James' World 2

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Amid the pandemic, TikTok became a fountain of information for, well, just about anything you might be even a little bit curious about. This has brought about a need for social media users to vet their sources, so as to not fall victim to believing and perpetuating the often dangerous misinformation that can go viral. But, thanks to credentialed professionals who have taken to the app, it’s also provided a sense of community, awareness, and access to information about various health-related issues and conditions.

In 2020, Sasha Hamdani, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) specialist based in Kansas City, Missouri, joined TikTok after noticing a need for more evidence-based information about the neurodevelopmental chronic condition on the app. As both a provider and person who has ADHD, Dr. Hamdani is uniquely suited to help others manage their ADHD and understand the way their brain works; she’s also passionate about helping folks with ADHD best care for themselves and prevent burnout.

Posting under the handle @thepsychdoctormd on Instagram and TikTok, Dr. Hamdani’s feed often recounts what living with and treating ADHD is like for her—the ups, the downs, the funny, the wrenching, the frustrating, and all the in-betweens. But the idea that she’d one day share her personal experiences to help so many others manage their ADHD once felt unthinkable.

Dr. Hamdani was diagnosed with ADHD in fourth grade, but didn’t understand what exactly that meant for her until she was in college because her parents had managed her medications and routines—they also hadn’t actually told her what she had.

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Burnout

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Like many people I know, I always pee right before I leave the house. This has been a non-negotiable habit ever since the time I was stuck in traffic on the freeway with a painfully full bladder and no relief in sight. It’s become even more important during the pandemic—since many public restrooms are closed, it feels as essential to pee before going out for a social-distanced walk as it is to grab your mask and hand sanitizer.

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However, while the “just in case” pee seems like a smart strategy, it might actually be pretty bad for your bladder. At least, that’s according to a recent viral TikTok video from Bethany Henry Clark, PT, DPT. In the video, she says that making yourself pee when you don’t feel the immediate need to do so can, over time, actually make you have to pee more and more often. (Mind. Blown.)

I had never heard of this before, so I got in touch with board-certified urologist Lamia Gabal, MD, to get her thoughts on “just in case” peeing.

First off, a normal bladder capacity is about 10-15 ounces, Dr. Gabal says. (Many things can affect this, such as pressure on your bladder from pregnancy or constipation.) In general, it’s normal to pee six to eight times in a 24-hour period if you drink 64 ounces of fluid a day, but this depends on how much you drink. “I often tell my patients, ‘What goes in, must come out!'” she says.

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Need to go

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London, 13. Credit… Dee Dwyer for The New York Times

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When I was a kid in my Alabama hometown, every year brought the same parties in our Nigerian-American community: the Fourth of July cookout in the park; the Christmas throw-down in the hotel banquet hall, where my family and our friends wore our finest traditional clothing, a sea of blinding-bright textures and elaborate head ties, called geles, that stretched toward the ceiling. During those holiday parties, as Fela Kuti and King Sunny Adé played from the speakers, I inevitably ended up staring at my mother’s girlfriends, other married (but sometimes divorced or single) women, as they floated around the hall, eating, talking, laughing. Their hair and makeup were exquisitely done, with big curls and updos, red lipstick, and vivid eye shadow; their outfits, planned weeks in advance, melded glamour and comfort, so they could sweep you up into their folds of crinkly, glittering fabric as they danced; and their jewelry, usually gold or coral, was dramatic. Their shoes and purses matched, obviously. Their swagger seemed both over-the-top and effortless.

I was never exactly sure how to define my relationship to those women in my mom’s life. My mom’s sisters were naturally my aunts, beloved by my brothers and me. But her friends were also a constant part of the background—in our home, at gatherings at the houses of my parents’ friends, and at important moments like birthdays and graduations—and though they weren’t relatives, my mom instructed me to refer to all of them as “Auntie” anyway. The women were not my “age-mate,” as Nigerians like to say, not people I could treat like my school and neighborhood friends, and over time, they became like family. They flooded me with love and praise—and they disciplined me, shouting my name as a warning when I got out of line or ran around like a heathen. (In fact, sometimes I wanted to shout back that they were not my mom.)

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Model Adut Akech sits pretty in a many-patterned Duro Olowu dress (ikram.com) and up-to-there gele, or head tie. Octave Jewelry earrings. Victoria Beckham boots. In this story: Hair, Shiori Takahashi; makeup, Ammy Drammeh. Photographed by Nadine Ijewere, Vogue, December 2020

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Cece Xie doesn’t mince words. “I really do think that I hate quitting,” the 32-year-old says. Although she was raised with the notion that quitting was bad, somehow, the lawyer and writer became an advocate for quitting. She never quite pictured a career outside of law, but when Xie connected with a literary agent, she began to imagine an alternate future, one as an author, beyond the large law firm where she was a sixth-year associate. The problem was, she never had time to work on her book proposal. “The fact that my current career was getting in the way of me even working on this book proposal at all,” Xie says, “I kind of came to a fork in the road, and I was like, it’s stupid for me to not pursue this thing just because I have a career that I have spent time on.”

So, in early 2022, she quit. Stepping away from her day job afforded Xie the time to not only finish her proposal, but to sell it. Now, she has the time and mental space to work on the manuscript and start a new law firm with a former coworker. “It’s kind of fun,” she says, “to just see where life leads and follow the possibilities in a way that I don’t think I ever let myself, or that corporate structures really don’t allow you to do.”

The act of quitting has earned notoriety. In American culture especially, those who give up on a practice, a hobby, or a goal are considered unambitious, lazy, even a failure. In the book Quitting: A Life Strategy, author Julia Keller traces the origins of the negative view of quitting to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Success was equated with hard work and perseverance through adversity. “If you weren’t successful, it just meant you didn’t work hard enough,” Keller says. “That very much served the interests of the people in power, because if you want to say to people, ‘Well, the reason you’re still poor and downtrodden is because you didn’t work hard.’”

Success is hardly won on grit alone. Rather, Keller argues, quitting can help you achieve your goals just as effectively as perseverance. “You abandon old ways and embrace new ways,” she says, “you abandon old things and do new.”

Instead of being seen as a failure, quitting can be an opportunity to reclaim time and to rethink passions, relationships, and accomplishments. There is power in abandoning what no longer serves you — that is, if you’ve given it a fair shot.

“You can’t just be pursuing all the time,” Xie says, “without quitting.”

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Pete Gamlen for Vox

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Maybe you’re inside your house, or walking through the park down the street. The scene around you is vividly real, yet altered in ways that are making you feel uneasy. Family and friends appear, but conversations produce a sense of anxiety or even dread. Disturbing emotions begin to build into fear, and then terror. You’re being chased. You’re trapped. You’re falling. Your life is in grave danger—then you’re suddenly jolted awake.

Emerging from nightmares, sweaty and with a pounding heart, provides at least a momentary sense of relief. It wasn’t real.

But the lasting effects of regular nightmares are very real. Nightmare disorder, a condition in which disturbing dreams are frequent and significantly impact life by producing fatigue or lasting feelings of unease and anxiety, is a surprisingly common ailment. In the United States, around 4 percent of adults—more than 10 million people—are affected. For those with nightmare disorder, lying down for a good night’s sleep can be an ordeal. They know that after they close their eyes, their brains will likely be flooded with negative emotions, and they’ll revisit a dreamworld they’d much rather avoid.

Now, a study published this week in Current Biology suggests an intriguing method that might help sleepers take more control of their dreams. Sounds played during sleep may reduce the frequency of nightmares and promote positive emotions that can help lead to a better slumber.

Existing therapies coach sleepers to imagine and rehearse alternate happy endings to their nightmares before bed, a practice known to significantly reduce bad dreams. Now, Swiss scientists aim to supercharge this idea by associating those happy endings with an audio cue that will trigger them during sleep. When nightmare disorder sufferers listened to a piano chord while they practiced imagining a good dream, then heard that same chord while they were in REM sleep, bad dreams were frequently kept at bay.

“We observed a spectacular clinical improvement, with a fast decrease of nightmares, together with dreams becoming emotionally more positive,” says Sophie Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the University of Geneva and co-author of the study. The decrease in nightmare frequency also showed staying power, lasting for at least three months after the audio experiment ended.

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Roughly 4 percent of adults in the United States have chronic nightmares. janiecbros via Getty Images

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