Healthy living can be hard. You can’t always wake up for your morning run, you can’t always be on-point with your food orders and you sure as hell cannot always sleep on time. There are some pros who manage a breakfast smoothie, make it in time to their routine medical check-up and are the picture of health. While they walk around with their effortless glow, you wonder what it takes to be really healthy. Ever stopped to throw some questioning into the mix and wonder what you might be doing wrong?
The generic individual makes some pretty ill-informed choices through the day. The best of us fell for some very common myths that became a part of our memory over the years. You go about your daily routine following ‘healthy-living’ rules that aren’t very smart.
On World Health Day, we’re taking you through your day and busting some of those myths for you:
Morning: Being a morning person isn’t real and tea is not breakfast, folks!
Our body has a natural clock but it isn’t to be trusted all the time. At the bottom of your brain is the hypothalamus that is connected to the photosensitive cells of your eyes which react to natural light. It is this natural light that tells you its time to wake up. When its night time, melatonin (secreted by your pineal glands) tells your brain to get some shut-eye. It’s a 24-hour cycle. The process is simple but it's complicated by artificial light and before you know it, your brain is confused about when to go to bed. As you push bedtime further, it becomes harder to wake up in the morning. So that's why being a morning person isn't biologically possible.
Once natural light wakes you up fully (if you live anywhere in India) you head to the kitchen to get tea. Now, tea is great but most of the country gets tricked into thinking its breakfast and tends to forget following it up with food. This is specially common in the rural areas. That my friend, is the effect of a certain tea brand commercial that packaged tea as a morning routine staple. Sips to that!
Mid-Work Slump: Some of the medication you’re having is banned in most parts of the world
You get to work and the little sliver of your morning energy begins to fade off. Like any member of the urban workforce, you think maybe its time to take a “mild” pill that helps you ensure you don’t fall sick later. Casually taking a pill is so common that you won’t think twice of it, even if I ask you to. Most off-the-counter medication in India is comprised of banned pills. These pills are bad for health and in some cases lethal in the long run. Check out the case study on Aspirin, your favourite headache pill. Aspirin is banned in the UK and in 2017 Delhi also banned the over-the-counter sale of like Aspirin, Disprin, Brufen, Voveran as it is a threat to dengue patients.
Lunch: Protein-heavy food doesn’t take ages to digest
It's time to replenish with nutritious food but you are watching what you eat (at least in the smaller ways, you picked brown bread right?) so you go for a salad instead of the meaty subway sandwich. Let’s sort this out - our body’s digestive system is pretty good at doing what it does. Your tummy won’t turn into pizza dough for the rest of the day if you choose protein- heavy food for lunch. It takes about three to four hours to digest lunch which is pretty common regardless of the kind of food you eat.
Late Afternoon: Watching TV won’t give you glasses, that’s just a myth your parents made-up
Binge-watching or casually watching a movie is a huge part of the video streaming culture we’re all lucky to be a part of. Remember the dark days when your parents nagged you into switching the TV off. Yes, TV screen exposure to the eyes isn’t great and it causes a lot of strain but it cannot damage your eyesight for you to resort to wearing glasses. Vision correction is required when you are near or far sighted and that is something that can be caused only by genetics or certain physical trauma/injuries. Question: Why do young kids at four have thick glasses? There’s no way they watched enough TV in their lifetime. Watching too much TV isn’t as bad as your parents made it out to be.
Evening: Holistic wellness is for Instagram models
Well, this isn't entirely a myth but c'mon, healing crystals? Really, guys? Instagram has a way of making life look amazing through the filters. It cleans up a lot more than just your enlarged pores in selfies. Holistic health isn’t just a wellness approach, it is also a very smart marketing strategy. They first make you feel like bad people for buying regular soap and then suggest you try expensive organic sold (the making process isn’t mentioned on the back) and that is somehow supposed to make you look and feel healthier. With the same popular approach comes the call for veganism, cutting our dairy and basically switching every habit you’ve followed since you were a kid. Now that has repercussions. Before you know it, they have you trying yoga poses and chakra crystals that honestly, no educated person should believe in.
Dinner: Calories eaten at night are no different than calories eaten during the day
Skipping rice for dinner, are we? A few extra servings of rice at night will make you fat and that is why dinner should be light. That’s one of the most common health perceptions we have. But according to studies, it is no different than consuming caloric content during the day. You are welcome to avoid calories and make better eating choices but it’ll have the same effect on you in the night as it will during the day.
Before Bed-time: Google knows nothing about your symptoms
When you’re done with the day, in the late hours of the night, anxiety kicks in (because of course, it does). Your mind questions things seconds before bedtime and you get an urge to Google the questions you have. While you may Google to check theories of your favourite Avenger, please refrain from doing so for health symptoms. Google will tell you that you have cancer and that’s just one click away from more anxiety that will escalate and ruin your sleep cycle further. And then as you’ve been told, morning will come much later.
It's important to be mindful about your health. Try making informed choices, be kind to your body and don’t take your health for granted. Do get yourself to see a doctor if you think something isn’t right and rely only on professional medical sources. Good health goes well with good habits and while we’re busting myths - Homeopathy is a lie!
