Ever realized we do so many things in our daily lives without realizing their repercussions? Right from our ways of living, personal choices, work culture; everything has a direct impact on our well-being. Unfortunately, most of our lifestyle decisions are adversely affecting our physical, emotional and mental health. We have let our modern day lifestyle come in the way of a healthy life.
A lifestyle choice is a personal and conscious decision to perform a behavior that may increase or decrease the risk of injury or disease. If we exercise every morning then we have made a positive lifestyle choice to increase our physical wellness. If we choose not to drink alcohol then we choose to avoid serious potential consequences, such as a car crash while driving drunk or damage to our internal organs, such as our liver. These are all active lifestyle choices that benefit our health.
Bad Lifestyle Factors
Of course, many choices also harm us. Just take the alcohol consumption example. If we choose to drink, especially in excess or at the wrong time, then we increase our risk of death from something like a car crash. If we smoke, then we increase our chances of developing various diseases including cancer.
Let’s examine some lifestyle decisions that are ruining our body and health on a daily basis.
Skipping Meals
Most of us do not follow a proper diet regime. We only eat when we have time and not when we should be eating. Sometimes we even skip an entire meal altogether. Such practice can interfere with our body’s metabolism, leading to health concerns such as low appetite, blood pressure, acidity to name a few.
Erratic Sleep Patterns
Blame it on technology or late work hours, most of us find it difficult to sleep on time. We may hit the bed on time but don’t fall asleep easily because we are either on our phones or laptop. Getting a sound sleep is more essential than we may realise. Lack of proper sleep creates a mental imbalance and affects our productivity and the body’s ability to function actively the next morning.
Eating junk and outside food
‘You are what you eat!’ This phrase has been around for who knows how long and quite frankly, it’s not too far off the mark. If we eat well, we are much more likely to have a healthy body and mind. If we choose junk food over fresh vegetables, then this is less likely to be the case. Fast food often contains higher calories and highly saturated fats that the body does not need.
Lack of Physical activity
Chairs – we sit in them, work in them, shop in them and eat in them. The fact that most of us have sitting jobs; we do not get to move around much. Once we are home, we just lie around, watch T.V., or use our laptops. With a routine like this, we tend to become lethargic and gain body weight. Even a little bit of physical activity easily exhausts and tires us out. Sitting for long periods is bad because the human body was not designed to be idle. Lack of movement slows metabolism, reducing the amount of food that is converted to energy and thus promoting fat accumulation, obesity, and the litany of ills—heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and more—that come with being overweight.
Smoking and excess Alcohol consumption
Quit smoking and you’ll be healthier and your skin will look better. Stop excess drinking and you will feel better, stay healthier and stay in shape. Next time you light up, feel your pulse. It will start rising within a minute. That’s extra work for your heart. Instead of oxygen the blood cells carry carbon monoxide. Apart from increasing the risk of heart disease, smoking causes many serious medical disorders including lung cancer and emphysema. Moderate drinking is not a problem but if you drink more than the recommended daily limits, the risks of harming your health are increased. The harm caused by alcohol usually only emerge after a number of years and by then, serious health problems may have developed.
Stress can be deadly
You may feel there’s nothing you can do about stress. The bills won’t stop coming, there will never be more hours in the day, and your work and family responsibilities will always be demanding. But you have more control over stress than you might think. Stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer. It’s vital that we learn to relax and take it easy every once in a while. Identify the triggers that are causing you to stress out and figure out healthy ways to deal with them.
Over exposure to Gadgets
Your thumb and wrist are throbbing, your eyes are bloodshot and you’re pretty sure you have “text neck.” Sitting hunched over and tapping away at your smart phone comes with its share of consequences. The human eye is not adapted for staring at a single point in space for hours on end. If you log significant time in front of a computer monitor, you’ve probably experienced computer vision syndrome: eyestrain, tired eyes, irritation, redness, blurred vision, and double vision. Over exposure to gadgets can retards brain health, cause frequent headaches, disturb the sleep cycle and can lead to many more debilitating changes to the body.
Many of the risk factors described above won’t kill us suddenly or irreversibly hurt us right away. This means that we can still help our-self, our health, mind and body by altering some of our poor lifestyle decisions and incorporating some new healthy ones.
A few key ways to achieve better health and subsequently a better lifestyle are through physical activity, exercise and a healthy diet. Exercise aids cardiovascular and respiratory functions, slows the loss of muscular strength, increases bone mass, aids digestion and bowel functions, promotes sound sleep and prevents depression.
So instead of “treating” yourself to something like an ice cream or beer that will do more harm than good, treat yourself to good health.
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