so since I am here now, allow me to do some SLEEP PROPAGANDA

SLEEP IS GOOD

SLEEP IS IMPORTANT

SLEEP IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY EDUCATION OR JOB

and the fact that we are forced to compromise on sleep in order to fulfill duties to capitalism is an immense injustice and health risk.

lack of sleep obviously increases stress levels and therefore the risk for all kinds of diseases, but it also damages your brain on a cellular level because SLEEP MAINTAINS THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR BRAIN.

you should also be aware of the fact that everyone has their own "internal clock", and their own circadian rhythm - meaning everyone's body has specific times at which it would like to be asleep.

adjusting this schedule by external means, commonly known as "sleep hygiene" (light levels, activity levels, social interaction, cognitive stimulation, eating / drinking, ...) is normal, and in fact necessary to maintain a schedule. most people do it without thinking about it, others need to work on it

but this "entrainment" of your internal clock has limits.

not everyone has the physical ability to train their body to sleep at the desired time.

and some people can do it, but have very poor sleep quality during that time.

so basically... if you feel best when you sleep at an unconventional time, that's not you being "lazy" or "weird", that's just a perfectly natural and INCREDIBLY COMMON human variation. it's easy to imagine the evolutionary benefits of this variability as well.

a lot of studies have been done and found that people who go to bed late have poorer sleep, poorer performance in life, more stress etc, but not a single one that I've seen has mentioned, let alone examined, the effect of social sleep norms and expectations, so I find them all questionable.

especially because many of them not only do not correct for, but in their methodology and their analysis actually reproduce and reinforce stigmatisation of "undesirable" sleep times.

this is, once again, a case of the medical establishment reinforcing social stigma against normal physiological variations.

how many doctors tell you to just go to sleep earlier and tell you that sleeping late is unhealthy? this is just the same bullshit as always.

I'm here to tell you that your body knows what it needs, and if you listen to your body's signals and give it the amount of sleep it needs at the time when it needs it, you're doing everything right.

barring very few specific medical conditions, "too much sleep" is not really a thing either.

you know how they tell you "too much sleep is as bad as too little sleep?"

bull.shit.

too little sleep = your brain does not get the time it needs to repair its neurons, degrading your cognitive function, memory, impulse control, emotional regulation

too much sleep = ??? you might get back pain???

in fact, "too much sleep" is in many cases simply catching up on sleep debt. pulled an all-nighter for uni? went out after work and then got to work again the next day on 4 hours of sleep? kept waking up with indigestion? YOUR BODY IS GONNA NEED THAT SLEEP BACK.

it is absolutely normal to sleep much longer than usual for several WEEKS after you've had to restrict sleep time for a while.

so in short

- sleep when you want, as much as you want

- different sleep times are a normal human variation

- too much sleep isn't bad for you

- naps are good

- sleep is THE most important factor for keeping your brain functional

- doctors are full of shit and reproduce social stigmatisation of normal differences

- sleep time variations are artificially pathologised

- they turn into real disabilities because they deviate from the supported norm, see: social model of disability

if you have kids: allow them to skip school to catch up on sleep

if you're an adult: allow yourself to take sick days to catch up on sleep (I know it's not always possible but it SHOULD BE because it is NECESSARY)

if you can't get the sleep you need at night: allow yourself to take copious naps

if you find yourself pushed to the fringes of society by unusual sleep needs or patterns: it's not your fault. I shall talk about temporal accessibility another time

our society is set up in a way that favours people whose natural circadian rhythm includes an early sleep time.

they are the people who end up in positions of power and influence. everyone else is too sleep deprived to keep up and/or has to carve out spaces in odd jobs that work for them.

so the doctors who end up defining what's "healthy" end up being people who sleep early.

the bosses that define work times too.

the politicians making laws for time management too.

self-reinforcing system

@skye Here's two concrete medical examples of 'sleep discrimination' that I've run into myself:

1. Instructions for medication that erroneously tell you to take it at a specific *time*, when it is actually meant to be taken relative to your wake/sleep cycle (extremely widespread problem)

2. Take-home blood pressure meters that are locked to a specific clock time (eg. 6-9) because they assume you are a morning person and therefore that must be when you wake up / go to sleep