Today, we discuss 10 everyday habits that you should leave for a great and happy life.
Smoking
No matter what you smoke and how you smoke it, tobacco can kill you. Substances from tobacco products like carbon monoxide, tar, and nicotine affect your entire body that can lead to long-term problems. Aside from irreversible lung diseases like bronchitis, cancer, and emphysema, it can affect your brain too.
Since tobacco is a mood-altering matter, it becomes addictive leading you to become irritated, depressed and anxious if you withdraw. Smoking weakens blood vessel walls, raises your chances of getting a stroke and increases blood clots. Your skin loses elasticity and affects your hair as it increases balding and graying.
Even exposure to secondhand smoke carries the same risks to a nonsmoker as well. Smoking may be a difficult habit to kick, but since smoking impairs every system in your body, it’s best to stop now so you can live a happier and longer life.
Grinding your teeth
Teeth grinding mainly happens while you sleep, in fact, you might not even be aware that you’re doing it! Teeth grinding is linked to tooth growth and development when kids are growing in new teeth or coping with teething and earaches. But as adults, teeth grinding and teeth clenching is related to stress, tension, and frustration. Some factors include smoking and drinking caffeine before sleeping can be a contribution.
Also if you have misaligned teeth, you may end up grinding since your muscles are pulling your jaw in an unnatural location. In most cases, teeth grinding is mild, but severe cases can irritate joints in your lower jaw leading it to pain and even headaches. It can causes tooth sensitivity and chipped teeth.
The good news is that there is a simple fix. You can wear a night guard at night, change the position of which you sleep or stop smoking and consuming caffeinated drinks during bedtime. You can also try yoga or listen to relaxing music to relax.
Not sleeping enough
You already know that lack of sleep can make you irritable and deplete your energy. But don’t make this a regular habit as the absence of sleep can affect your memory, looks, health, and your sex drive. Drowsiness can slow down reaction time just as much as being drunk.
You’re more prone to work accidents and it can even hurt your cognitive processes too. Sleep deprivation disturbs alertness, concentration, attention and problem-solving. This makes it problematic to learn efficiently. Chronic sleep loss can lead to heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and heart attacks.
In addition, lack of sleep can lessen your sex drive due to increased tension and minimal energy. Lastly, losing sleep can make you gain weight. Recent research has found a link between peptides that control appetite and sleep. Loss of sleep triggers cravings for carbohydrates and high fatty foods.
Using your phone or tablet at night
Between texting, playing games or watching one more episode on your phone and tablet can last anywhere from two hours or more. The longer we stay our screen leads to an intake of photons, which makes us stay awake even longer. This alters alertness, sleepiness and subdues melatonin levels.
Plus excessive phone use at night can put a strain on your eyes making them sore and tired which can also lead to dry eyes, headaches and blurred vision. The best thing to do is to adjust the brightness on your screen, take a break and minimize the glare. But better solutions would be to avoid screen time entirely before bed. Pick up a good book or listen to some music instead.
Biting your nails
Nail biting is an annoyingly bad habit that is fairly common. It usually starts out in childhood and is a habit that sticks with us through adulthood. It might be done to calm down nerves or it might be done out of complete boredom. But either way nail biting is something that has got to go! Biting your fingernails can increase the risk of catching illnesses because you’re sticking unwashed hands in your mouth. Bacteria lingers under your fingernails which can lead to fungal and viral contamination.
According to dermatologist Rochelle Torgerson at the Mayo Clinic, it also raises the risk of infection of your skin that surrounds your nails. You can wind up with swelling, pain, discomfort, and redness. With constant nail biting and picking, it could leave you with a funny fingernail called habit-tic-deformity, leaving your nail with horizontal ridges inside of it caused by repeated trauma. In addition, nail-biting harm your teeth as it can cause your teeth to move out of place and splinter tooth enamel.
Not flossing
Admit it, how many of us actually floss every day? If anything maybe once or three times a week. But flossing is a crucial part of dental hygiene and skipping this important step can impact your oral health. Just brushing your teeth alone simply isn’t enough to keep your pearly whites clean and shiny. Food particles get trapped into your teeth, in hard to reach places. So flossing removes dental plaque that minimizes the risk of cavities.
If you don’t floss, the harmful bacteria creates acid and wears down the protective enamel. Also skipping out on flossing produces gum sensitivity. We’ve all heard our dentist say, “You’re bleeding because you don’t floss!” To reduce the bleeding, flossing can help strengthen your gums and helps the tissue to become healthier.
Don’t worry; it doesn’t matter whether you floss in the morning or at night either. What’s most important to do it at least once a day to get the best results.
Stopping yourself from sneezing
We’ve all had those moments when we had to sneeze, but it just won’t come out, so we stop ourselves. Usually, it’s not a huge deal, and we’ve all bottled up a sneeze without any issues. But there is a small chance that a held in a sneeze could lead to an adverse reaction especially if you have a preexisting ear injury or anatomical oddity.
Sneezes aren’t meant to be held in as sneezes expel irritants and viruses out of your nose. Even though the risk of hearing loss is minor while holding a sneeze, it is still possible. The pressure behind a sneeze causes germs to fly out of your nasal cavity at 100 miles per hour. Holding it in can rupture your ear dream and cause damage in your inner and middle ear.
If you feel a sneeze coming out and want to stop it, rub your nose instead. Just make sure when you sneeze, you don’t do it in your hand, but the corner of your arm as everything you touch is contagious and you don’t want to spread those germs everywhere.
Skipping breakfast
It’s true what they say! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Some people choose to skip breakfast in an attempt to lose weight or maybe they don’t have time to grab a bite to eat in the morning. But it’s the first few hours of the day that the brain distributes nutrients to continue working the physiological processes after a long fast during the night. So if you don’t give yourself energy, the brain will need to use reserves and work to make an extra effort to retain correct functioning.
Missing out on breakfast could result in poor concentration and memory, reduced intellectual and physical performance and a reduced amount of energy throughout the day. If you are trying to shed some extra pounds, then think twice about which meal you’re sacrificing. According to nutrition science, professors at the University of Alabama-Birmingham say that your blood sugar control and metabolism are better in the morning than it is during the evening and at night, so it makes total sense to consume more food earlier in the day.
