In this material we will publish myths and facts about a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy lifestyle – what is it? Each person has their own idea of how to achieve good health. Some people think that it is enough to exercise occasionally, while others think that you need to go on a diet. In order to understand these prejudices, let's look at some popular myths and facts about a healthy lifestyle.
Myth: A healthy lifestyle is only available to young people
Fact: Take care of your health from a young age. Of course, this saying was invented for a reason. But old age in our time is not a reason to give up on yourself. In addition, older people have a lot of free time. Retired life allows you to develop new healthy habits and break old unhealthy ones. You can take more walks with your grandchildren, take care of your garden, leisurely cook delicious and healthy meals, read, actively communicate, and even get another education.
Myth: A healthy lifestyle is a constant diet
Fact: A diet is usually called a temporary dietary restriction. And the new way of life is forever. In addition, the diet is often dull and tasteless, and there is a danger of gaining weight again. But healthy food is tasty, varied and satisfying, otherwise there is no talk of health. Starting to eat right is much easier than sitting on buckwheat and kefir for a week.
Myth: A healthy lifestyle is impossible in the rhythm of modern life
Fact: And indeed, it seems that a modern city dweller, also known as an office worker, has no chance at all for a healthy life. Chronic lack of sleep, constant stress, irregular meals with semi-finished products are a typical set of living conditions for a city dweller. But in fact, it is possible to make your life healthier, and if you have a rather busy work schedule, you would like to. Start small - save about an hour of working time by stopping to take a smoke break, walk home and to work, buy frozen vegetables instead of dumplings and train yourself not to watch TV series before bed.
Myth: You need to drink 2-3 liters of water a day.
Fact: Of course, water will not do you any harm, but in large quantities, as you know, anything can be harmful. Even if you exclude all other drinks, you are still eating vegetables and fruits and thus gaining moisture. If you overdo it, the result can be hyponatremia - a lack of salts in the body. This will greatly increase the risk of cardiovascular and other serious diseases.
Myth: There is nothing healthy about frozen foods.
Fact: Frozen fruits and vegetables can be as good as fresh ones if they are properly picked and frozen. Moreover, cold processing and sealed packaging retain much more vitamins than is retained in fresh food left in the sun or in the supermarket refrigerator.
Myth: If you stay outside for a long time in the cold season, you will definitely get sick.
Fact: A decrease in external temperature in itself does not affect the state of the immune system. Unless, of course, we are talking about extreme degrees of frostbite, when you no longer need to worry about a cold. People get colds not because of cold weather, but because viruses enter the body. In winter, we are more susceptible to colds because we spend a lot of time in poorly ventilated areas, where viruses spread very quickly.
Myth: You cannot gain weight immediately after eating.
Fact: Researchers from Oxford University have found that fat is stored in the body much faster than previously thought. Changes in the fat layer, according to scientists, can be noticed just three hours after a heavy meal. Staying in excellent shape does not require strict diets and debilitating hunger strikes. Experts from the University of Rhode Island recommend following only one important rule - eating food slowly. Research has shown that most obese people tend to eat much faster than thin people and that there is a direct relationship between the speed of eating and weight.
Myth: It doesn't matter what you eat at night.
Fact: Eating too spicy and spicy foods close to bedtime can seriously affect the quality of your sleep and can also cause nightmares. All this was proven by specialists from the Sleep Disorders Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. They conducted a study with the participation of 389 people, and also found that 8.5% of all subjects experienced nightmares when they consumed spicy foods. Scientists attribute this to the fact that increased body temperature and accelerated metabolism after this type of food lead directly to increased brain activity. Approximately every hour and a half, a sleeping person falls into the rapid phase of sleep, which is characterized by dreams. In addition, dysfunction of the frontal lobe of the brain develops, and the mechanisms that are responsible for regulating emotional reactions and memory are disrupted. Thus, the digestive process itself can become the reason that a person will sleep poorly and feel exhausted the next morning.
Myth: Live yoghurts are a component of proper nutrition.
Fact: Yes, indeed, yoghurts with live microorganisms are good for health, but the whole question is which yoghurts are considered live. Only unpasteurized (that is, produced without heat treatment) yoghurts can be considered as such, which can be stored exclusively at low temperatures and for no more than a week (only in such conditions the beneficial bacteria remain alive). Something that sits on store shelves for weeks cannot be alive in principle.
Myth: It is enough to exercise once a week.
Fact: Experts believe that the ideal option is light, but daily training. If it doesn’t work out, then in a day. At the very least, twice a week. As a result, the body muscles will not suffer from excessive overload and tension, they will get used to constant work and will remain in good shape. Moreover, regular, properly distributed load will not allow you to stretch muscle tissue or cause injury to yourself. Do exercises that you enjoy, otherwise you will quickly give up on this activity.
Health is our strategic value, and we are taught to treat these reserves with care from a very early age. It would seem that the basics of a healthy lifestyle have long been known. However, the human body and its various conditions have not yet been studied enough for the answers to all questions to be obvious and the recommendations to be unambiguous. Moreover, there are many interesting facts about health that will surprise you.
About the benefits of freshly squeezed juices
We have all heard about how healthy fresh juices are and that we should drink them with all our might and whenever possible. However, the latest opinion of nutritionists completely destroys this materially expensive theory. At best, in their opinion, freshly squeezed fruit juice is just a portion of additional calories; at worst, it is a concentrate of glucose and fructose floating in a glass that is harmful to the body.
With frequent use, disturbances in the gastrointestinal tract and problems with the mucous membrane are possible. Doctors received slightly less vegetables from fresh vegetables than fruit juices; they called them harmless, but said that it is much healthier to eat raw vegetables as they are, along with fiber. In addition, vitamins and microelements in freshly squeezed juices are quickly destroyed when they come into contact with air.
Is it harmful to live near an airport?
It is generally accepted in society that living in close proximity to airports is much less harmful than, for example, living near a 24-hour liquor store. We won’t argue about the convenience store, but we will argue about the airplanes. If the airport and airliners flying at low altitude are less than 5 km away, then the daily noise level on average exceeds the permissible norm by 3 times.
This threatens chronic hypertension, disruption of sleep patterns and quality, and the development of coronary heart disease. Exceeding the permissible level of carbon dioxide, as well as sulfur and nitrogen dioxide, is also not beneficial, however, for this you need to move the house even closer - 2 km. A distance of at least 10 km is considered safe.
Is cleanliness the key to disease?
Not entirely true, but the principle of the “golden mean” is no less important here than in everything else. Excessive zeal in maintaining cleanliness is a direct provocation of increasing the risks of certain pathologies. These include, for example, childhood diabetes type 1.
At least, this is the conclusion reached by scientists who studied a sick group selected at random. Excessive cleanliness of parents was identified as a common pattern in most children with diabetes. Apparently, a small amount of even pathogenic bacteria serves as a kind of inoculation, hardening for the body.
Lie in the direction of the target!
Physical education is good for health - this is an indisputable fact. The trouble is that laziness ruins everything (chronic fatigue, lack of time, etc.). Recently, a group of researchers delighted us with the experimentally confirmed fact that lying down and imagining yourself actively exercising is much more beneficial than just lying down.
Diligent and conscientious visualization helps not only stimulate general blood circulation, but even strengthen muscles and improve neuromuscular conduction. And this, by the way, means that even if you don’t improve your shape, you can at least prevent muscle atrophy in bedridden patients, which is especially important for older people.
Biological (internal) clock and electronic light
You won’t really surprise anyone with a statement about the uselessness of electronic gadgets. Much has been said about their harm to the eyes, and about the risk of developing oncology (by the way, nothing has been proven by anyone), and about the development of spinal pathologies.
Let me add one more item to the list - disruption of biological rhythms due to prolonged exposure to the backlight of a monitor screen, phone, tablet, electronic reader, etc. The result is disturbed night sleep, deterioration in melatonin production, general weakness and fatigue. The list of consequences of disturbances in the functioning of the biological clock can be continued, and it will look no less sad.
Watching TV close is not harmful!
The US Center for Eye Protection says that distance from the TV makes no difference to eye health.
Watching TV for a long time is indeed harmful due to visual fatigue, but the distance to the screen has nothing to do with this. But what is especially dangerous is “forgetting” to blink.
An interesting fact is that Health Day, celebrated annually on April 7, takes place every year under a new motto related to a specific disease or problem.
Hypertension, food safety, diabetes, bacterial drug resistance are all topics of recent years. The main focus of Health Day 2017 was depression as a growing problem.
Are tests really that harmless?
Often, to make a correct diagnosis, the patient is asked to undergo one or another test. However, not all of them are so harmless. For example, computed tomography, in addition to being associated with radiation, in some cases requires the introduction into the body of a special radiopaque substance that has a negative effect on kidney function.
Frequent complications are also associated with testing. The most annoying thing is that most tests do not answer the question of what pathology you have, but show what disease you do not have. The most annoying thing, perhaps, is that in many cases, tests simply help the doctor save time on a conversation with the patient, from which much can be learned without laboratory diagnostics.
The health of teeth and the entire oral cavity is the most important indicator of the quality of life of a modern person, including his appearance and the ability to experience the joy of delicious food and human communication.
By the way, by the age of 60, a person in most cases loses more than half of his receptors, but since this happens gradually, he does not feel discomfort from this very significant loss of taste sensitivity. But a newborn baby has 3 times more of them than the average adult. Considering the monotony of his diet, it seems to us that this is at least unfair.
Wisdom teeth - why do we need them?
First of all, this third row of molars has nothing to do with any wisdom. In addition, they do not perform any important functions, at least for modern man. “Wise” teeth owe their name only to the approximate age of a person at the time of their eruption (it is believed that by this time he should already have at least some wisdom). The fact is that before the age of 16-18 they simply have no room to grow - there is no room for them on the jaw.
As the human brain developed, the structure of the jaw bones also changed: they became less pronounced and shorter, as if going deeper into the skull. This evolutionary transformation continues to this day, which leads to the fact that many people no longer have enough space in the jaw for additional molars.
By the way, until now scientists have not come to a consensus why this “indigenous set” grows much more often among Europeans and Americans than among residents of Asia. Are they smarter than us, or what?
Why do we grind our teeth?
In medicine, the phenomenon when a person clenches his teeth in his sleep until they creak is called bruxism. In childhood, before the appearance of permanent teeth, this happens at least occasionally to almost everyone. Among adults, no more than 15% of the population suffers from bruxism. The symptom is not harmless, since the force of compression can be such that the teeth crumble or become loose, and the jaw joints suffer.
It is common among people to attribute this phenomenon to worms, and even a countermeasure is proposed - smearing the navel with kerosene. Scientific research has led to the conclusion that emotionality, increased levels of mental stress and anger are to blame. By the way, alcohol aggravates the problem. It turns out that balanced people have healthier teeth not only because they don’t interfere in something other than their own business.
Diagnosis of dental health... by plane
If nothing hurts in your mouth, this does not mean that everything is fine there. While still invisible and not causing concern, carious cavities, poorly placed fillings, incipient abscesses and other problems sometimes suddenly make themselves known in the sky during an air flight.
Changes in pressure overboard, ascents and descents are all factors that cause unexpected increasing pain, which disappears without a trace after landing. Doctors recommend not to ignore barodontalgia - this is the name of this interesting, but rather unpleasant phenomenon. Thanks to this manifestation, many dental problems can be solved with more gentle methods, before they have yet declared themselves in full voice.
Interesting health facts for children
However, many of them will be interesting for adults as well.
- You will never be able to sneeze without closing your eyes.
- Men blink almost twice as often as women.
- The imprint of the tongue is individual for each person.
- More people are killed by donkeys every year than by plane crashes.
- The average time to fall asleep is 7 minutes.
- During the first two years of a child's life, his parents, on average, lack sleep for the equivalent of 6 months of normal life.
- Newborn babies have such a strong hand grip that they are able to support their own body.
- In every fifth pair of twins, one of them is left-handed.
- We feel different tastes with different parts of the tongue. “Sweet” and “salty” receptors are located at the very tip, “sour” tastes are on the sides, and bitter taste is in the center.
- During a conversation, microscopic drops of saliva fly out of a person's mouth - approximately 2.5 drops for each word spoken.
- In order to say one single word of average length, we use 72 muscles!
- Contrary to popular belief that there are not enough boys born, approximately 105 male babies are born for every hundred girls.
- Humans are the only primate that can consciously smile!
And, of course, we can talk a lot about how long a smile, a good mood and a generally positive attitude towards life can prolong life and improve health. Studies have also shown that loneliness significantly lowers immune status, chocolate improves mathematical abilities, and hugs before bed make it easier to fall asleep and make sleep deeper and more restful. So smile, hug and indulge in chocolate!
Since childhood, we have developed the idea that milk is rich in calcium, and therefore makes bones strong. Cartoon characters and doctors have told us that we should drink milk every day to get calcium and vitamin D.
However, recent studies H. A. Bischoff-Ferrari, B. Dawson-Hughes, J. A. Baron, J. A. Kanis, E. J. Orav, H. B. Staehelin, D. P. Kiel, P. Burckhardt, J. Henschkowski, D. Spiegelman, R. Li, J. B. Wong, D. Feskanich, W. C. Willett. Milk Intake And Risk Of Hip Fracture In Men And Women: A Meta-analysis Of Prospective Cohort Studies. prove that there is no connection between the amount of milk you drink (or take special calcium or vitamin D supplements) and the number of fractures you get. Moreover, now more and more different books and articles are appearing about the fact that with age it is desirable to reduce the amount of milk and dairy products consumed. And some even associate milk consumption with the development of cancer and some autoimmune diseases.
You can get vitamin D from other sources. In order for it to be better absorbed by the body, it must be taken in combination with other vitamins, otherwise it will simply come out of you along with processed food.
2. Organic foods are free of pesticides and contain more nutrients.
Farmers who grow organic food are allowed to use natural chemicals, which are sometimes much more harmful to the environment than synthetic ones. It all depends on their number.
As for nutrient availability, the latest 98,727 studies show A. D. Dangour, K. Lock, A. Hayter, A. Aikenhead, E. Allen, R. Uauy. Nutrition-related Health Effects Of Organic Foods: A Systematic Review. In this area, organic and conventional vegetables and fruits are no different from each other, but the magic word “organic” is reassuring. You will be even more confident in the vegetables and fruits grown by you personally.
3. Something that is quickly raised is not considered to be fallen.
This is the “five second rule”: if you quickly pick up the fallen food, you can assume that it did not fall. It turned out that all this was just another myth. The point is not exactly how long the food spent on the floor, but how clean the floor was, because even two seconds is enough for bacterial contamination of food.
4. Eating chocolate contributes to acne.
This statement is wrong. For one month, scientists fed some experiment participants with chocolate bars containing 10 times more chocolate than standard ones, and others with fake chocolate. At the end of the experiment J. E. Fulton Jr., G. Plewig, A. M. Kligman. Effect Of Chocolate On Acne Vulgaris. They compared both groups and it turned out that neither chocolate nor fat had any effect on the appearance of acne.
5. Eat an apple a day and forget about going to the doctor
We were convinced that we simply had to eat apples every day, preferably more, and doctors prescribed a couple of teaspoons of apple juice a day for babies over three months old. Indeed, apples contain quite a large amount of iron and fiber, but this fruit is not a panacea for all diseases. By eating an apple, you will get useful substances, but nothing more.
6. Honey is healthier than refined sugar
In fact, using honey, which we add when making homemade or carbohydrate bars, is no better than using sugar or corn syrup.
Professor Alan Levinovitz says the biological effects of honey are the same as high fructose corn syrup. The only difference is that usually the amount of sugar in candies and other sweets is much greater, so the products become much higher in calories.
7. Eating ice cream when you have a cold will make your condition worse.
If you have a cold, but you really want ice cream, you can satisfy this desire with a clear conscience.
The fact that dairy products increase mucus production is not true. What's more, scientists at the Mayo Clinic say that frozen dairy products can actually soothe a sore throat and provide you with the energy you need to fight illness when you're having trouble eating solid foods.
8. Sugar makes kids hyperactive
American films very often show how caring mothers try not to give their children sweets with sugar and not feed them sweets at all, because the children become insane. In fact, numerous studies have tried to find a link between hyperactivity and sugar consumption, but have failed to do so.
This myth probably originated in 1974, when Dr. William Crook wrote a letter to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which then published it. “Over the past three years, I have come to realize that sugar is a major cause of hyperactivity,” the letter said.
However, the letter did not contain any scientific research. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the idea that refined sugar causes or worsens ADHD symptoms is popular, but there is currently no scientific research to support this fact.
9. Eating a lot of carrots will give you the ability to see in the dark.
Yes, carrots contain a large amount of vitamin A, which has a positive effect on the health of our eyes. But this does not mean that eating this vegetable in huge quantities will give you the ability to see in the dark.
This myth originated from British propaganda during World War II. So the government wanted to cover up the existence of a radar installation that allowed British bombers to hit targets at night.
10. People can't grow new brain cells.
You are not born with a full set of brain cells. There is a huge amount of research D. Cossins. Human Adult Neurogenesis Revealed. and evidence that into adulthood, new cells continue to form in our brain, at least in several areas of the brain. This process is called neurogenesis.
11. You should wait at least an hour after eating before you go swimming.
We have heard more than once from our grandmothers a warning that we should not swim immediately after eating, as a cramp may occur. This is actually a lie. The theory behind this myth is that most of your blood will be used to help your stomach digest food. Consequently, less blood will flow to the muscles, and the likelihood of cramps will increase significantly.
But at the moment there is no evidence based on scientific research to support this theory. And there are no sources documenting that a person drowned from a cramp associated with swimming on a full stomach.
Cramps are a fairly common occurrence while swimming, and they have nothing to do with whether you do it on an empty or full stomach.
12. The events of the wild party can be gradually recalled
If you wake up after a stormy night and have little memory of what you did, don't even try to remember. Most likely, those memories that will gradually emerge in your memory will turn out to be false.
In fact, the part of the brain that is responsible for encoding memories is switched off R. A. Nash, M. K. Takarangi. Reconstructing Alcohol-induced Memory Blackouts. if we drink too much alcohol.
13. Brown sugar is healthier than white sugar
Brown sugar is given its color by sticky syrup (molasses or molasses). White sugar is obtained by purifying brown sugar from this very molasses. Yes, it does contain some vitamins and minerals (potassium and magnesium), but the amount is not enough for your body to notice the difference. Your body doesn't care what kind of sugar you eat.
1. More than four hundred and fifty people over the age of one hundred live on the Japanese island of Okinawa. This island is considered the healthiest place on Earth.
2. People who smoke suffer more from stress than people who have never smoked and those who quit combined.
3. People who spend a lot of time working on a computer or watching TV often suffer from constant fatigue syndrome.
4. Urinating while sitting helps to completely empty the bladder, reduces the likelihood of prostatitis and allows you to live a full sexual life for a long time.
5. Research has shown that cuddling before bed is very beneficial. This helps the body relax and also slows down the thought process, making it easier to fall asleep.
6. Research has shown that chocolate can improve your math skills.
7. Loneliness weakens the immune system. Friends and other loved ones just by being in your life can boost your immunity by 60 percent.
8. Sprinkling sugar on a wound or cut can significantly reduce pain and speed up the healing process.
9. Missing someone is unhealthy and can cause insomnia. The feeling of dissatisfaction from being away from someone you love makes you wake up at night.
10. Cherries can cause cancer cells to self-destruct.
11. Diet soda is as damaging to teeth as meth or cocaine.
12. People who rarely complain suffer more from stress, anxiety and depression.
13. There is a device that can replace the heart in the body; a side effect is the absence of a pulse.
14. A fifteen-year-old boy with Down syndrome speaks English, Spanish, French and Latin. He played the violin at the 10th World Down Syndrome Congress in Ireland and set six youth records for people with Down syndrome.
15. Cracking your knuckles does not harm your bones or cause arthritis. What you hear is the sound of gas bubbles forming (not even bursting).
16. Stress is often considered a "silent killer" - it leads to heart disease, high blood pressure, chest pain and early death.
17. If you have a cat in your house, your risk of heart disease is reduced by forty percent, and sudden strokes by thirty percent.
18. The tigress lost her cubs as a result of early birth. Soon after this, she began to experience depression and her health began to deteriorate. Since tigers are endangered, every effort was made to save her. Zoologists dressed the piglets in tiger suits and showed them to their mother tiger. Now she adores these piglets and takes care of them as if they were her own children. The tigress's health has improved. Everyone has feelings.
19. “Killing season” is a term used by British doctors to describe the month of August, when doctors who have just graduated from college come to hospitals.
20. If you sleep less than four hours or more than ten, you are at risk and may die early.
21. A breakup is not easy to deal with because it is a time when the body and brain experience a kind of withdrawal. It's like drug addiction. We become addicted to love.
22. A nice morning kiss can help prevent illnesses caused by stress. A kiss in the morning fills us with harmony and helps us fight external troubles.
23. Excessive love for cats can cause mental illness leading to suicide.
24. Banana milkshake is a great hangover cure.
25. Sitting straight in a chair is bad for your back. You need to lean back and sit at an angle of 135 degrees.
26. In 2008, an experiment was conducted in which people were exposed to painful electric current. After this, they were offered placebo tablets. Some cost ten cents, and others two dollars and fifty cents. Studies have shown that the former reduced pain by 64%, and the latter by 85%. Conclusion: expensive placebos work better than cheap ones.
27. Before the popularity of cabbage as a food product increased in 2013, its only major consumer was the Pizza Hut pizzeria, which used the vegetables not for food, but to decorate its salad bar.
28. Bayer sold drugs containing HIV and the Hepatitis C virus, causing more than ten thousand people in the United States to become infected with HIV. Having discovered such components in their drugs, the company withdrew them from the US market and sold them to countries in Asia and Latin America so as not to lose money.
The most interesting facts about health that everyone should know about are collected in this article.
Cardiovascular disease is extremely rare in horses. English veterinarian S. Littlejohn explains this as follows: “Horses do not smoke, do not drink, adhere to a strict vegetarian diet and do a lot of physical exercise.”
The only animals that suffer from leprosy, besides humans, are armadillos. A third of the 250 Americans who contract leprosy each year get it from armadillos.
Lack of physical activity causes as many deaths worldwide as smoking.
In conditions weightlessness caries develops faster than on Earth. On the teeth of mice launched into space, microorganisms that cause caries multiplied more actively than usual. It is believed that in zero gravity, saliva is less well distributed throughout the oral cavity and does not wash away microorganisms from the teeth well.
Salt is harmful to the cardiovascular system of the human body. If its amount is reduced by at least 3 grams per day, life expectancy will increase by 5-6 years.
The more educated a person is, the lower the likelihood of brain diseases. Intellectual activity causes the production of additional tissue to compensate for the disease.
Medical studies conducted in 2010 showed that someone who has no friends has the same health risks as a smoker who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day.
Feeding bread to ducks is extremely harmful to their health and ecosystem. Feeding birds in the warm season causes great harm to birds .
Their natural instincts to search for food and favorable natural conditions become dulled and they become almost tame. The stomach of a wild duck does not digest this food well and the bird dies. Black bread is especially dangerous, as it can cause severe fermentation in the digestive system of waterfowl.
The number of cases of skin cancer caused by tanning beds significantly exceeds the number of cases of lung cancer caused by smoking.
74% of men and 64% of women in the US are obese or overweight, according to the National Institutes of Health.
There is a movement called "Movement for the Voluntary Extinction of Humanity", the goal of which is the gradual destruction of the human race, through the voluntary cessation of reproduction, which will allow the Earth's biosphere to recover.
Have you ever been interested in the question Why do common colds start during cold weather? And all because human skin is more sensitive to cold. For comparison: on one square centimeter of skin there are about 12 points sensitive to cold, and only 2 to heat.
Fruits and vegetables can help the body make its own aspirin.
McDonalds sued a wellness company called McWellness, signaling that McDonalds may have a medical division in the near future.
Air fresheners contain numerous chemicals that are hazardous to our health, such as formaldehyde, which can cause serious breathing problems.
Bananas are quite radioactive, and a truck carrying them can cause false positives when testing radiation materials in American ports, and at the same time they are completely safe for humans.
Dogs can smell cancer and low blood sugar.
Sitting straight in a chair is bad for your back. You need to lean back and sit at an angle 135 degrees.
Smokers are four times more likely than non-smokers to report feeling tired in the morning, and are 70% more likely to have hearing problems.
The newest and most expensive drugs are not necessarily the best or safest.
If you regularly drink orange or grapefruit juice, you can significantly reduce the risk of osteoporosis.
In a lifetime, a person travels a distance equal to three revolutions around the globe.
People who live on the coast live longer than those living on the mainland.
Less than 10% of all people on the planet know how to breathe correctly. When breathing, it is necessary to use not only the chest, but also the stomach.
