Seven Daily Sins

一些长期以来被现代人视为对健康有好处的日常生活习惯原来正在悄悄地蚕食着我们的健康。这些习惯究竟包括哪些呢？一起来看看吧!

Could your daily routine be ruining your health? We all know that smoking, drinking and bingeing on junk food are behaviors to avoid if we want to keep fit—but an increasing amount of research is emerging to suggest other seemingly good habits could also be bad for us.

Here are the seven daily sins, and what we can do about them.

Daily sin: shower every day

The modern preoccupation with personal hygiene could be to the bad to our skin, according to Dr. Nick Lowe, consultant dermatologist at the Cranley Clinic in London. He says: “Using hot water combined with harsh soaps can strip the skin of its oils, resulting in dryness, cracking and even infection.” If the prospect of skipping a daily shower horrifies you, at least make sure you wash with cooler water, he says. If you have a tendency towards dry skin, use a soap?free shower gel or watery cream.

Daily sin: sleeping eight hours a day

The idea of getting eight hours of solid sleep each night is a “modern convention” that could leave you feeling more tired, says Professor Jim Horne, of Loughborough University’s Sleep Research Centre. “A short four to 15?minute ‘power nap’ can be as effective as an extra hour at night.” He adds, “This modern idea that waking in the middle of the night is a bad thing can actually be destructive to the quality of our sleep.”

Daily sin: rinsing after brushing teeth

Fight the urge to rinse after cleaning your teeth, says dentist Dr. Phil Stemmer, from The Fresh Breath Centre in London. “Rinsing washes away the protective fluoride coating left by the toothpaste, which would otherwise adds hours of protection.”

And whatever you do doesn’t clean you teeth straight after eating, he says.

Daily sin: sitting on the toilet

A study published by Israeli scientists in the journal Digestive Diseases and Sciences revealed that squatting instead of sitting is a more natural position. This in turn reduces the risk of bowel problems.

Daily sin: cleaning

It’s the perfect excuse to abandon housework—housework can actually be bad for your health, according to a research published earlier this year.

Scientists in the U.S. found those who took on most of the responsibility for running the home had significantly higher blood pressure than those who left it to their partner.

Daily sin: breathing wrongly

“Ask anyone to take in a deep breath and they will no doubt puff out their chest as they inhale. But this is wrong,” says Neil Shah, psychotherapist and director of the Stress Management Society. “This means that dirty air stays at the bottom of our lungs. Yet it’s the bottom section of the lungs that contains the warmest and wettest blood vessels—the most efficient for gas exchange and moving oxygen into the blood.”