Researchers and physicians have discovered multiple daily habits many of us do without thinking (and some we believe are healthy) that are slowly breaking our bodies down.
Acid window
Cleaning your teeth right after drinking your morning orange juice or coffee or eating an acidic salad sure feels beneficial, but it’s incredibly damaging to your teeth.
Eating foods or drinks high in acid softens and washes away minerals from your enamel, or the outer coating of your teeth. By brushing while your enamel is softened, you’re essentially sandpapering away weakened parts of your teeth, eventually diminishing your enamel.
It’s better to rinse with water after eating or drinking something acidic and then wait at least half an hour before you brush, giving your saliva time to help your teeth recover.
Silent bubble
Yes, sleeping experts will tell you your room should be dark and quiet when you sleep. However, going to extremes and subjecting yourself to complete darkness and silence can do more harm than good when it comes to your neurological tolerance.
By not allowing your brain to perceive white noise and small variations in natural sunlight when you wake up, your ears and eyes become more sensitive.
As a result, when you’re forced to hear slight noises or a little bit of light while you sleep, your body is going to stress out unnecessarily because you’ve trained yourself to only sleep in pitch darkness.
This makes you more prone to nighttime awakenings and daytime stress.
Alarm loop
Pressing snooze multiple times to get those extra five minutes of sleep here and there chops your wakeup process into pieces and tires you out. Doctors call this grogginess “sleep inertia”.
When you snooze and fall back asleep in small chunks, you put your brain right back to the start of a new sleep cycle. You then abruptly wake yourself up from that sleep cycle when your next alarm rings.
This process constantly confuses your brain and keeps you from waking up smoothly. And you end up pumping yourself full of cortisol and feeling groggy for hours.
Too much antibacterial
Your health isn’t improved by keeping your living space squeaky-clean. Your body actually benefits from exposure to all of the microscopic organisms in your environment.
Your immune system learns how to properly react to outside pathogens by interacting with harmless bacteria from a young age. If you clean everything you possibly can, you stunt the development of your body’s microbiome and become more prone to allergies and asthma.
What’s more, daily contact with antibacterial chemicals like triclosan wreaks havoc on your fragile endocrine system and is even directly responsible for creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
The knee lock
Crossing one leg over the other while studying at a desk or lounging on the couch is one of the most ubiquitous positions we put our bodies in regularly.
While it may feel natural, crossing your legs at the knee places direct pressure on the sciatic nerve located at the back of your leg, causing temporary numbness and weakening the muscles that lift your foot.
Crossing also limits blood from travelling up through the large veins back to your heart, forcing your heart to work harder against the pressure and increasing your blood pressure temporarily.
Over time, habitually sitting with your legs crossed can cause your pelvis to rotate, lead to back pain, and contribute to spider veins.
False hydration
Relying solely on those fancy, store-bought drinks, smoothies, and coffees for your fluids means your cells will actually be running on empty.
Although these drinks are made with water, they also contain high amounts of fruit sugar, salt, and water-pushing diuretics like caffeine.
When you drink these high-chemistry beverages, your organs are unable to absorb clean, free water to help eliminate toxins from your cells.
And consuming these drinks regularly may cause you to experience ongoing fatigue in the afternoon, chronic headaches, and sluggish digestion without realizing you’re dehydrated.
Indoor stride
Confining all your running and walking workouts to an indoor motorized treadmill fundamentally alters your body’s natural mechanics, leading to the gradual weakening of crucial stabilizing muscles.
Your hamstrings, glutes, and ankle stabilizers get a serious workout when you’re out on a stationary trail or track, constantly adapting to the uneven ground to propel you.
The treadmill belt does that work for you by rolling toward you, causing you to rely less on pushing off with your hind-legs and instead putting increased strain on your quads and knees.
Blocked sneeze
Closing off your air passages to hold in a sneeze can cause a dangerous buildup of pressure in your sinuses.
Your body is built to let you sneeze with explosive force (projecting air at over 100mph) and preventing it means that pressure is redirected into your head. This force can rupture small blood vessels in the eyes, puncture your eardrum, or push contaminated sinuses fluids back into your nasal cavity.
There have been some cases of this resulting in sinus infections. In rare instances, medical professionals have noted patients suffering temporary rib fractures and air accumulating in the deep tissues of the neck and chest.
Skinless produce
Peeling your apples, cucumbers, pears, and potatoes before consuming them deprives your body of the most nutrient dense parts of the plant.
Plant skins are typically where fruits and vegetables store the highest concentration of insoluble fiber, vitamins, and potent cellular antioxidants that fight environmental oxidants.
By disposing of the skins you are ensuring you consume the highest amount of sugar stored in the middle of the fruit while eliminating the fiber necessary to moderate your body’s glucose uptake in the digestive tract.
Plus, when you consistently peel fruits and vegetables, you’re essentially starving your gut microbiome of diverse food nutrients.
Cushion dependency
If you replace all of your shoes with thick, cushioned sneakers whenever you run your errands or go for a stroll, you’ll actually cause the arches in your feet to become weaker.
Shoes with lots of arch support immobilize and confine your feet, meaning they no longer have to work to support those intrinsic muscles and tendons that make up the arch.
When you cushion everything your feet encounter, those muscles become weaker over time and lose flexibility, leaving your ankles, knees and lower back to take the impact of each step.
Podiatrists are also observing that footwear offering excessive support may contribute to issues like flat feet, plantar fasciitis, and persistent joint misalignment.
Thermal bubble
Don’t hover around the thermostat. Staying in a perfectly cooled or heated home or office 24/7 robs your body of beneficial thermal stress.
Your body is designed to adapt to changing temperatures multiple times a day. When this happens, your metabolism has to work hard to either warm or cool down your body.
If you’re always lounging in your comfort temperature range, your body will stop producing brown fat. This is the good fat that burns calories to keep you warm. This continuous comfort can result in a sluggish metabolism, compromised blood flow, and a diminished capacity to handle heat or cold.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
