What ‘Wrong’ You May Be Doing to Your Body

Having a routine is part of life—without it, you would have no pattern to follow and make things chaotic. Routine helps organize your day. Try imagining having no routine—you wake up, decide to get dressed for work, then decide you should shower instead, then decide to take out the trash, and so on. It’s crazy, right? So, routine, without you noticing, makes life run smoothly. However, there are some routine that people do that aren’t good for the body. Here are some.

After Breakfast – After you’ve had the most important meal of the day, you usually head to the bathroom to brush your teeth. The problem here is if you’ve had any acidic foods, such as fruits or juice, it will weaken your enamel, which affects the teeth eventually. This can lead to cracks and discoloration.

What you need to do to avoid this is rinse your mouth and wait for 40 minutes. During this time, the calcium in your saliva remineralizes weakened areas. If you don’t have 40 minutes to spare, at least brush your teeth before eating, and just rinse after.

Morning Drive to Work – When you drive you may prefer to have windows open. Unfortunately, air pollution on highways is multiple times higher than in the suburbs. Fumes are a health risk—this can cause headaches, or worse, cancer and heart disease.

What you can do is close all your windows and use the ‘recirc’ on your auto’s AC. This will lessen your exposure to pollution.

Lunch Time – It is considered that the most handy kitchen appliance is the microwave. And usually the most common food container is plastic, which means that’s also what is used to heat food in. And you may be one who always pops a container of food in the microwave for a quick heating. But plastic is not ideal for microwaves, even if it is BPA-free (Bisphenol A—chemical used to make certain plastics) ‘phthalates’ may still get in your food. This has negative effects on the body, which includes altering hormones.

The best to use for microwaves is glass. There are glass containers available everywhere, so choose that instead. Or you can transfer the food into a glass bowl when you’re about to heat it.

Happy Hour – A lot of people love to have a few sips of wine right after work just to unwind with friends after a stressful day. Even if a person’s blood alcohol level is just a .01 (well below the legal limit of .08), the percentage of getting into a crash is 46% higher than sober drivers.

If you can totally avoid having a few drinks with friends, then make sure you eat before drinking even just a glass of wine. But it would be best not to drink at all if you’re driving.

Bed Time – The tendency of a person in bed is to continue tinkering with their smartphones, which means checking work emails, which leads to replying. This basically means continuing work in bed. Studies have shown that doing this makes a person groggier in the morning. And having little sleep wreaks havoc to the body, which can eventually be life threatening. And if this is part of your routine, the best to do is turn off email notifications, so you can relax and get more sleep. If there’s an emergency, someone will call.

These are simple routine activities that you can be doing and not even notice any more because it’s automatic. But now you know even the simplest of activities can cause harm to your body, so you need to be more aware of what you do.