8 Habits That Can Sabotage Your Health
Introduction: You may look healthy, but you could actually be the most fragile person in the world. Seemingly small habits, like skipping breakfast, wolfing down your food at the table, not drinking water and only having coffee... in the long run, these can cause your health to "stray." Don't take them lightly!
Habit 1: Not Drinking Enough Water
Reason: Leads to brain aging; triggers cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases; affects kidney metabolic function.
Office workers, when highly concentrated on their work, can easily forget to drink water, leading to insufficient water replenishment in the body. A decrease in body fluids causes blood to thicken and become more viscous, which can easily lead to thrombosis, triggering cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases, and also affects the kidneys' metabolic function.
Solution: Drink more water and go to the restroom more often; but note, for those with poor colonic metabolic function, it's best to drink water only when you feel thirsty, to avoid further disrupting your body's water metabolism.
Habit 2: Eating Fruit as a Meal
Reason: Causes the body to lack substances like protein, leading to nutritional imbalance and even disease.
Many office workers, due to long hours of sedentary work, suffer from indigestion, high blood lipids, and vascular hardening. They do need the nutrients in fruit to counteract these issues. However, fruit cannot replace a main meal. Although fruits contain various vitamins and sugars, they lack the protein and certain trace elements the human body needs.
Solution: Go online first to see what foods are suitable or not for your body type.
Habit 3: Smoking After a Meal
Reason: Makes it easier for harmful substances in cigarettes to enter the body.
Smoking a cigarette after a meal can be as harmful as smoking ten cigarettes at other times. This is because after eating, gastrointestinal motility strengthens and blood circulation speeds up. At this point, the body's ability to absorb smoke is at its "peak," making it easier for toxic substances to enter the body and thus causing greater damage to health.
Solution: Quit smoking completely.
Habit 4: Excessive Alcohol Consumption
Reason: Large or frequent drinking can cause the liver to become inflamed and enlarged, affecting the reproductive and urinary systems.
Solution: If you drink, you must first learn how to drink:
Best Types: Alcoholic beverages are divided into spirits, beer, and fruit wine. From a health perspective, red wine, a type of fruit wine, is the best choice. The French suffer less from heart disease, which is attributed to this. Researchers say that regular consumption of red wine can cut the risk of heart disease in half.
Best Time: It's safer to drink after 2 PM. In the morning, the concentration of alcohol dehydrogenase—the enzyme that breaks down alcohol in the stomach—is low. Consuming the same amount of alcohol is more easily absorbed in the morning, raising blood alcohol concentration and causing greater damage to the liver, brain, and other organs. Additionally, it's not advisable to drink on an empty stomach, before bed, when you have a cold, or when you're emotionally agitated, especially with spirits, to protect your cardiovascular system.
Best Amount: A person weighing 60 kg should limit daily alcohol intake to under 60 grams. Those weighing less than 60 kg should reduce this amount, ideally to around 45 grams. This translates to: 50 grams of 60-proof liquor, 1 kg of beer, or 250 ml of whiskey. Although red wine is beneficial for health, it should not be consumed excessively; 2 to 3 glasses a day is ideal.
Best Food Pairings: From the perspective of alcohol metabolism, high-protein and vitamin-rich foods are the best choices, such as fresh vegetables, fresh fish, lean meat, beans, and eggs. Note: Avoid pairing alcohol with cured fish, sausages, or cured meats, as these smoked and preserved foods contain large amounts of pigments and nitrosamines that react with alcohol, not only harming the liver but also damaging the oral and esophageal mucosa and even inducing cancer.
Habit 5: Drinking Too Much Coffee
Reason:
1. Reduces fertility. Drinking one cup of coffee per person per day can lower the chances of conception by 50%;
2. Increases the risk of heart disease. Coffee contains a high concentration of caffeine, which can alter heart function and increase cholesterol in the blood;
3. Reduces work efficiency.
American medical researchers have found that a person who drinks 5 or more cups of coffee a day is twice as likely to develop heart disease as a non-drinker. The longer and more one has been a coffee drinker, the higher the likelihood of heart disease. A survey of 858 people aged 45-69 who had their first heart attack showed that those who drank more than 5 cups of coffee a day had a 70% increased risk of the disease.
Solution: Drink less.
Habit 6: A Hearty Dinner
Reason: Can lead to insomnia in the evening.
For office workers, dinner has almost become the main meal of the day. Breakfast depends on the "clock," lunch on the "work," and only in the evening can one truly relax and sit down at the table for a satisfying feast.
Solution: First, eat dinner early. Eating dinner early can significantly reduce the incidence of urinary stones. Second, eat a light dinner. Dinner should be vegetarian-based, rich in carbohydrates, and should include plenty of fresh vegetables, while minimizing the intake of excessive protein and fatty foods. Third, eat less for dinner. Generally, the calories provided by dinner should not exceed 30% of the total daily caloric intake.
Habit 7: Skipping Breakfast
Reason: Severely harms the stomach, making it difficult to work with full energy, and also tends to "make you look older." Researchers at the University of Erlangen in Germany, after a long-term study of 7,000 men and women, found that 40% of them were in the habit of skipping breakfast, and their lifespan was 2.5 years shorter on average than the other 60%. Another university, in a study of people aged 80-90, found that one common trait among the long-lived was: eating a substantial breakfast every day.
Solution: Make your breakfast food as tasty and appetizing as possible; have sufficient quantity and good quality; be small in volume but high in calories; and be quick and easy to prepare.
We know that different foods stay in the stomach for varying lengths of time and cause different blood sugar reactions. Normally, a mix of solid and liquid foods can stay in the stomach for 4-5 hours. However, liquid foods, due to their large volume, make you feel full right after eating, but they don't stay in the stomach for long. Their nutrients are not fully digested before being expelled, and the resulting blood sugar level drops quickly and cannot be sustained. Therefore, when choosing foods, be sure to have a mix of solid and liquid, and a balance of meat and vegetables.
Habit 8: Eating Too Quickly
Reason: Overloads the digestive system and can lead to obesity. Many office workers eat their lunch in a great rush. Eating too quickly means food is not chewed thoroughly, which is not conducive to the preliminary digestion by oral enzymes and saliva amylase, overloading the digestive system. With too little chewing time, the vagus nerve remains overly excited, and over time, this can easily lead to overeating and obesity.
Solution: Try to make your teeth and tongue move as slowly as possible. If you're really short on time, then sacrifice a little time spent playing cards or napping.
Final Thoughts: Good health has always been what we strive for. Without a strong body, it's easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to get things done. So, everyone should cast aside these bad habits, remember these solutions, and counter them! These 8 habits must be changed!