Body Harmful Things: The Most Harmful Things You Can Do To Your Body
Every day we do different things that have some sort of impact on our bodies.
You’d like to think that most of the things you do have a positive impact, but that’s not always the case.
In reality, there are lots of harmful things you’re doing to your body without even realizing it.
In this post, we’ll look at the most damaging things you can do to the human body.
Some of these are obvious, while others will shock you!
Body Harmful Things: Not Getting Enough Sleep
Hands up how many of you can remember the last time you got a good night’s sleep? By ‘good’, we’re talking around 7-8 hours and you wake up feeling refreshed.
This is how you should feel every morning as sleep is designed to make you more energized. Unfortunately, it’s far too common to stay up super late and get 5-6 hours every night.
Then, you go ahead and do a full day of work, only to repeat the same nightly pattern.
The problem with a lack of sleep is that it seriously hurts your body. Not getting enough sleep can throw your hormones into disarray.
Hormones are chemical messengers that trigger responses in our bodies.
As an example, when you’re hungry, your body secretes hormones that tell your brain you’re hungry, and you feel the need to eat.
Funnily enough, when you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t produce enough of the hormone that suppresses your appetite.
In turn, this means you’re hungry all the time, leading to excessive snacking and weight gain.
Additionally, a lack of sleep can cause mental health issues like increased stress and anxiety.
You feel exhausted all the time, making it hard to concentrate at work. This increases your stress as you feel like you can’t be productive.
In short, make sure you get a good night of sleep!
Eating too much sugar
Sugar is horrible for the human body. In small quantities, it can be effective at providing short bursts of energy.
But, consume too much, and you end up with massive energy spikes and comedowns.
It also messes up your blood sugar levels, which leads to complications with glucagon and insulin production. If this gets too bad, you can end up with diabetes.
Given that sugar doesn’t do a lot of good for the human body, this means it’s considered empty calories.
In short, this refers to calories that don’t provide your body with anything beneficial. For example, if we eat a piece of meat, that will have calories in it.
A slab of steak has more calories than a small packet of candy. However, the meat also provides protein and other essential nutrients that our bodies need.
The candy doesn’t. It fills you with sugar, meaning you consume pointless calories. In turn, this can lead to excessive weight gain in the long-term.
Someone with a high-sugar diet is likely to be overweight as sugary foods are usually very calorific and don’t provide any health benefits.
Smoking tobacco and doing drugs
Tobacco cigarettes are awful for the human body in so many ways. It really isn’t worth going through all of them as most people are aware of how bad smoking is for the lungs and heart.
Still, if you’re interested, you can learn more about the dangers of smoking here.
Similarly, drugs are bad as they disrupt your body in a variety of ways.
Mostly, drugs have an effect on your brain as they make you act differently and play around with your short-term memory.
Can you imagine what this will do to you if you did drugs all the time? You don’t need to imagine as there are countless examples of people suffering from addiction in a terrible mental state thanks to the drugs.
One of the worst things about smoking and doing drugs is how long substances stay in your body.
Smoking can leave harmful substances in your lungs for 3-10 after you’ve stopped smoking.
So, imagine you smoke regularly – even once every 5 days means there’s a chance the bad things never leave your system!
The same is true for many drugs, particularly cocaine. This is one of the most popular recreational drugs, but how long is cocaine in your system?
It can stay there for as long as 5 days – imagine what that does to your body!
It’s obvious, but drugs and cigarettes are bad!
Don’t put them in your body if you want to live a long and healthy life.
Following a restrictive diet
Now, before anyone starts getting offended, this doesn’t mean vegan or vegetarian diets. Instead, it refers to any diet that excludes particular nutrients from your meals.
The healthiest diet is one that contains a balance of protein, carbs, fats, fiber, and other nutrients.
Your body needs all of these things to function properly and provide you with enough energy to move.
Things like fiber also aid with digestion, protein helps you build muscle, and carbs are also very valuable.
The problem with restrictive diets is they make you cut out these valuable things. The most popular example of this is a diet that eliminates carbs.
Some people think carbs are bad as they make you put on weight, but that’s simply not true.
They provide you with a release of energy throughout the day, which is obviously essential.
Cutting this out can leave you feeling lethargic and light-headed.
Perhaps the main issue with restrictive diets is that they are impossible to stick to.
So, you deprive your body of key nutrients for absolutely nothing. Plus, they leave you in a terrible mental state and create a bad relationship with food.
Body Harmful Things: Not being active
We know that diet and exercise as the keys to being healthy. So, if you’re not active, you will be unhealthy.
It really is as simple as that, but let’s look at why. An inactive person will not burn enough calories in the day.
This means that they gain weight really quickly as they consume calories through eating.
When you gain weight, you run the risk of developing many cardiovascular diseases that can lead to long-term health complications.
Furthermore, your body needs to be active to get your lungs and heart working efficiently. Inactivity means you don’t breathe as effectively as you should, which can cause respiratory issues.
On top of the weight gain, a lack of activity also damages your heart as it doesn’t get trained.
Again, this increases the likelihood of cardiovascular diseases even more. Inactivity can also harm your posture and weaken your muscles, which will lead to chronic pain and inflammation.
The shocking thing about inactivity is that it’s so easy to be active. Walk around for 30 minutes a day and do some form of exercise at least 3 times a week.
It’s really not that hard, regardless of how busy your schedule is.
How many of these things are you guilty of doing? Be honest, you’ve probably ticked off at least one, maybe even two bad habits.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, it’s hard to keep track of what you do daily.
However, you should definitely use this article as a springboard to a healthier you. Now that you know what can harm your body, it’s easier to make adjustments.
Re-evaluate some of your ongoing habits and make small changes that benefit your life. In the end, it will help you live much longer and you will be far happier. So, make your change today!
