There is a new subreddit called r/PeriodPantry that allows people who need period products to post wishlists. Many people are forced by poverty to chose between menstrual hygiene products and other necessities, and may end up skipping meals or suffering health problems or social isolation as a result of lacking hygiene products. Please feel welcome to post a period product wishlist, fulfill a wishlist, and/or reblog this post to help it reach others.

Hey, this is a really cool mutual aid group, if you need period products or can help someone get period products this is a great little group to check out.

Periodic (hah!) reminder that this cool group exists and can be a source of menstrual products and is a place where you can help people who need menstrual products.

women should lift weights because it prevents osteoporosis in old age and makes you a more capable person in everyday life please shut up about butts and waists and hourglasses i'm going to fucking kill

;___;♡♡♡♡

genuine question from someone who would rather chew their arm off than go to a public gym, and also doesnt have a lot of money: how do you safely get into strength training? are there youtube channels, apps (android), etc anyone recommends that makes it approachable and don't lean into diet culture / body shaming?

also the biggest thing that keeps me from working out is that I already have joint and spinal issues and moving the wrong way can fuck up a knee or a shoulder or my spine for days. I really don't want to injure myself, and have unwittingly done so before. resources that are extremely clear on exactly how to move and offer gentler / alternative ways to move for people with limited range are vital.

Okay, so this may not technically be strength training, but muscles are dumber than bricks and cannot tell the difference between your own bodyweight and actual weights.

So, may I recommend:

He runs a YouTube channel where he goes over how to work your way up to more complex exercises (for instance, his pull-ups videos start with using a door jamb and moving your weight back and forth) so it's good for easing yourself into things.

You also don't have to fork out for expensive weights and such if you don't want to/can't. Substitute with stuff you either already have at home or can get from the supermarket and build up the weight you can exercise with. 500 gram cans of butter beans then 750 gram bottles of pasta sauce. 1 litre drink bottle then your 1.5 litre milk bottle. 3 litre bulk-buy bottle of laundry detergent. Etc. One of my dogs weighs 13 kilos and I pick her up on the regular (to her delight). One weighs 16 kg and I pick him up too (to his consternation and mild disapproval). You don't have to fit out some fancy home gym before you can start strength training.

I second Hybrid Calisthenics, that's the program I use. It's run by one guy who's taken it upon himself to make exercising more accessible and it's completely free! Each exercise has different variations based on your ability and each variation is further divided into different levels of difficulty so you can work up to where you want to be. If you can't do a single push up for example then this program will help you work up to the point where you can, and if you're a master of push ups then there are more advanced body weight exercises you can tackle so you can keep moving forward in your training without stagnating. The routine offers a full body workout with absolutely no equipment required for the beginning levels. The only reason you would need to buy anything is if you want to work up to a full pull up, at which point you would need actual pull up rings

Here's his actual website which I feel is easier to navigate than the YouTube channel on its own and organizes things in a way that's easy to understand. He explains everything you need to know about the routine and each individual exercise has both a text description and a video tutorial

Also want to recommend Diamond Dallas Page's program specially designed for people with limited mobility. You do have to pay, something like $45 for the whole thing, but it is for people who are literally bedbound so they can eventually sit up on their own and stand up.

Read more...

i learned that sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. This myth is based on a single 1978 study; no subsequent study has shown a relationship (x)

In fact, a meta-analysis of 16 different studies on sugar and hyperactivity all came back with the same result: ’sugar does not affect the behaviour or cognitive performance of children’. If sugar does change something, it’s parental expectations of their children

The Sweet Truth. The sugar-hyperactivity myth is based on a single study from the mid 1970’s in which a doctor removed the sugar from one child’s diet and that child’s behavior improved. Since then, over a dozen larger studies have been conducted without proving sugar causes hyperactivity.

Love all the people in the notes who are like “well CLEARLY you haven’t had this anecdotal experience that totally invalidates the results of double-blind scientific studies”

What a coincidence! The podcast Maintenance Phase just put out an episode about this myth! (And two other sugar related myths: that you can predict what foods cause blood sugar spikes, and that sugar is as addictive as cocaine)

I feel like someone drinking non alcoholic beer in a group. Non knowing that it’s non alcoholic. Followed by the person acting drunk.

You think Sugar makes you hyper. So you feel justified to do hyper things.

Source

This will be huge if it gets enacted

A national health service and a full care system, a right to housing...

No wonder the Economist is terrified.

Cartoon Girls + Medicine

When your pet is lying on their belly with their back legs splayed out behind them, there’s a word for that.

It’s called a ‘sploot,’ and it’s something cats and dogs do to stretch their hips or to cool down when it’s hot outside. 

(Source, Source 2, Source 3)

During WWII, Dr. Eugene Lazowski tricked the Germans by creating a fake epidemic in Poland. He knew of a bacterial strain that caused people to test positive for typhus with no ill effects- so he began injecting the strain into non-Jews.

The Nazis assumed there was an outbreak, stayed away, and quarantined an area of about 8,000 people- which saved the lives of countless Jews and Poles who would have been killed or sent to camps.

Source Source 2 Source 3

Like POSITIVITY? Download our happiness app WHOLE at getwhole.co Read more: https://www.thehappybroadcast.com/news/in-milan-you-can-attend-cat-yoga-classes

Good news for tidalpunks

Good news for tidalpunks

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Good news for everyone, phytoplankton is a huge source of oxygen!!

Hello! I would like to warn everyone of an experience my roommate and I have just had, in case I can prevent it happening to anyone else. Or, you know, if anyone knows a lawyer who could advise us.

My roommate has a queen size Nectar mattress. Friday night, she spilled some water on the bed and took the cover off to air dry. She unzipped the cover, and a flame retardant sleeve (that we hadn’t known was there to begin with) made of woven fiberglass began shedding small fiberglass particles. They were airborne. The whole room and everything in it is contaminated, and there are few surfaces elsewhere in the apartment that don’t have at least a little. Nowhere on the mattress’ tags or on the Nectar website does it say there is a fiberglass sleeve. In fact, it makes a big deal of how there are five components: top of cover, three layers of foam, bottom of cover. Nothing about the flame retardant sleeve there. The label on the cover doesn’t say you can’t take it off, just that they suggest you don’t. It does not mention fiberglass as a material found in the mattress at all. The website even has a page explaining that you CAN take off the cover and wash it, if you must, just that they suggest you don’t. No real reasons given. No mention of fiberglass.

Our apartment is sparkly with fiberglass. We have had to drop money on a HEPA filter vacuum that could safely remove some of it, and on new non-permeable mattress covers to contain the worst of the source. We have had to garbage-bag up almost everything in her room. No amount of runs through the laundry seems to get it all out of clothes, and we have to thoroughly wipe out the washer and dryer drums every load. All her pillows were ruined, the chair in her room, her clothing, some expensive bras, a nice area rug, and I’m sure there will be trouble on the horizon with our landlord regarding the carpet, even if we do vacuum it as well as we can.

Lilly has been having nosebleeds, before the mattress was unzipped, but the worst one I’ve seen yet was the one that evening. She’s been sleeping on it almost a year, and it could have begun coming through the fabric cover. Nosebleeds are a sign of fiberglass inhalation.

We have contacted the company, and their response was honestly insulting. We were told that we shouldn’t have taken the mattress cover off to begin with, and that it can no longer be covered by the 365 night guarantee, despite us having had it for under the full year. I have just now, after three days trying, finally spoken to someone willing to look into our case, so here’s hoping we’ll get even a fraction of what we are, frankly, owed.

It really feels like there could be some sort of lawsuit here.

In fact, there is one, with a situation nearly identical to ours but with a different company. This was the first hit when I searched our problem online.

https://topclassactions.com/…/zinus-class-action-says…/

Anyway, if you have a Nectar mattress, don’t ever open the easily accessible warning-label-free zipper! If you have had it under a year, and it’s in its original condition, it can still be returned. If you were planning to get one, maybe don’t! A lot of the foam-mattress-in-a box types have the fiberglass, though most of them disclose the presence of the fiberglass rather than hiding it like a dirty secret. Make sure you do a search for mattresses WITHOUT fiberglass as a flame retardant.

I had to go back and find this post because we just discovered our (Zinus) mattress is leaking fiberglass, and we NEVER removed or even touched the zipper on the cover.

My partner had changed the sheets, and then later while outside we saw that he was covered in shiny fiberglass (like the video above). I remembered this post and immediately knew we had to check the mattress. Sure enough there were glittery fibers EVERYWHERE in the bedroom, all over the floor, sheets & laundry, etc.

We are still trying to figure out just how bad the damage is & how much we need to throw away vs. what can maybe be salvaged.

Again, we NEVER removed the cover. And there is no evidence of the cover having been damaged anywhere.

It just was 3-4 years of regular use and then suddenly, one day while changing the sheets, there was glass everywhere. It’s probably been leaking into our laundry, and likely our bodies, for who knows how long.

Lots of people saying these mattresses are safe as long as you don’t remove the cover - it’s NOT true. Maybe it’s fine for a year or two, but at some point the fibers break down and start to come out THROUGH the cover.

These mattresses are outrageously dangerous & they should not be allowed to keep selling them. Yet they are one of the top selling brands on Amazon…

@thebibliosphere

Jesus Fuck that’s terrifying.

I found this huge blog post by a guy who mostly does tech stuff. in it, he talks about his attempts to get several mattress companies to tell the truth about their products, and has compiled his results into a nice table. on the subject of nectar, he recommends avoiding the company entirely. they’re shady as shit

this mile long page is set up as a ranking of The Best Mattresses To Buy In 2021 uwu but it does go in depth about the fiberglass content of each product, and near the bottom it mentioned this interaction with a customer service rep from nectar:

this nectar representative admits to there being fiberglass in the mattress, but don’t worry, it’s the good kind! this author points to nectar specifically for being duplicitous

there was one other interesting thing I found during my search. I’m not going to link it here, and I have no screenshots because I was using an incognito tab (I don’t particularly feel like being peddled nectar mattresses for the next year).

the very first links that come up on google with the prompt “nectar mattress fiberglass” lead to a site called victorianhomesmag. on my first quick scroll through the page, it looked like there was only one mention of fiberglass, which was in the title of the page. “Does Nectar Mattress Have Fiberglass”. that’s a pretty straightforward title, no? but the rest of the page doesn’t answer the question; it just reads like a page that would be titled “Why You Should Buy Our This Mattress”. I did notice that some of the headers for the different sections had odd spaces in them, though. weird, right?

then I used the find in page function to search for the word “fiberglass” and suddenly, when there was only one before, there were five instances of the word! each of them was in those weird empty spaces. I can only assume this is to manipulate search algorithms. again, shady as shit.

one last thing about this page- when I hit the back button, instead of going back to the google results, I got redirected to nectarsleep dot com. there’s a sale going on right now! don’t miss out :3

@thesylversmyth @thebibliosphere

Well that’s just even more skeevy.

Make sure your mattress doesn’t have fiberglass people, your health depends on it

Shit, my lull mattress contains fiberglass?

Fucking yikes. I was just looking at mattresses today. Had no idea at all this was an issue with nectar, or any bed. Came at the actual perfect timing

more about the zinus class action suit:

Buy fiberglass free!

i learned that in August 2014 Women’s Voices for the Earth commissioned testing of four types of Always menstrual pads, manufactured by Procter & Gamble. The certified laboratory STAT Analysis Corporation analyzed the products for volatile organic compound.

“The results of the testing indicate that both scented and unscented Always pads emit toxic chemicals, including chemicals identified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the State of California Environmental Protection Agency as carcinogens, and reproductive and developmental toxins. None of these chemicals are disclosed on the product by the manufacturer.” (x)

I switched to dye free fancy cotton pads, after years of having periods so fucking bad I would sometimes faint, and now i just get like. regular cramps occasionally, they’re not even that bad anymore.

i switched back to these after using fancy organic cotton pads during my most recent period & they caused PROBLEMS out of the blue - 100% confirmed, these are not good to use

been using these reusable menstrual pads since november 2019 and im never going back to these commercial pads. commercial pads like these always gives me skin rashes which is so annoying. switch to reusable i swear you’ll not only be period-ready but also rashes-free!

psa they also have a starter pack in case you want to switch and you dont know what to get and an xl size for plus sized women!

EXPLAINS ALOT. WOULDVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW AWHILE AGO. COOOOOOL.

Plus, there’s a study that showed that vagina are highly vascular so, basically, every chemical you put down there is absorbed by your body real fast and really well. In short, ditch tampon too.

TAMPONS are dangerous frequently the direct cause of TSS  TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME

Yeah, reusable pads were one of my first major eco-friendly changes but my body has been way happier that way. They are infinitely more comfortable and effective, and I just throw them in my washing machine on the hand wash + extra rinse and hang dry. I can’t say being on your period is ever pleasant, but it’s way better than before - ESPECIALLY in situations where you can’t change as often - and I don’t feel like the harbinger of the end of the world when I look at my restroom trash can anymore :)

I always buy generic brands but wasnt “always” the ones who were sending fucked up pads to women in africa just a few years ago too???? Fuck always brand.

PSA!!!

they now have a budget-friendly trial pack so you no longer have to worry which pad fits best for you. you can just buy the pack to get one pad of each size!!

Could the fact that i use Always brand be the reason i get such bad cramps?? I must test this theory…

Also, pads can take up to 800 years to decompose. Yikes.

Cariona pads (link above) are AWESOME. Don’t knock it til you try it - I’ll never go back to always pads. My period is, like, manageable, for the first time in my life. It is no longer a struggle with excruciating cramps, heavy bleeding, leakage, and looooong periods, but like, mild to medium cramps, and I HAVE A CYCLE AGAIN for the first time in years. Try it. The upfront cost is daunting, I understand, because I was worried I wouldn’t like them, but I’m SO GLAD I got them. Just toss them in bottom of your shower when you take them off, shower as usual, and then squeeze them out. That basically rinses them for you, and then they’re all set for the washer and dryer. You’ll thank yourself later; give it a try.

Why isn’t anyone talking about how cute the Cariona pads are? They look adorable tbh

Cariona pads are amazing and they are SO cute. Like @maybeitsfinallytime was saying, they’re really easy to rinse out, and I usually hang them over my shower rod to dry so I can reuse them during the cycle, then give them a proper wash in hot water with a little sanitizing detergent afterwards.

Here’s to trying some. I even bought the animal crossing variety! Maybe I’ll never worry about running out of pads again? Who knows? I’ll update when I’ve tried them.

For people who menstruate 🩸….

UPDATE: I just ordered the trial pack. I personally have a lot of problems with excruciating cramps my cycle being consistent, especially in recent months after losing weight and medications and such. Hopefully these work well/help because I always feel guilty about the amount of waste normal pads create

Due to when the reusable pads I ordered arrived I ended up switching literally in the middle of my last period and the difference was instant, I’ve gotten really bad cramps for as long as I can remember and still did the first half this time around but I didn’t cramp at all wearing the reusable pads. I highly recommend the switch.

I bought the cariona pads too and oh my gosh. The difference. I went from painful cramps and headaches to just mild cramps for like a day. They are so easy to use and so comfortable.

Been saying this for years and people thought I was crazy, it definitely affects us women and we should have a say in how these things are manufactured.

hi these are the reusable pads i use and while they do slide around a little bit, i haven’t once gotten throbbing sensitive skin around my vulva or shooting pains down my legs since using them. i used to think that was a part of having my period but now i’m convinced it was from the pads and tampons i was using. not to mention i save tons of money on disposables.

Despite being dead for over a year, famous author Agatha Christie saved a baby’s life in 1977. Her novel The Pale Horse described thallium poisoning so well that a nurse who’d been reading it was able to diagnose a sick infant, who had doctors stumped. The baby was immediately tested, they found traces of thallium, doctors changed treatments, and her life had suddenly been saved by a 16-year-old murder mystery novel. Source Source 2 Source 3

Dame Agatha must have had the most wild search history.😉

she started writing mysteries because it was something fun to do with everything she learned as a World War I pharmacy tech

—

Erica Wohldmann

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

AN URBAN DWELLER’S GUIDE TO REWILDING (2016)

A Ted Talk by an environmentalist and cognitive psychologist, in which she describes her experiences travelling in the woods for six months and relying on foraged food. She discusses the lessons she has applied from this to her urban life, and touches on some of the ways both we, and the natural environment, would benefit from a closer, more positively reciprocal relationship. 

(via architectureandfilmblog)

During my last pregnancy which was twins I became diabetic. I was switched to a specialist nurse. She was so lovely. The first week after finding out we tried diet control. It didn't work everything from fruit to dairy to carbs were setting it off. She informed me that it was her job to find a way for me to cope. It quickly became apparent that my diabetis would be best controlled through exercise so I was sent to a phyiso who gave me some support bands to keep me on my feet. In the end I need insulin, an over night stay in hospital (as the steroids you are given towards the end of a multiple pregnancy to strengthen your babies lungs if you go into early labour can up your blood sugar levels) and a C-section as the babies had grown large. Total cost : £0.00. We do have a prescription charge in the UK. But under 16's do not pay. Those on many types of income support do not pay. Pregnant women do not pay. I am no longer diabetic, but until my girls are 5 I'm not in the clear. I never really will be. But because the UK has the NHS I have had the full support and knowledge I need to stay healthy. Rainbows stand for pride. Pride in who we are as people. Who we love. And here in the UK pride in our NHS.

America you need to wake up.

i learned that male platypus venom contains a hormone that promotes insulin release, called GLP-1; it’s found in humans but degrades quickly. Platypuses make a long-lasting form of it, paving the way to new diabetes treatment; the platypus GLP-1 can be made in the lab so no platypuses will be needed for it (x)