You know, in all my years of being a patient full time, the only doctor who ever asked about my sleep was a psychologist during treatment for depression. I would ask my physicians, but the best they could suggest was a melatonin gummy and less screen time. They would never bring it up. Ever. Meanwhile, they were telling me to put less salad dressing on my salad as I was seeking treatment for gastroparesis.
Our medical system has a really skewed priority when it comes to fat, and another really skewed priority when it comes to rest. Generations of moral panic about the obesity epidemic, and a shrug over the impact of stress.
The research is stunning. Study after study after study exists warning of the dangers from poor sleep, and yet both academia and medicine are legendarily hard on their staff and trainees, hazing them with abusive policies and inhumane work expectations. If they won’t even change their own processes to allow their own staff rest, they are certainly not going to campaign for the changes the rest of us would need.
I could sit here quoting studies at you all day.
“Sleep impacts memory, learning, mood, behavior, immunological responses, metabolism, hormone levels, digestive process and many more physiological functions.” [Acosta MT. 2019]
A lack of sleep impacts the ability to make decisions, particularly complex or emotional ones. This impact can’t be compensated for with caffeine.
“Sleep and immunity are bidirectionally linked. Immune system activation alters sleep, and sleep in turn affects the innate and adaptive arm of our body’s defense system.”
Lack of sleep impairs immune function through dysregulation of inflammatory and antiviral responses.
Lack of sleep increases hostility in relationships as it increases negative perceptions, and it also increases injuries in everyone from truck drivers to student athletes.
Lack of rest and recovery is often a bigger barrier to healing than the initial stress or injury.
Sleep deprivation is torture. Cults use sleep deprivation to overwhelm cognitive ability and disrupt a sense of self. And yet out in the rest of the world it is seen as a sign of status. Sleepiness is seen as dedication, hard work, and being important and in demand.
The same people who concern troll fat people eating fast food will brag about how healthy they are for only getting 5 hours of sleep a night. It’s madness. No one has ever told me my puffy eyes meant I was going to die sooner, but people sure do love to say that about anything they deem “glorifying obesity.”
All of the health concerns that are correlated with fat, are also correlated with deficient sleep. Deficient sleep is even acknowledged as a cause of increased fat. But there is not a trillion dollar sleep-gain industry like there is a weight loss one.
Why are we living so upside down? Because nobody makes money while we’re resting.
Rest is a human right. It is more important to our health than nearly any other intervention, but it is deprioritized unless there’s money to be made off of desperation. If we actually care about wellness instead of status, rest should be one of our highest priorities.
When I got really sick again in 2016, my timing was good in only one way: I was in bed and on twitter with Tricia Hersey started The Nap Ministry. During my long and slow recovery, I’d call the Nap Ministry hotline to get a pep talk from the minister. I’d scroll and scroll on social media, soaking up every character of wisdom and encouragement as I stared at the ceiling, trapped in bed. Her revolutionary – truly – words made my own limitations so much easier to bear. She and her organization gave me the framework I needed to feel like there was a point to me, even when all I could do was keep the sheets warm.
The main tenets of The Nap Ministry are:
“1. Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.
2. Our bodies are a site of liberation.
3. Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent, and heal.
4. Our DreamSpace has been stolen and we want it back. We will reclaim it via rest.”
Thinking of my body as a site of liberation – instead of a burden useless to society – opened up a whole world of possibility to me. By showing my body enough respect to meet its need for rest I was liberating myself from every message that taught me my worth came from work and learning to value myself for my humanity.
At Body Loyalty, our definition of rest is “Any practice that allows the body to recover and heal from activity.” Sleep is only one form of rest and there are many other ways we need to recover, particularly in a world of constant social and mental stimulation. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith lists seven different types of rest we need in her book, Sacred Rest: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, sensory, and creative.
This could be accomplished in a lot of different ways, depending on your resources and your circumstances. Sleep, Saying no, Hobbies, Quiet time, Avoiding busyness, Naps, Boundaries, Liedowns, Time in nature, Social media breaks, Resting your eyes, Phone detox, anything that lets you be still and recover from whatever stimulation you need to recover from.
Next time you get motivated to fix habits, don’t start with food. Try a new approach. Start with sleep.
Addressing your need for rest would also include addressing your trauma. Trauma keeps us hypervigilant, so our whole musculoskeletal system tightens up with stiffness and contractions. Intrusive thoughts or flashbacks can prevent falling asleep and nightmares can prevent staying asleep. Waking up can be challenging as stress chemicals flood out of habit from all the times you woke up to chaos. There are many many reasons why sleep would be hard other than just being lazy or undisciplined, and working with doctors and therapists can sort that out.
Trapped in my recovery bed I learned that the only way I was going to heal was if I made resting my job. I treated myself like a newborn, where nothing NOTHING was as important as sleep, and I was just as unapologetic about prioritizing my rest as I would have been for a baby.
It can be challenging, because it does require letting go of actual rewards. We are socially rewarded for perpetuating this system, and when we stop, those rewards do go away. Rested people get passed over for promotions. The social capital of being seen as busy and important disappears. Grind culture will tell you you’re lazy, uncreative, and negative. The ‘elite’ social circles won’t let you in. It’s important to acknowledge the barriers so that you can build appropriate supports. But once you build those supports, you won’t notice any judgement, because you’ll be blissfully asleep.