It may occasionally seem that Jennifer Lopez is a superhero—in fact, that she is not superhuman is a reality she herself sometimes forgets. In her email newsletter “On the JLo,” the superstar artist opens up about why that’s such a dangerous error to make.
“There was a time in my life where I used to sleep 3 to 5 hours a night,” she writes. “I’d be on set all day and in the studio all night and doing junkets and filming videos on the weekends. I was in my late 20s and I thought I was invincible.” (Didn’t we all.)
She continues, “Until one day, I was sitting in a trailer, and all the work and the stress it brought with it, coupled with not enough sleep to recuperate mentally, caught up with me.” Lopez writes that she went from feeling perfectly normal in one moment to completely frozen in the next. “I found myself feeling physically paralyzed, I couldn’t see clearly and then the physical symptoms I was having started to scare me and the fear compounded itself. Now I know it was a classic panic attack brought on by exhaustion, but I had never even heard the term at the time.”
Luckily, Lopez says she was taken to the doctor by her security guard. She recalls feeling terrified that she was losing her mind. “[The doctor] said, ‘No, you’re not crazy. You need sleep … get 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, don’t drink caffeine, and make sure you get your workouts in if you’re going to do this much work.’ I realized how serious the consequences could be of ignoring what my body and mind needed to be healthy.”
Jennifer Lopez has heeded the doctor’s advice well: In 2020 she told ET that she combatted pandemic-related depression by staying active. “It’s more important on the days that you feel bad that you get up and do something,” she said. “Do a little workout at home, do something that’s going to make you feel good, cook something you like. Lift yourself up—keep going.”
