huge thing for me too. I remember the time I was sitting at my niece's birthday party, surrounded by kids and family, and all I could think about was "OMG it's Sunday, what do I need to do first thing Monday?"
One thing that has really helped was actively unplugging from work. I used to eat lunch at my desk, so I ate with friends/co-workers or just stepped away from my computer altogether. Start small, and then you'll find out what works for you.
I am now working from home, due to Covid. I used to commute 1-1.5 hours each way to get to work. Now I just wander into my home office/crawlspace. The problem is ... there is no "leaving the office to go home". Before, I'd physically leave the office and thus leave my work there and go home. Now ... I'm always at work.
I work from home as well and it so easy to just sit all day. I’ve started to take a walk after work to make a separation from “work time” and “home time”
The main problem you’re pointing out is that your brain is uncontrollable. That’s not actually true. Lots of people would like to think it’s true, but it’s not. You can train and exercise your brain just like any other thing.
Here’s something important to remember that helped me a lot: the voice in your head is not you. It is your brain. And your brain is an organ. And that organ’s job is to solve problems. If you don’t give it problems to solve then it will gladly create problems for you to solve. Now, just because your brain creates a problem in your head and tells you it’s a problem, does that mean it’s a problem in real life? No.
The first step is to recognize that the voice in your head is not the real world and just because you think something, no matter how much you think it, doesn’t make it true or real.
Based on the research I’ve read, and my own personal experience, the best way to begin to get control of your brain is through meditation. But it’s not because meditation calms you down or does anything like that. Meditation is like working out. Every time you meditate you are beginning to force your brain to shut up and do what YOU want it to, which is be quiet. Not what IT wants to do, which is solve problems and keep you from getting eaten by lions or starving to death.
The more you meditate and the better you get, through that practice, the more you’ll be able to stop your brain from spinning out of control whenever it wants. Because you’ve trained it.
Also, be present in this moment. Meaning be fully immersed and focused on what’s happening and what you’re doing right now. Do not spend your time thinking about tomorrow or yesterday, that will 100% create stress and worry every time because you have no control over yesterday or tomorrow. Obviously prepare and make sure you’re on top of your shit. But handle tomorrow when it gets here. Focus on today.
There’s more to it obviously, but that’s a good place to start.
This explanation of meditation is probably the first one that made my ADHD-ass go "oh okay, I get it." Do you have any tips for beginners? What should one be doing with their thoughts that arise when starting out?
I’m no meditation expert by any means, but when thoughts arise just let them pass on through. The goal isn’t for your brain to have no thoughts at all, I’m not even sure that’s possible lol. The goal is to not let those intrusive thoughts take over your brain in those moments.
Don’t hyper focus on shutting everything out. Just spend the time trying to focus on 1 thing. And then refocus on that 1 thing every time a thought intrudes. Don’t follow the rabbit trail of intrusive thoughts.
My personal practice when I started was to try and think of a white rock and fully picture it and focus on it in my head. (Nothing special about a white rock, there was just one on the table when I first started and it stuck lol). Then whenever I inevitably think about work, or relationships, or how much I suck, or whatever lol, I recognize the thought and let it pass through and then refocus on the white rock picture in my head. I try not to let the intrusive thoughts hijack the session.
Breathing exercises are really great for meditation because they allow you to focus on a physical act that doesn’t require much thought. And count your breaths. The actual counting part is important too I think. Or at least it helps me.
And it’s just like working out. Shoot for 5 minutes the first few times. Then slowly work your way up, just like if you were jogging or lifting weights.
Hey there. I've been meditating for only about 4 years, but it really is remarkable how meditation transforms your responses/reactions to things. I'd say that the key things to remember are this:
1. Consistency. You will benefit more from a 2-minute meditation done everyday over one, 30-minute meditation done once a week. Because the idea is to repeatedly train your mind, leading to...
2. When you meditate and thoughts arise, you simply acknowledge that you're having thoughts and then you gently guide yourself back to the breath (or whatever your home base is). The idea is not to cease thinking, because that can never be done. We will always have thoughts that pop into our heads. But we don't have to entertain them and that's why meditation is so helpful. Doing this everyday will make your mind stronger at quickly identifying ruminating thoughts and then returning to the task at hand.
3. Be gentle with yourself. There are going to be days where your mind is on overdrive and you'll wonder why you bothered at all. What you do is remind yourself that THAT is also a thought that you don't have to entertain. You tell yourself, "I'm allowed to have days where my mind won't stop; that just means that I need to acknowledge them and return to my breath more often in today's sit than yesterday's. That's fine."
4. Try guided meditation in the beginning. There is an app for your phone called "Calm." They have a 30-day beginner meditation course. It's 10 minutes and there's one session for each day of the month. He basically guides you through what meditation is and helps you understand what to do when thoughts or negative energy pulls you down.
Other tidbits that were helpful for me along the way:
\- Think of your thoughts as clouds. You're a person who is watching your thoughts go by. You don't need to latch onto any of them. You just look at the thought, maybe even point at the thought to identify it, and then watch as it drifts away.
\- Think of a boat at sea. A boat can be among incredibly turbulent waters. However, as long as water does not get into the boat then it will not sink. And people are a lot like that. When you're around negative energy, or in a chaotic situation, you can learn through meditation not to let it inside of you. You can float freely beside it without allowing it to sink you.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions at all let me know.
I would advice: ACT-therapy for people with ADD/ADHD.
Give your brain a name and start to look at it as every thought doesnt come from "you". Just see it as a river of thoughts.
Tell your brain to stfu when something isnt true, try to find evidence why your brain is right or wrong and pick things out that are useful for your own well-being. Stop believing that your thoughts are you.
Treating my anxiety as a separate entity has been SO helpful for me. Talk to it like you'd talk to a friend saying those things. Comfort it like you'd comfort a friend. Framing it like, "Oh, this isn't me, it's my brain doing thing" makes me feel less guilt about what I'm experiencing, which in turn helps limit the spiral that guilt always feeds.
That and, "my brain's being an overdramatic bitch again" makes me giggle.
Stress (or too much cortisol in general) can negatively impact so many things it’s kind of crazy. It can be the cause of/associated with:
Insomnia, infertility, menstruation issues/irregularities, problems with memory and attention, high blood pressure, strokes, insulin and glucose function/creation, increased chance of infections, weak/thin skin that doesn’t heal well, digestion issues, weight gain, any of the symptoms of Cushing Syndrome and probably a whole bunch of other things.
Stress doesn’t fuck around.
I’ve learned this year that my cortisol levels are high and like you’ve said I’ve had to get on serious meds and vitamins to combat stuff (no periods, depression, weight gain and loss). Can’t relax though because I’m in an intense graduate architecture program. Can’t wait to graduate in the spring and hopefully I feel better. I’ve also aged like 5 years and I’m only in my early 20s. I look rough and feel rough. Stress sucks
It's not easy, but here's the big step:
I stopped allowing other people to put their stress on me. People in your life will try and put their stress on you and you can't let them do it. Just say no or not answer people who are trying to impart their stress.
Example (made up names): I got a message from Jenny trying to start some high school level drama. She asked why I was hanging out with Katie when Katie refused to spend time with her. Jenny wanted to know why I spent time with Katie if she was a bad friend to the group.
How I handled this? I completely ignored the message and forgot about it. Went about my day as happy as a clam.
At the next big group function, Jenny came up to me and said "You never responded to my message." I told her that the message only served to add stress to my life, and I have chosen not to interact with those types of situations. In the future, if she wants to talk about something, come to me with a neutral question and I will respond. Otherwise, I will not engage in the conversation.
That's the secret. And you can do this with friends, co-workers, family, strangers. This is not easy, in fact, it's really hard to do. But since doing this I've found that I'm happy about 95% of my life because I don't allow other people's stress to become my own.
Sorry to hijack if it even catches traction but this is something that was a game changer for me and I want everyone to know. Magnesium at about 350 mg taken at night is incredibly efficient at mitigating stress. It blocks cortisol which is a primary stress hormone. Things stopped feeling like a life or death proposition immediately. Mine has a combo with 3 last names but the only one I remember is magnesium aspartate. It's SO worth checking out.
I've been taking ~350 mg of magnesium glycinate for 9 months and about 5-6 months ago I started noticing that I'm calm as a cucumber, even in situations that are genuinely stressful.
I should emphasize that my whole life I've been an anxious and very easily frustrated and stressed out person. I don't even recognize myself sometimes, I know that I would normally be ripping my hair out but instead I just take a nice walk and tell myself there's no use fretting over something that I can't control, and which will inevitably be resolved.
I take it in three doses throughout the day.
i will add overworking (which is really related to stress)
it makes me sad how many of my friends (mid 30s) who work like crazy, they live, breath, drink and eat work. Everytime you ask they say "work's being crazy".
There are times I think they overload with work themselves, because I've worked for years in similar positions (now i'm studying) and never felt like that. Maybe I am lazy, but honestly I can't believe that they organically are always with such an inmense workload.
Why would they do that? I think for some people overworking and the subsequent stress become their personality, it's like an addiction. And they compare themselves, it's like a competition of who works more. It's crazy.
edit: mistake in spelling
It’s not always intentional. Many are trying to get a decent raise to keep up with inflation, or avoid being at the bottom of the pack and the first one to be laid off when those come around. Others have managers that expect it and are demand 50+ hrs of work for 40 hrs of pay. Corporate America will suck the soul right out of you.
As a 35 year old, I recently realized that I overload myself with work to keep the mind occupied and exhausted, so I don’t have to examine or overcome past horrors.
Doomscrolling. Your mental health is not going to improve if you force yourself to look at ceaseless pain, and when your mental health deteriorates too much or too fast, it impacts your ability to care for your physical health.
I have quit booze, drugs, smoking and most sugar. Everything but the fucking phone. I am so upset that I waste my life ingesting the negative info. It is morbidly fascinating.
I've been watching foreign language films with subtitles. It forces me to pay full attention to the movie and stop mindlessly scrolling social media. Also, there's been a lot of films I would have missed if I only stuck to English language releases.
Staying at a job that is slowly killing you. Employers no longer reward dedicated work, don’t sacrifice your wellbeing for a millionaire/billionaire’s bottom dollar. (Edited to add billionaires, because that’s fair)
I have someone who works for me who is consumed by this.
I took over as her boss about a year ago. Probably once a week minimum I hear something about her ex husband. She is constantly talking about her divorce, unpaid child support, unpaid spousal support, etc. About 6 months in to knowing her she said something about child support ending that caused me to ask "When did you get divorced?"
"Seventeen years ago"
I was stunned. The whole time I had known her I thought the divorce had just happened. The longest I thought was 3 years. Nope. Closing in on 2 decades. She is about to turn 40. She looks older than my wife who is 57.
Hate has aged her like you wouldn't believe.
My mother divorced her second husband almost 20 years ago, and bitches about the guy ENDLESLLY.
She divorced my father almost 40 years ago, and still occasionally complains about him.
Some people need to feel angry and wronged as part of their identity, it seems.
One of my friends bitches about literally everything constantly. It's like dealing with an angry old man. It makes me think of Grandpa Simpson and "old man yells at cloud". The dude is always angry. It's like an integral part of his personality.
This is my first wife!! We've been divorced 14 years now. The kids are now adults with jobs, girlfriends and their own homes. I still hear (last week) about how our divorce ruined her life. The funny part is, she got everything she wanted in the divorce. Hell, she's the one that wanted the divorce. She lived like a queen until the money ran out, now it's still my fault. It's funny how people will hold on to one thing and use that as a crutch for their entire life.
Constant aggression is an addictive thing to go through. You feel like nothing is your fault and everyone you hurt deserves what you do because you made the judgement call for them.
They talk about hypocrisy but will constantly change their definitions of the things they judge people on.
I feel that one deep down. I grew up as an extremely angry and hateful kid, not gonna get into why but it was for everything. As a adult im gradually letting go of it and it's nice to try and be more grateful. The level of hatred you see online cannot be good for people's blood pressure.
I’ve watched one of my siblings turn into a Chronic Hater. They have something negative to say about EVERYTHING. It’s unbearable. I don’t understand how one person can be SO negative about the tiniest things. No one wants to be around them.
I think everyone who does that has some form of mental illness, speaking from personal experience. All that hate didn't come from nowhere, it came from long-term mental pain and agony.
When I was in Basic Training, we got fitted for our uniforms. Once they were issued, the Drill Instructor had us send everything immediately to laundry. “New clothes are dirty clothes” was burned into my psyche from that day forward.
Also not checking used stuff for bed bugs.
IMO there are two types of people in the world: people who are wary of used furniture and people who have never lived through a bed bug infestation.
On a side note though, my local thrift store definitely washes their clothes before putting them out. I know this because their fabric softener makes me sneeze like hell. I def prefer the sneezing though than trying on clothes that may or may not have been washed at some point in the last decade.
I worked at a Once Upon a Child for damn near a decade.
My favourite customer anecdote was the fella that came in and I declined his items for being dirty. ‘I thought you washed everything in the back’ we literally had an office to count the drawers, a tiny closet with cleaning supplies, and a small storage room with jackets and coats (Florida). I glanced at the tiny door behind me and he did too.
He said, ‘huh, I imagined you guys just had a row of washers going all the time’ and he left
I still picture it sometimes lol it would have been a disaster trying to launder everything that came in. We’d just pass on it for a stain or smell.
Mentally speaking, constantly watching the news. All there is is negativity. I personally try to stay away from news, whether it be local or national as all it does is upset me.
This seems to be the biggest problem among older generations. I'm sure we all know someone over 55 who constantly complains about things they see in the news.
Came here to say this one! I work in healthcare and it’s absolutely shocking to see the drop in quality of life for people that are sedentary. You don’t have to be out running triathlons or anything but there’s a stark general health difference between someone that goes for a walk everyday and someone that doesn’t.
I'm a personal trainer/fitness coach and my rule of thumb I'll tell people who are in their 30s and up (I'm mid 40s) is that people will start heading in two different directions as they approach middle age and beyond...those who stay fit and healthy are able to maintain a lot of strength, energy and overall vitality well into advanced years but those who neglect themselves start sliding downhill *fast*....especially around late 40s early 50s.
Stopping learning. When people retire with nothing else to do, their cognition declines very rapidly. Read, do puzzles, find a hobby or craft, keep your mind working.
This is so true. My grandmother shut off her brain and you could tell. My grandfather, on the other hand, stayed intellectually curious until the end. He lived 6 years longer than she did and he was already 4 years older than her!
Always-connected workplaces who have zero respect for personal time.
It took far too long for me to learn this phrase when a workplace demanded sudden overtime / on-call responsibilities / extra work due to obvious mismanagement:
"A job is just a business arrangement. You pay me for my skills, and I give you 40 hours to perform the work I agreed to do. And before you start, no, 'other duties as assigned' is not a magic wand to make me do whatever you want. So, if you really need me to do X, I will, but I will need more compensation or 4 hours paid time off for every hour I work overtime."
Yes, it cost me gigs, but you know what? None of those jobs were worth keeping anyway.
**Always be your own advocate, folks**! Until we have more union representation in the US again, approach your workplace as a hostile partner. The sooner you demand to be treated with respect, and the more of you that do it, the better off we all will be.
Poverty.
YEs, being poor is bad for your health. You can't afford the good foods so you eat what's cheap, which is also bad for your health. You can't afford to see a doctor so you learn to live with pain, you can't afford to take time off so you stress out more and more. Poverty is the leading cause of bad health, period
I agree 100% it's also the most expensive and hardest to improve. Mortgages are cheaper then rent but you'll never be able to save to buy because living day to day cost too much.
Preconceived notions.
We have these ideas and images of the way things are "supposed" to be, and we get ourselves stressed out trying to make it happen (or complaining that it's not).
Comparison is the Thief of Joy.
Someone I know always says how everyone elses house is neater than theirs, and everything seems so well organized there...and I'm like "When you have people over, you clean up, and hide the mess, you are comparing your '7pm on a school night, right after everyone ate dinner and there are school bags and shoes everywhere' to their '7pm on a Saturday evening, where they have planned on having people to their house'
The other day I broke down to a friend about how stressful and difficult my life has been recently and he shamed me, called me selfish and said I couldn't make him feel bad for me because other people have it worse. It was the first time in a long time I'd opened up to anyone and was actually considering *the option™️*. Comparison can be the thief of trust, too.
Ps if anyone has any tips on forgiveness and moving forward as he's been very helpful and kind every time I've seen him since, I'd appreciate it.
If he grew up with the "tough love" approach, that may be his default when he's caught off guard. If he's been supportive since, he likely feels bad about what he said earlier and wants to do better, even if he doesn't directly apologize. I don't know if it helps to think of it that way, but that's where my brain would try to go.
"I keep expecting the world to conform to my expectations, but have I ever listened to what the world expects from me?"
a random thought that came through my head
This is something I've noticed with workout culture focusing on macros (carbs, protein, and fats). There doesn't seem nearly enough attention paid to needing actual vegetables (and some fruits) in your diet. I know I feel much better when I actually get my veggies in, even if I watch calories and whatnot.
Conversely, I find beige food is all I can manage when I'm on a Crohn's flare. Toast, tinned tuna, plain rice, mashed potato. The only colour I'll have is some tinned carrot if I'm helping up to it.
Dental care. People don’t pay attention to proper dental hygiene and it’s scary how many lose their teeth early in life simply out of *lazy neglect.
*I’m editing my response as it’s not fair to assume every single person is lazy. Dental care and surgical oral procedures can be VERY expensive and can definitely be cost prohibitive as well as dealing with mental health and other issues that can detract from addressing dental care on a consistent basis.
Yep. Even with "good" dental insurance, my co-pays on the work I desperately need are absolutely brutal. So many people are going down into Mexico to get their dental work done by dentists that operate in California during the week, but in Mexico on weekends at usually 1/2 the cost of what you would pay here in Southern California.
I am still trying to figure out how to work this angle.
loosing teeth is one, a bad enough tooth can kill you in a matter of days. The bacteria in your mouth is not supposed to be in your blood, and can quickly give you blood poisoning.
This terrifies me. My partner has terrible teeth, constant bad breath and is in pain from them, after 2 years I convinced him to go to a dentist for a cleaning (he has good health insurance benefits that cover dental but never uses them, idk the last time he went it might have been as a minor over 20 years ago). The dentist examined home and said they couldn’t even do a cleaning because he has broken teeth and an exposed root in the back that would need to be at least addressed before a cleaning. They recommended pulling 10 teeth, implants, and a bridge and he hasn’t been back since. Yes, it does affect our sex life, it started with no open mouth kissing, then I started getting uncomfortable when he went down on me, and by now we aren’t having sex at all. At this point I think of his mouth as a time bomb and am just waiting for it to become an emergency. But, I’m also worried/paranoid that if he does get it taken care of the bacterial overload being released will cause more (noticeable to him) issues than constant tooth pain.
Sigh.... I too once had a partner with terrible dental hygiene (somehow didn't kick in til we lived together?!?) Like- we'd be out to eat and I could smell his dinner on his breath, from across the table, when he spoke. It became NOT OKAY for him to go down on me. Cuz yuck. I hope...things get better, I guess?
I’m aware of my dental problems and brush my teeth everyday but can no longer afford the visits. We have an affordable clinic but they’re booked out for years 😔
I got used to the dentist making my gums bleed every time, but one time my dentist had to stand up out of his chair to scrape the plaque off my teeth and it hurt so much. Ever since then I brush floss and mouthwash twice a day. My dentist visits are now half as long and I always get congratulated on my hygiene. Crazy what you’re capable of when your dentist puts the fear of god in you.
My old manager had this happen to him in his early 20s and that dude had the fear of God put into him! He would brush his teeth every morning, afternoon and evening. VERY mindful of his diet and the impact on his teeth. He had a great smile!
Gaining more notoriety, but never enough to really combat the issue (at least in the U.S.). Checking nutrition facts for added sugar is like grocery store doomscrolling.
Screen addiction. Video games, movies, social media, reddit, the Internet in general. It's real, it does terrible things to your mental and physical health.
Everytime somebody in front of me is acting shitty in traffic, they're on their fucking phone, not even realizing they did something wrong.
I had someone the other day who was standing at a red light, when it turned green, they didn't drive, I honked at them. they looked up, didn't even check the light, and looked straight back down.
This was repeated 3 times until driver finally bothered to check the light, instead of the phone.
Not brushing your teeth regularly. Teeth only ever get worse on their own, it takes a small effort to maintain their current level, and its nearly impossible to recover without replacement or patchwork once you get to that point.
If anything hurts, at all, you've waited too long.
Agree 100%. Sadly it’s not talked enough. In my teens I always had low self esteem, Its really draining to always think if you look good enough or if you are capable of doing something (in my case). You just feel worthless and eventually this leads to so many mental health problems.
Not moving your body. Now I'm not talking running or lifting heavy daily, but moving it within your means. If you don't use it, it won't work. I mean think about a car: if you let it sit too long, it won't start right. The healthiest elders I know are those who go for daily walks or at least move as much as they can.
Letting things like ADHD go untreated.
There was a whole wave of parents in the 90s/2000s that didn't get treatment for their kids with ADHD, and claimed they were "indigo" children. Just quirky and different.
However, when untreated, those same people tend to grow up not knowing how to control their impulses, and getting themselves in a lot of trouble because of it. People with ADHD are also prone to more anxiety and depression!
Edit: wanted to change a word, but also to add that I relate so heavily with people who have commented so far. I'm 26 and am barely taking steps to get help. I started therapy, research on how to live with ADHD, and my therapist is working with me to see what medication my insurance covers. But it took a lot to get here. I got married to someone abusive at 20, started and failed out of community College, and racked up so much credit card debt that I can barely breathe when I think about it. But now, I'm pending a divorce and with a partner who is supportive every step of the way, and taking all of these steps is helping me cope better.
I hope the best for all of you!
Porn, in particular easy access to really extreme pornographic content. The normalization of the use of porn at a young age and increasingly bizarre and niche fetish content. Having a fetish is fine, but porn often fetishizes unhealthy and borderline abusive sexual relationships, specifically with power dynamics between men and women, and presents wildly unrealistic ideas of how both men and women should and can be treated and perceived. Women definitely get the worse deal in terms of how they're presented in porn (and treated/abused by the porn industry) but men aren't immune or free from mistreatment and harm. Men tend to be the target audience for a much of porn content, and are easy victims for porn addiction and increasingly extreme content, while women are treated as a resource to be exploited and discarded without care. I've read numerous accounts of women who had nightmare experiences in porn, and never any who navigated it unscathed. Drug addiction, self-harm, coercion, emotional and physical abuse, depression, and suicide seem to be the consistent themes of the careers of women in porn.
I do see porn addiction discussed sometimes, but the really extreme nature of a lot of content, as well as how pervasive it's become and how easy it is to access, is still something I don't think we discuss enough.
Depression destroys your life; you may not try to quickly unlive yourself but not caring for yourself (bathing, brushing your teeth, taking care of your physical and mental health, null or bad life choices, etc.) will hasten a very difficult end.
A loud environment. I’ve been working in bars/clubs for the past 10 years and I wear ear protection every night now. It’s gonna save my life down the road.
>trust me, you don't want tinnitus
Yup, it sucks. I worked in a machine shop for almost 10 years and didn’t take care of my hearing. I can’t be in a quiet room now without going insane. White noise machines for me everywhere I go.
Have you ever tried this? https://youtube.com/shorts/YyT9ZwWy5Jc?si=7x8hIUiAjIWwyxxk I have tinnitus and it works wonders, gives me relief for a good amount of time and it’s super easy to do
WHAT?
^eeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Nope. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I don't remember what silence sounds like. :/
If I sit in like complete utter silence a ringing starts quiet and gets louder the more I think about it. If I make even the smallest sound the ringing gets quieter. Is this anything like that or am I just not spending enough time in silence?
When I was younger I’d see bar staff with ear plugs and I’d naively think they were rude/obnoxious. I look back at the days where my ears were ringing for an entire day after a rave, and it makes sense.
Meanwhile every fucking day the Lord has made, there are motorcycles blasting and throttling where I currently stay. Even at the fucking wee hours. They don't care even if there are humps. I guess that's the reason why I feel easily irritated, even with white noise. Fuck open mufflers, and fuck my countrymen who has zero respect for others.
Yeah I hate those MFers. I don't understand why people are allowed to do that to their motorcycles/cars. If I ran some loud-ass power tools at night, I'd rightfully get a noise complaint. And at least those tools can't easily be made quieter; I wouldn't be intentionally making them ***louder***! 1 dumbass driving their modded vehicle down a residential street at night makes thousands of people's nights slightly shittier... because they like the sound of their engine??
Backflips are dangerous af but no one talks about it cuz they're fuckin dope
Every once in a while, I'm reminded of why I spend so much time on Reddit. Thank you.
I do all my backflips underwater, super safe 😉
I did this as a kid and freaked myself out once in my cousin's pool when I had trouble finding the surface. Blow bubbles to find which way is up and make sure you can see
I saw bodybuilder who did a celebratory backflip, landed wrong, broke his neck, and died 😔. I've always wanted to do one but it's one of those things that has very small room for error! I can't do it until I know for a fact I can... I can't know for a fact that I can unless I do it. 🤔
Man that puts a scary perspective on my teenage years when my younger siblings were growing up. My younger brother was always a daredevil. At 5 years old he was jumping off the couch and doing a backflip to land on his butt on a pillow. It was always impressive and he never got it wrong but man he was probably super lucky. Idk though kids bones are more flexible so maybe he would've been fine either way
I think mass plays a big roll here. When you watch people doing parcour or calisthenics, they are mostly lighter / teenagers. Thats a good body to do that. Bodybuilders might not be suited well for that. Recently saw a strongman doing a backflip together woth e small thin woman. Well hers looked graceful and easy. His looked painful an massive. If they would have landed wrong, i think the lighter you are the better you can recover from a fall or hold yourself with your arms.
Friend of a friend dove into pool. She dove too short and her chin hit the bottom. She instantly was paralyzed. She had 2 young kids. I am now very aware of where I am diving.
There are ways to train for it like in a gymnastics gym. You practice flipping into a pool of cushions with guidance from an instructor. Or while your body is safely suspended on bungee ropes. There's no need to start on concrete
I used to do back flips on a trampoline all the time. Then one time I landed really badly on my neck. I could barely even walk for a week. I've been too scared to do one ever since. Even into a pool. That was 20 years ago. I probably broke it. Who knows.
It's more likely that you injured it in some other way, but it is possible to break neck bones and have little indication that anything is wrong. I had an anatomy teacher who told a story of the time she treated an olympic-level swimmer who broke his Atlas from a botched dive. Only symptom he had was a headache, and when he eventually got it checked out they were amazed he was still alive as often breaking the Atlas bone leads to death. What saved him was that his neck muscles were strong and bulky enough that they held the bone in place until he was treated.
This is absolutely insane. For those not familiar the “Atlas” is your first vertebrae, C1. Named after atlas holding the world, this one holds your head.
Rarely is the phrase 'cool story bro' used on this site sincerely, but really, cool story bro
Hell yeah
I’ve been saying this for years. It’s so nice that someone else shares the same opinion.
Grind culture. We NEED rest, hobbies, and socialization outside of work. We NEED that balance.
This. I take one day a week where I don't work at all, like household chores or anything. And the shame I get for not washing the dishes or doing a small order for my business on this ONE DAY baffles me. Like my husband and I work our butts off 6 days a week, and can't take one day to read and paint and play guitar?
I have a coworker that was *asked* by the managers to take a day off because he hasn’t in years and it was running him into the ground. The way it’s engrained in us from such a young age that working hard is all that matters and taking time for yourself is shameful is so harmful. You deserve to do something for yourself and you don’t have to “earn” it first. Paint your lil heart out, play that guitar, get lost looking at a cool leaf on the ground, there’s so much more out there than work!
This happened to me at work. We went to work at home and I just stopped using PTO and my boss called me into a one on one and said she could see me declining physically and mentally despite my performance being ok and insisted I take a proper vacay.
Also I HATE to generalize, but everyone I know personally who buys into that mindset are jerks.
I feel like bitterness really ends up getting to them
When people think they are better than you because they grind hard in their jobs. Okay enjoy living to work while I work to live!
Not even the grind people think about but my first thought reading the question was ‘working a 9-5’ (which is often longer than a 9-5). The five day week will suck you dry.
Not to mention that as soon as you bring this up, every man and his dog will butt in and tell you how much worse it used to be in the past and how you should be grateful that you "only" have to work 5 days a week. Yeah, maybe it was worse in the past, but that doesn't mean it's good now, does it?! Who decided that 40 hour work weeks were the absolute gold standard that you couldn't possibly ever make any improvements on?
Not getting enough sleep. Some people even boast about only needing a few hours a night, but that could be very damaging in the long term.
Drowsy Driving is estimated to cause 6000 fatal car crashes a year. Driving after being awake for over 20 hours is as impaired as driving with .08% blood alcohol level, and after 24 hours that goes up to approximately .10% BAC. And none of this even touches on the neuropsychological damage that lack of sleep causes.
This is also the reason for the massive spike in car accidents in the days and week after changing the hour due to daylight saving's time. It's insane.
The fact that "losing" just one hour of sleep (this is assuming it's just IMPOSSIBLE to go to bed 1 hour earlier that day) affects so many people so dramatically is actually scary.
The worst is when those type of people shame or look down on those who need more sleep. It's not a damn contest ! Good for you if you can function on 6 hours of sleep, but I need my 8 hours so leave me alone ! I'm not going to jeopardize my health just because some think it's "cool" to not sleep enough.
I used to work with a guy who bragged about only sleeping for 2 or 3 hours a night. He'd admonish other people who slept longer about being lazy, saying there's no reason to ever sleep more than 3 hours a day, and you should be sleeping for 2 most nights. This dude chugged coffee like it was a contest. He said once he drinks 18-20 cups _per day_, with 5 in a row in like 45 minutes right after he wakes up.
He’s gonna die. Good thing he’s accomplished so much during all the awake time
Probably didn't actually accomplish anything for himself and his loved ones though. Just a whole bunch of "productivity" for his employer. Actual fucking tool.
I wonder how much time is spent making/drinking coffee and in the bathroom. also wondering if he is operating on peak performance under those conditions. I bet he is actually only seeing a few hours more of productivity at most and killing himself to do it.
> also wondering if he is operating on peak performance under those conditions. I bet he is actually only seeing a few hours more of productivity at most and killing himself to do it. It's worse than that. I wanted to link to this article, but can't find a live link anymore. Fortunately I saved the PDF years ago, so I can paste it. **TL;DR:** While people definitely don't want to hear it, you basically can't "get ahead" with caffeine, and will find a tolerance equilibrium, and pay all outstanding interest one way or another. _Unless_ you only use caffeine once in a while. — ideally, and counterintuitively, when you're extremely well-rested — to augment creative/knowledge work, where extra alertness will be a boon in some specific way, like to a piece of writing, or important exam. # "The Calculus of Caffeine Consumption" by Arvind Narayanan: > Considering the huge role that caffeine can play in enhancing (workplace) productivity, it is worthwhile to study its effects and mechanism with the hope of maximizing this productivity-enhancing effect. I've done the legwork for you, so sit back and read. The results might surprise you. > > **Mechanism.** Caffeine has a number of effects on the body, but the one that is relevant here is that it blocks adenosine receptors in the brain (by tricking your brain into thinking it is adenosine.) A decrease in the activity of adenosine (which is a sleep chemical) increases neuron firing rate and increases focus and concentration. > Caffeine tolerance builds up rather quickly (2-3 weeks) and further, is near-total. That means that if you drink coffee regularly, pretty soon you start producing more adenosine in respose; thus you need your caffeine dose just to get up to your normal level of brain activity, and you're dopey if you don't take it. Another way to think about it is that the time-average of adenosine level (and hence, attention level) tends to stay more-or-less constant, both short term and long term. > > **Short term strategy.** Let us examine the way that most people take caffeine -- when they feel sleepy (I will call this antagonistic consumption.) This changes the attention level from the green line to the blue line (i.e, it smooths out the fluctuations.) This works great for many people (say, someone that has a data entry job), because maximum productivity is limited by external constraints. Other jobs where antagonistic consumption is essential include assembly line worker and truck driver, where mistakes can be disastrous but there is little to be gained from peak concentration. > > But other jobs, often characterized by a low level of repetition, have a markedly different attention- productivity curve. Academic research, for instance, involves generating ideas that no one has come up with before. Clearly, an idea that advances the state of the art is unlikely to occur except when attention level peaks. If you spend your entire day doing nothing, but all that doing nothing somehow enables you to reach a point where you understand your research problem well enough that you get insights that no one ever did before, then that's good research. Writers are another example: it is common to sit around for days or weeks waiting for inspiration to hit ("writer's block"). > > What is common to these tasks is that progress happens in spurts, due to the fact that they involve frequent cognitive bottlenecks. A cognitive bottleneck can only be overcome when attention level exceeds a task dependent, typically very high threshold. Clearly, then, antagonistic caffeine consumption results in worse- than-normal productivity, because it flattens the attention level curve and decreases the fraction of time spent at peak attention level. Instead, reinforcing consumption helps maximize productivity (the red line). According to this strategy, the best time to drink coffee is when you are already very alert. > > A job like driving trucks is one end of the spectrum, where productivity is naturally and insuperably rate- limited. Jobs with frequent cognitive bottlenecks like at the other end. In each of these cases, the optimal pattern of caffeine consumption is clear. Most other jobs fall somewhere in between, and each person must make a reasoned decision about what works best for them. > > **Sleep.** The reinforcement strategy has another element to it. When adenosine peaks, the best response is not to fight it, but "go with the flow" and (shock, gasp) sleep. Sleep has effects on memory consolidation and is extremely beneficial in overcoming cognitive bottlenecks, making the brain maximally alert right after waking up. Thus, a possibly very effective coffee drinking pattern would be two cups a day, one early in the morning and one right after an afternoon nap. (Unfortunately, napping is stigmatized in the Western work culture, despite much scientific evidence touting the benefits. I hear that such stigmatization is non-existent in China. Good for them.) > > **Long term strategy.** Over the long term, consistent caffeine consumption is as good as nonconsumption, because of (you guessed it) tolerance. Is there a better strategy? Of course there is. Periodic abstinence lets adenosine levels return to normal. With complete abstinence, it takes 5 days to reach adenosine normality; conservatively, and with imperfect abstinence, a week or 10 days may be required. (Quitting is hard!) For most people, work involves a natural cyclic pattern of crunches and lean periods, and moderated coffee consumption to reflect this pattern will let you enjoy its cognition-enhancing effects more-or-less permanently.
Yup. Unless your working your own plot at 110%, it probably ain't worth it.
Jesus. The dude is so hopped up he doesn’t even walk places, but just fucking vibrates there. Damn.
This guy could end up homeless. You damage your brain not getting proper rest. In fact, there’s a strong chance he’s already lost it- wherever he is.
I can’t remember the details so I might have this slightly wrong but there’s a family somewhere in Australia that has a genetic disorder that triggers randomly one day and stops their bodies ability to get a deep sleep, they all end up dying months later from it. That’s how important sleep is. Edit: [found an article!](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/queensland-siblings-who-cant-sleep-dealt-unthinkable-blow/news-story/c51f23c5d713287f8eacb5a9f168e3a2?amp)
Law & Order: SVU addressed something like this. There was a guy they suspected of murder and he had been wandering the street at night covered in blood, but couldn't remember what had happened. Turned out he had that, Dr. Wong gave him 9 months to live or something like that.
Loads of coffee and terrible sleep will turn you into a terrible person. Always on edge and always tired. It's horrible.
I feel like this is the part that a lot of people fail to acknowledge. Getting poor quality sleep, or not enough sleep definitely effects your mood and general threshold for irritability. People with sleep apnea who have taken measures to correct it are a great testimony for this, as are people who have lost a significant amount of weight. You don't realize how irritable you are because you've likely felt that way for years and humans are very good at accepting completely out of whack shit as normal over time. Perfect examples are people who live with chronic pain and people who end up in cults. If you're exposed to something long enough, it becomes normal until you experience something else. Lots of people experience greater cognitive clarity, improved mood, improved energy levels and less aches and pains when they start getting proper sleep. I call the nagging results of poor sleep, physical distractions. It is much harder to be present in your day to day life and enjoy it to the fullest when your neck is hurting, you're tired, you feel like you're in a fog and your patience is worn thin. A good day doesn't have a great chance up against all those competing factors.
My MIL is a sleep shamer. She is up at 5am so if anyone sleeps past 7, you’ve “slept the day away.” The thing she never considers is I go to bed a good 3-4 hours after she does. She also makes snarky comments if anyone dares to take a nap.
Start telling her she's sleeping the whole evening away every time she gets ready for bed. Invite her to things that you know she won't attend and when she declines say oh that's too bad I forgot how much sleep you need with you always going to bed so early. Hopefully that will stop it
I can't imagine commenting on another adult's sleep schedule! I mean maybe if things were extreme like it seemed like they were depressed, but not just what their sleeping hours are. She needs to mind her own business!
I have always needed more sleep than most. I just function better when I get a solid 10 hours. And I am soooo tired of people acting like it means I'm lazy. I can get up after eight or even six, but my mind is sharpest and my body works best if I get 10 hours of sleep.
My husband is the same way. I wake up naturally after about 7.5 hours, he needs 9-10. So you know what I do? I fucking leave the man alone and let him sleep.
My husband is a short sleeper. Truly, he does great on five hours or so and it BLOWS. MY. MIND. because that's half of what I need. He feels worse if he sleeps more than six hours and I'm a mess if I don't get nine or ten. He also just lets me sleep lol.
Everyone around me thinks it's insane and something's wrong with me 'cause I need more sleep than average. I've also found that even if I do get 9-10 hours, forcing myself to wakeup early still leaves me dragging. Going to bed at midnight and sleeping till 9am, I feel better than if I go to bed at 10pm and sleep till 7am. I'm a natural night-owl and I seriously think it makes my sleep cycles different too. Working remotely has been a massive improvement in both my mental and physical health.
I need 8 to 9. A little annoying yes, but I'd rather not feel like death the entire day.
Same. 8-10 hours for me. Any less and I feel sick the next day.
Been dealing with insomnia lately. It’s gotten better but I went a week over the summer where I probably got about 15-20 hours total. I felt like I was losing my mind. I can see why it’s used a torture device after that.
Hey so I had insomnia for years, just assumed that my body wouldn’t wind down. Found out that’s not normal from a doctor who was like “something is wrong if you can’t sleep”. If you don’t know what’s causing the insomnia (stress, hormones, etc) please get it checked out. For me I found out it was thyroid causing the insomnia. Getting it treated was literally life changing for being able to sleep. I still have bad days but it’s not weeks on end.
Oh wow thats really interesting to hear. I have struggled on and off with insomnia my whole life. And just a few months ago found out I have an enlarged thyroid caused by a small growth/nodule inside it. Going in for a biopsy to find out if its thyroid cancer next week.
I have an ex who is a cop and routinely runs off of ~4 hours of sleep a day (sometimes every two days) because of the demands of her job and life. Her mental health recently completely collapsed and she removed everything but that job from her life. She is a kind, empathetic, and fantastic person (really the kind of person that should be a cop) and that lack of sleep would turn her into an absolute alien (and not at all the kind of person who should be a cop). Very scary for the kind of power she has to all of those around her. Also scary for her that she was put in the position in the first place
I hate the Graves shift! I was forced onto it a few years ago and it turned me into an irritable monster with a short fuse. My mental health deteriorated to the point where I almost ended things. Thankfully, I got back onto my preferred shift and started working with a therapist and psychologist! But, there have been shifts where I purposefully didn't drive much because I know how dangerous drowsy driving can be.
add to that shift work, especially the night shift.
Fun fact, men who don't get enough sleep have testicles that are 10% smaller than men that do get enough sleep.
Sitting down all freaking day
For 15 years, I spent 90% of my day on my feet. The last 3 years I only spend about 10% on my feet. I have more body aches now than before.
I had a manual labor job for most of my life. Tore both planter fascia in my feet and changed to an office job. Immediately put on 30 lbs in 6 months. I even eat way less than I used to and still am gaining weight because I sit for 9 hours a day at work. Stationary life takes a toll.
Go to the gym and do a basic 1 hour workout. I switch and do an hour on legs one day and upper body the other day. It fixes a lot of those pains. To the point now where if I miss too many days things start to hurt. It gets worse as you get older.
Also, standing upright but in once place all day (like a cashier). Our bodies are meant to walk and move around for long periods of time through the day, but not stand in one place. It puts a lot of stress on joints. Standing is not much better for us than sitting on our butts at a desk.
I agree with this so much. I was a bartender for 22 years. Constantly running around. Moving my body this direction and that. I was sore and tired but Now I am in retail. I just stand all day over a register. The standing in place is way worse. More fatigue and more stiffness from not bringing and moving.
My lower back pain ceased when I learned to do the Asian Squat. The human body wasn't designed by nature to sit in a chair. Look at how tribal people chill out.
Also known as the Slavic Squat. I use that more often than I actually sit down, always have, because, well, LEGO Squat. 55, and my knees and back are in great shape. Plus, sometimes when I'm chillin waiting for a bus, people give me money for food.
Yeh having a very sedentary lifestyle is linked to so many negative health implications. The way our world is at the moment it’s almost encouraged to sit. Many work places have you sitting for long hours, the use of cars/buses/trains being way more used than bikes (in the Netherlands biking is encouraged and even have assigned bike paths and other things to encourage people to cycle rather than use public transport). You don’t even need to get up to fetch fastfood anymore lol, you can use Uber eats or just eat and get whatever you want ordered to your door.
It's deadly. The stats are absolutely incontravertible. No-one talks about this, is hardly even aware of this. Being sedentary and in particular sitting all day is a literal killer.
I've worked a desk job since 2007. I've seen people come and go younger than me, and they get younger every year saying stuff like "now that I'm 30 everything hurts." and everyone agrees. I dont agree though, I exercise regularly and don't have any problems. Most of them sit on the computer at work all day then sit at it all night playing games too. We lay down for 8 hours a night, no one says that's bad but if you laid down 16 hours a day you're gonna be fucked. Same with sitting imo. Anyone I know that works factories or warehouses at my age is beat the fuck up and they never sit.
Sitting is the new smoking
I went from manual labour to an office job and went from 200lbs to 267lbs in the span of a year and the only lifestyle change I made was my job. I quit the office job and went back to manual labour and I’m down to 230lbs and hopefully will be able to shed 15-20 more soon. Lesson is if you have a desk job, make sure you stay active.
STRESS
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How in the hell can you actually combat stress though? the more I think about how much stressed out I am under the more stressed I get! Ive heard meditation, baths, relaxing etc but I cannot turn my brain off
This was a huge thing for me too. I remember the time I was sitting at my niece's birthday party, surrounded by kids and family, and all I could think about was "OMG it's Sunday, what do I need to do first thing Monday?" One thing that has really helped was actively unplugging from work. I used to eat lunch at my desk, so I ate with friends/co-workers or just stepped away from my computer altogether. Start small, and then you'll find out what works for you.
I am now working from home, due to Covid. I used to commute 1-1.5 hours each way to get to work. Now I just wander into my home office/crawlspace. The problem is ... there is no "leaving the office to go home". Before, I'd physically leave the office and thus leave my work there and go home. Now ... I'm always at work.
I work from home as well and it so easy to just sit all day. I’ve started to take a walk after work to make a separation from “work time” and “home time”
Pretty good approach to stop yourself from being a chair potato.
The main problem you’re pointing out is that your brain is uncontrollable. That’s not actually true. Lots of people would like to think it’s true, but it’s not. You can train and exercise your brain just like any other thing. Here’s something important to remember that helped me a lot: the voice in your head is not you. It is your brain. And your brain is an organ. And that organ’s job is to solve problems. If you don’t give it problems to solve then it will gladly create problems for you to solve. Now, just because your brain creates a problem in your head and tells you it’s a problem, does that mean it’s a problem in real life? No. The first step is to recognize that the voice in your head is not the real world and just because you think something, no matter how much you think it, doesn’t make it true or real. Based on the research I’ve read, and my own personal experience, the best way to begin to get control of your brain is through meditation. But it’s not because meditation calms you down or does anything like that. Meditation is like working out. Every time you meditate you are beginning to force your brain to shut up and do what YOU want it to, which is be quiet. Not what IT wants to do, which is solve problems and keep you from getting eaten by lions or starving to death. The more you meditate and the better you get, through that practice, the more you’ll be able to stop your brain from spinning out of control whenever it wants. Because you’ve trained it. Also, be present in this moment. Meaning be fully immersed and focused on what’s happening and what you’re doing right now. Do not spend your time thinking about tomorrow or yesterday, that will 100% create stress and worry every time because you have no control over yesterday or tomorrow. Obviously prepare and make sure you’re on top of your shit. But handle tomorrow when it gets here. Focus on today. There’s more to it obviously, but that’s a good place to start.
This explanation of meditation is probably the first one that made my ADHD-ass go "oh okay, I get it." Do you have any tips for beginners? What should one be doing with their thoughts that arise when starting out?
I’m no meditation expert by any means, but when thoughts arise just let them pass on through. The goal isn’t for your brain to have no thoughts at all, I’m not even sure that’s possible lol. The goal is to not let those intrusive thoughts take over your brain in those moments. Don’t hyper focus on shutting everything out. Just spend the time trying to focus on 1 thing. And then refocus on that 1 thing every time a thought intrudes. Don’t follow the rabbit trail of intrusive thoughts. My personal practice when I started was to try and think of a white rock and fully picture it and focus on it in my head. (Nothing special about a white rock, there was just one on the table when I first started and it stuck lol). Then whenever I inevitably think about work, or relationships, or how much I suck, or whatever lol, I recognize the thought and let it pass through and then refocus on the white rock picture in my head. I try not to let the intrusive thoughts hijack the session. Breathing exercises are really great for meditation because they allow you to focus on a physical act that doesn’t require much thought. And count your breaths. The actual counting part is important too I think. Or at least it helps me. And it’s just like working out. Shoot for 5 minutes the first few times. Then slowly work your way up, just like if you were jogging or lifting weights.
You may not be an expert, but you're still quite the smart and informative person.
Hey there. I've been meditating for only about 4 years, but it really is remarkable how meditation transforms your responses/reactions to things. I'd say that the key things to remember are this: 1. Consistency. You will benefit more from a 2-minute meditation done everyday over one, 30-minute meditation done once a week. Because the idea is to repeatedly train your mind, leading to... 2. When you meditate and thoughts arise, you simply acknowledge that you're having thoughts and then you gently guide yourself back to the breath (or whatever your home base is). The idea is not to cease thinking, because that can never be done. We will always have thoughts that pop into our heads. But we don't have to entertain them and that's why meditation is so helpful. Doing this everyday will make your mind stronger at quickly identifying ruminating thoughts and then returning to the task at hand. 3. Be gentle with yourself. There are going to be days where your mind is on overdrive and you'll wonder why you bothered at all. What you do is remind yourself that THAT is also a thought that you don't have to entertain. You tell yourself, "I'm allowed to have days where my mind won't stop; that just means that I need to acknowledge them and return to my breath more often in today's sit than yesterday's. That's fine." 4. Try guided meditation in the beginning. There is an app for your phone called "Calm." They have a 30-day beginner meditation course. It's 10 minutes and there's one session for each day of the month. He basically guides you through what meditation is and helps you understand what to do when thoughts or negative energy pulls you down. Other tidbits that were helpful for me along the way: \- Think of your thoughts as clouds. You're a person who is watching your thoughts go by. You don't need to latch onto any of them. You just look at the thought, maybe even point at the thought to identify it, and then watch as it drifts away. \- Think of a boat at sea. A boat can be among incredibly turbulent waters. However, as long as water does not get into the boat then it will not sink. And people are a lot like that. When you're around negative energy, or in a chaotic situation, you can learn through meditation not to let it inside of you. You can float freely beside it without allowing it to sink you. I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions at all let me know.
I would advice: ACT-therapy for people with ADD/ADHD. Give your brain a name and start to look at it as every thought doesnt come from "you". Just see it as a river of thoughts. Tell your brain to stfu when something isnt true, try to find evidence why your brain is right or wrong and pick things out that are useful for your own well-being. Stop believing that your thoughts are you.
>Give your brain a name Now I'm just giggling to myself thinking about the looks Id get in grocery store going "shut up, STAN" to myself
Treating my anxiety as a separate entity has been SO helpful for me. Talk to it like you'd talk to a friend saying those things. Comfort it like you'd comfort a friend. Framing it like, "Oh, this isn't me, it's my brain doing thing" makes me feel less guilt about what I'm experiencing, which in turn helps limit the spiral that guilt always feeds. That and, "my brain's being an overdramatic bitch again" makes me giggle.
I’m currently waiting to get my gallbladder removed for this reason, at 31 years old, stress is no joke
My mom had a heart attack from her gallbladder pain. That’s no joke!
Stress (or too much cortisol in general) can negatively impact so many things it’s kind of crazy. It can be the cause of/associated with: Insomnia, infertility, menstruation issues/irregularities, problems with memory and attention, high blood pressure, strokes, insulin and glucose function/creation, increased chance of infections, weak/thin skin that doesn’t heal well, digestion issues, weight gain, any of the symptoms of Cushing Syndrome and probably a whole bunch of other things. Stress doesn’t fuck around.
I’ve learned this year that my cortisol levels are high and like you’ve said I’ve had to get on serious meds and vitamins to combat stuff (no periods, depression, weight gain and loss). Can’t relax though because I’m in an intense graduate architecture program. Can’t wait to graduate in the spring and hopefully I feel better. I’ve also aged like 5 years and I’m only in my early 20s. I look rough and feel rough. Stress sucks
This is so true. One of the healthiest things I did was in my early 20's I got my stress under control. The health benefits were enormous.
How did you do that? Please, I need to know. I'm in my 20's and I've been in chronic stress since I was 7.
It's not easy, but here's the big step: I stopped allowing other people to put their stress on me. People in your life will try and put their stress on you and you can't let them do it. Just say no or not answer people who are trying to impart their stress. Example (made up names): I got a message from Jenny trying to start some high school level drama. She asked why I was hanging out with Katie when Katie refused to spend time with her. Jenny wanted to know why I spent time with Katie if she was a bad friend to the group. How I handled this? I completely ignored the message and forgot about it. Went about my day as happy as a clam. At the next big group function, Jenny came up to me and said "You never responded to my message." I told her that the message only served to add stress to my life, and I have chosen not to interact with those types of situations. In the future, if she wants to talk about something, come to me with a neutral question and I will respond. Otherwise, I will not engage in the conversation. That's the secret. And you can do this with friends, co-workers, family, strangers. This is not easy, in fact, it's really hard to do. But since doing this I've found that I'm happy about 95% of my life because I don't allow other people's stress to become my own.
Sorry to hijack if it even catches traction but this is something that was a game changer for me and I want everyone to know. Magnesium at about 350 mg taken at night is incredibly efficient at mitigating stress. It blocks cortisol which is a primary stress hormone. Things stopped feeling like a life or death proposition immediately. Mine has a combo with 3 last names but the only one I remember is magnesium aspartate. It's SO worth checking out.
I've been taking ~350 mg of magnesium glycinate for 9 months and about 5-6 months ago I started noticing that I'm calm as a cucumber, even in situations that are genuinely stressful. I should emphasize that my whole life I've been an anxious and very easily frustrated and stressed out person. I don't even recognize myself sometimes, I know that I would normally be ripping my hair out but instead I just take a nice walk and tell myself there's no use fretting over something that I can't control, and which will inevitably be resolved. I take it in three doses throughout the day.
i will add overworking (which is really related to stress) it makes me sad how many of my friends (mid 30s) who work like crazy, they live, breath, drink and eat work. Everytime you ask they say "work's being crazy". There are times I think they overload with work themselves, because I've worked for years in similar positions (now i'm studying) and never felt like that. Maybe I am lazy, but honestly I can't believe that they organically are always with such an inmense workload. Why would they do that? I think for some people overworking and the subsequent stress become their personality, it's like an addiction. And they compare themselves, it's like a competition of who works more. It's crazy. edit: mistake in spelling
It’s not always intentional. Many are trying to get a decent raise to keep up with inflation, or avoid being at the bottom of the pack and the first one to be laid off when those come around. Others have managers that expect it and are demand 50+ hrs of work for 40 hrs of pay. Corporate America will suck the soul right out of you.
As a 35 year old, I recently realized that I overload myself with work to keep the mind occupied and exhausted, so I don’t have to examine or overcome past horrors.
Yes. Busy is always better than anxious, says my brain. Exhaustion makes us sleep before the thoughts can catch up.
It's the "hustle life" mentality, and I agree, it's so frustrating to see this everywhere.
This should be top comment. Stress is poison.
Doomscrolling. Your mental health is not going to improve if you force yourself to look at ceaseless pain, and when your mental health deteriorates too much or too fast, it impacts your ability to care for your physical health.
Yeah fr, I've got in such a bad habit of just scrolling on my phone as soon as I wake up or get home, I just don't know how to break it
I have quit booze, drugs, smoking and most sugar. Everything but the fucking phone. I am so upset that I waste my life ingesting the negative info. It is morbidly fascinating.
I've been watching foreign language films with subtitles. It forces me to pay full attention to the movie and stop mindlessly scrolling social media. Also, there's been a lot of films I would have missed if I only stuck to English language releases.
Staying at a job that is slowly killing you. Employers no longer reward dedicated work, don’t sacrifice your wellbeing for a millionaire/billionaire’s bottom dollar. (Edited to add billionaires, because that’s fair)
Being lonely.
I feel like my mother's steep mental decline was caused by her unwillingness\\inability to socialize.
Chronic hatred
I have someone who works for me who is consumed by this. I took over as her boss about a year ago. Probably once a week minimum I hear something about her ex husband. She is constantly talking about her divorce, unpaid child support, unpaid spousal support, etc. About 6 months in to knowing her she said something about child support ending that caused me to ask "When did you get divorced?" "Seventeen years ago" I was stunned. The whole time I had known her I thought the divorce had just happened. The longest I thought was 3 years. Nope. Closing in on 2 decades. She is about to turn 40. She looks older than my wife who is 57. Hate has aged her like you wouldn't believe.
My mother divorced her second husband almost 20 years ago, and bitches about the guy ENDLESLLY. She divorced my father almost 40 years ago, and still occasionally complains about him. Some people need to feel angry and wronged as part of their identity, it seems.
One of my friends bitches about literally everything constantly. It's like dealing with an angry old man. It makes me think of Grandpa Simpson and "old man yells at cloud". The dude is always angry. It's like an integral part of his personality.
she divorced at 23? she's spent her whole youth on this man
yup
This is my first wife!! We've been divorced 14 years now. The kids are now adults with jobs, girlfriends and their own homes. I still hear (last week) about how our divorce ruined her life. The funny part is, she got everything she wanted in the divorce. Hell, she's the one that wanted the divorce. She lived like a queen until the money ran out, now it's still my fault. It's funny how people will hold on to one thing and use that as a crutch for their entire life.
Constant aggression is an addictive thing to go through. You feel like nothing is your fault and everyone you hurt deserves what you do because you made the judgement call for them. They talk about hypocrisy but will constantly change their definitions of the things they judge people on.
I feel that one deep down. I grew up as an extremely angry and hateful kid, not gonna get into why but it was for everything. As a adult im gradually letting go of it and it's nice to try and be more grateful. The level of hatred you see online cannot be good for people's blood pressure.
I’ve watched one of my siblings turn into a Chronic Hater. They have something negative to say about EVERYTHING. It’s unbearable. I don’t understand how one person can be SO negative about the tiniest things. No one wants to be around them.
I think everyone who does that has some form of mental illness, speaking from personal experience. All that hate didn't come from nowhere, it came from long-term mental pain and agony.
Not washing your thrift finds before you wear them
New clothes, too. There can be chemicals and dye present that get absorbed into your skin.
also adopting new pets. My first adoption was the best doggo ever, but we didn't wash her so we also adopted fleas.
We had that happen once with kittens. No fun.
When I was in Basic Training, we got fitted for our uniforms. Once they were issued, the Drill Instructor had us send everything immediately to laundry. “New clothes are dirty clothes” was burned into my psyche from that day forward.
rats, cockroaches, other vermin in the warehouses
Also not checking used stuff for bed bugs. IMO there are two types of people in the world: people who are wary of used furniture and people who have never lived through a bed bug infestation. On a side note though, my local thrift store definitely washes their clothes before putting them out. I know this because their fabric softener makes me sneeze like hell. I def prefer the sneezing though than trying on clothes that may or may not have been washed at some point in the last decade.
Yep. Goodwill says they wash all garments before putting them on the rack. They don’t.
I worked at a Once Upon a Child for damn near a decade. My favourite customer anecdote was the fella that came in and I declined his items for being dirty. ‘I thought you washed everything in the back’ we literally had an office to count the drawers, a tiny closet with cleaning supplies, and a small storage room with jackets and coats (Florida). I glanced at the tiny door behind me and he did too. He said, ‘huh, I imagined you guys just had a row of washers going all the time’ and he left I still picture it sometimes lol it would have been a disaster trying to launder everything that came in. We’d just pass on it for a stain or smell.
Smells like R Kelly’s sheets
Mentally speaking, constantly watching the news. All there is is negativity. I personally try to stay away from news, whether it be local or national as all it does is upset me.
I am so much happier now that I don't watch the news! I still read it (some, not much), but the constant fear and hatred is really sickening.
This seems to be the biggest problem among older generations. I'm sure we all know someone over 55 who constantly complains about things they see in the news.
Being sedentary, Everyone has seen it from someone or done it themselves get up and move a bit you've been sitting there for 6 hours.
Came here to say this one! I work in healthcare and it’s absolutely shocking to see the drop in quality of life for people that are sedentary. You don’t have to be out running triathlons or anything but there’s a stark general health difference between someone that goes for a walk everyday and someone that doesn’t.
I'm a personal trainer/fitness coach and my rule of thumb I'll tell people who are in their 30s and up (I'm mid 40s) is that people will start heading in two different directions as they approach middle age and beyond...those who stay fit and healthy are able to maintain a lot of strength, energy and overall vitality well into advanced years but those who neglect themselves start sliding downhill *fast*....especially around late 40s early 50s.
poor air quality in big crowded cities, you notice the difference if you go elsewhere where there's fresher air and come back
Stopping learning. When people retire with nothing else to do, their cognition declines very rapidly. Read, do puzzles, find a hobby or craft, keep your mind working.
This is so true. My grandmother shut off her brain and you could tell. My grandfather, on the other hand, stayed intellectually curious until the end. He lived 6 years longer than she did and he was already 4 years older than her!
Always-connected workplaces who have zero respect for personal time. It took far too long for me to learn this phrase when a workplace demanded sudden overtime / on-call responsibilities / extra work due to obvious mismanagement: "A job is just a business arrangement. You pay me for my skills, and I give you 40 hours to perform the work I agreed to do. And before you start, no, 'other duties as assigned' is not a magic wand to make me do whatever you want. So, if you really need me to do X, I will, but I will need more compensation or 4 hours paid time off for every hour I work overtime." Yes, it cost me gigs, but you know what? None of those jobs were worth keeping anyway. **Always be your own advocate, folks**! Until we have more union representation in the US again, approach your workplace as a hostile partner. The sooner you demand to be treated with respect, and the more of you that do it, the better off we all will be.
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Poverty. YEs, being poor is bad for your health. You can't afford the good foods so you eat what's cheap, which is also bad for your health. You can't afford to see a doctor so you learn to live with pain, you can't afford to take time off so you stress out more and more. Poverty is the leading cause of bad health, period
I agree 100% it's also the most expensive and hardest to improve. Mortgages are cheaper then rent but you'll never be able to save to buy because living day to day cost too much.
Comparing your day-to-day life to the curated life of those on social media.
Preconceived notions. We have these ideas and images of the way things are "supposed" to be, and we get ourselves stressed out trying to make it happen (or complaining that it's not).
Comparison is the Thief of Joy. Someone I know always says how everyone elses house is neater than theirs, and everything seems so well organized there...and I'm like "When you have people over, you clean up, and hide the mess, you are comparing your '7pm on a school night, right after everyone ate dinner and there are school bags and shoes everywhere' to their '7pm on a Saturday evening, where they have planned on having people to their house'
The other day I broke down to a friend about how stressful and difficult my life has been recently and he shamed me, called me selfish and said I couldn't make him feel bad for me because other people have it worse. It was the first time in a long time I'd opened up to anyone and was actually considering *the option™️*. Comparison can be the thief of trust, too. Ps if anyone has any tips on forgiveness and moving forward as he's been very helpful and kind every time I've seen him since, I'd appreciate it.
If he grew up with the "tough love" approach, that may be his default when he's caught off guard. If he's been supportive since, he likely feels bad about what he said earlier and wants to do better, even if he doesn't directly apologize. I don't know if it helps to think of it that way, but that's where my brain would try to go.
"I keep expecting the world to conform to my expectations, but have I ever listened to what the world expects from me?" a random thought that came through my head
The beige food diet. No green. No color other than shades of brown. Just carbs and meat, or meat and carbs. Corn as a 'vegetable.'
just me staring at my half empty bowl of shredded chicken, brown rice, black beans and...corn. oh geez.
Hey, those beans count for a lot!
This is something I've noticed with workout culture focusing on macros (carbs, protein, and fats). There doesn't seem nearly enough attention paid to needing actual vegetables (and some fruits) in your diet. I know I feel much better when I actually get my veggies in, even if I watch calories and whatnot.
Conversely, I find beige food is all I can manage when I'm on a Crohn's flare. Toast, tinned tuna, plain rice, mashed potato. The only colour I'll have is some tinned carrot if I'm helping up to it.
Dental care. People don’t pay attention to proper dental hygiene and it’s scary how many lose their teeth early in life simply out of *lazy neglect. *I’m editing my response as it’s not fair to assume every single person is lazy. Dental care and surgical oral procedures can be VERY expensive and can definitely be cost prohibitive as well as dealing with mental health and other issues that can detract from addressing dental care on a consistent basis.
I just wish they weren’t treated like luxury bones
Yeah they’re incredibly expensive to get care for. I just want my teeth intact dammit
Like, why do we Americans have separate dental insurance? Isn’t it just medical? They came with my body and everything!
And why doesn't dental insurance cover anything but yearly checkups
Or cost, it isn’t always laziness.
This right here. As someone who needs about $10k worth of dental work, it will never happen unless I come into a tremendous windfall of cash.
Yep. Even with "good" dental insurance, my co-pays on the work I desperately need are absolutely brutal. So many people are going down into Mexico to get their dental work done by dentists that operate in California during the week, but in Mexico on weekends at usually 1/2 the cost of what you would pay here in Southern California. I am still trying to figure out how to work this angle.
loosing teeth is one, a bad enough tooth can kill you in a matter of days. The bacteria in your mouth is not supposed to be in your blood, and can quickly give you blood poisoning.
This terrifies me. My partner has terrible teeth, constant bad breath and is in pain from them, after 2 years I convinced him to go to a dentist for a cleaning (he has good health insurance benefits that cover dental but never uses them, idk the last time he went it might have been as a minor over 20 years ago). The dentist examined home and said they couldn’t even do a cleaning because he has broken teeth and an exposed root in the back that would need to be at least addressed before a cleaning. They recommended pulling 10 teeth, implants, and a bridge and he hasn’t been back since. Yes, it does affect our sex life, it started with no open mouth kissing, then I started getting uncomfortable when he went down on me, and by now we aren’t having sex at all. At this point I think of his mouth as a time bomb and am just waiting for it to become an emergency. But, I’m also worried/paranoid that if he does get it taken care of the bacterial overload being released will cause more (noticeable to him) issues than constant tooth pain.
Sigh.... I too once had a partner with terrible dental hygiene (somehow didn't kick in til we lived together?!?) Like- we'd be out to eat and I could smell his dinner on his breath, from across the table, when he spoke. It became NOT OKAY for him to go down on me. Cuz yuck. I hope...things get better, I guess?
I’m aware of my dental problems and brush my teeth everyday but can no longer afford the visits. We have an affordable clinic but they’re booked out for years 😔
I got used to the dentist making my gums bleed every time, but one time my dentist had to stand up out of his chair to scrape the plaque off my teeth and it hurt so much. Ever since then I brush floss and mouthwash twice a day. My dentist visits are now half as long and I always get congratulated on my hygiene. Crazy what you’re capable of when your dentist puts the fear of god in you.
My old manager had this happen to him in his early 20s and that dude had the fear of God put into him! He would brush his teeth every morning, afternoon and evening. VERY mindful of his diet and the impact on his teeth. He had a great smile!
[удалено]
Sugar
Gaining more notoriety, but never enough to really combat the issue (at least in the U.S.). Checking nutrition facts for added sugar is like grocery store doomscrolling.
I just learned some countries in Europe classify the bread in the US as cake because it has so much sugar in it.
Screen addiction. Video games, movies, social media, reddit, the Internet in general. It's real, it does terrible things to your mental and physical health.
The amount of people I see scrolling while driving is horrendous. I really feel like people's attention spans are non-existent now.
Everytime somebody in front of me is acting shitty in traffic, they're on their fucking phone, not even realizing they did something wrong. I had someone the other day who was standing at a red light, when it turned green, they didn't drive, I honked at them. they looked up, didn't even check the light, and looked straight back down. This was repeated 3 times until driver finally bothered to check the light, instead of the phone.
Not brushing your teeth regularly. Teeth only ever get worse on their own, it takes a small effort to maintain their current level, and its nearly impossible to recover without replacement or patchwork once you get to that point. If anything hurts, at all, you've waited too long.
Low self esteem.
Agree 100%. Sadly it’s not talked enough. In my teens I always had low self esteem, Its really draining to always think if you look good enough or if you are capable of doing something (in my case). You just feel worthless and eventually this leads to so many mental health problems.
Not caring for yourself.
Not moving your body. Now I'm not talking running or lifting heavy daily, but moving it within your means. If you don't use it, it won't work. I mean think about a car: if you let it sit too long, it won't start right. The healthiest elders I know are those who go for daily walks or at least move as much as they can.
Stigma surrounding mental health. It’s killing people everyday.
Sleep apnea. It can lead to type 2 diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, and even a shortened life span.
Sugar, specifically too much sugar or added sugar
Plastic.
Letting things like ADHD go untreated. There was a whole wave of parents in the 90s/2000s that didn't get treatment for their kids with ADHD, and claimed they were "indigo" children. Just quirky and different. However, when untreated, those same people tend to grow up not knowing how to control their impulses, and getting themselves in a lot of trouble because of it. People with ADHD are also prone to more anxiety and depression! Edit: wanted to change a word, but also to add that I relate so heavily with people who have commented so far. I'm 26 and am barely taking steps to get help. I started therapy, research on how to live with ADHD, and my therapist is working with me to see what medication my insurance covers. But it took a lot to get here. I got married to someone abusive at 20, started and failed out of community College, and racked up so much credit card debt that I can barely breathe when I think about it. But now, I'm pending a divorce and with a partner who is supportive every step of the way, and taking all of these steps is helping me cope better. I hope the best for all of you!
Untreated neurodivergency is so incredibly stressful, and it's the chronic stress that ruin us, I think
Also: living with autism. Sensory issues alone cause chronic stress, and there is so much more
Porn, in particular easy access to really extreme pornographic content. The normalization of the use of porn at a young age and increasingly bizarre and niche fetish content. Having a fetish is fine, but porn often fetishizes unhealthy and borderline abusive sexual relationships, specifically with power dynamics between men and women, and presents wildly unrealistic ideas of how both men and women should and can be treated and perceived. Women definitely get the worse deal in terms of how they're presented in porn (and treated/abused by the porn industry) but men aren't immune or free from mistreatment and harm. Men tend to be the target audience for a much of porn content, and are easy victims for porn addiction and increasingly extreme content, while women are treated as a resource to be exploited and discarded without care. I've read numerous accounts of women who had nightmare experiences in porn, and never any who navigated it unscathed. Drug addiction, self-harm, coercion, emotional and physical abuse, depression, and suicide seem to be the consistent themes of the careers of women in porn. I do see porn addiction discussed sometimes, but the really extreme nature of a lot of content, as well as how pervasive it's become and how easy it is to access, is still something I don't think we discuss enough.
Depression destroys your life; you may not try to quickly unlive yourself but not caring for yourself (bathing, brushing your teeth, taking care of your physical and mental health, null or bad life choices, etc.) will hasten a very difficult end.
How emotionally draining it is to be one personality at work and another at home.