Hitting the gym and eating right? Still falling sick? Everyday habits which are seemingly innocuous might be messing with your health, without you even noticing.
Take a closer look at your lifestyle, chuck these habits and you’ll feel so much better!
1. Using Your Phone in the Loo
This is something we have all been guilty of doing at some point in time. Or perhaps all the time. Sure, it’s a great time to play catch up without anyone bothering you. But it’s also unhealthy and unhygienic.
Toilet seats, flush, and your bathroom sink – they have dangerous bacteria crawling all over them. Touching your phone between pooping and washing hands might make it easy for the bacteria to get an entry in your life. There will be accompanying guests too. Think UTIs (urinary tract infection) and intestinal illnesses.
2. Not Decluttering Your Handbag
Women love their handbags. This is precisely the reason they love to carry almost everything in them. From cosmetics and combs to pepper spray and more, you name it, and you have it. While it may be convenient to have everything handy, it certainly isn’t healthy. Microbes such as norovirus, MRSA breed in the handbags if not decluttered for a long time.
Clear your bag occasionally and wipe it with a good antibacterial cloth. Also, pack light?
3. Not Changing Your Bed Sheets Regularly
Do you find yourself tied up at work so much that coming home simply feels like a stopover? It happens to so many of us with hectic schedules and erratic work lives. But what also happens to a lot of us is that we simply neglect changing our bed sheets and pillow covers. Our defence? The bed sheets aren’t dirty. But there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Dust mites love your empty, damp bed. The more you are away, the more they love it. Besides, sheets also accumulate a lot of your bodily secretions, sweat, dust and more. Sleeping on these may trigger allergies or asthma.
Change your sheets at least twice a week. Wash the used sheets in warm water and keep your bed sheets covered when not sleeping.
4. Eating at Your Desk
Eating at your desk not only invites rats and rodents, making your workplace unhygienic, but also cultivates a very unhealthy habit. Sample this: You touch the keyboard, touch the food, and eat it. The bacteria from your keyboard and desk move to the food, and ultimately your stomach. Yuck!
Always eat elsewhere, and wash your hands before and after meals. There’s a reason we are taught this basic hygiene rule as a kid.
There’s more to it.
Eating in a relaxed and happy environment helps early satiety. Always eat at proper times, away from the desk as it is great to get off your desk and mingle with colleagues. The whole idea is to take a break , relax, refresh, and socialise . All of these add a lot more than just providing nutrients from your food.Dr Rupali Datta, Nutritionist, Consultant Nutritionist, Fortis Escorts
5. Not Cleaning Your TV Remote and Kitchen Sponges
Love binging while watching TV? Ever bothered to clean the remote? If you haven’t already, now is the time to do it. The frequency with which TV remotes are handled, the number of hands that they exchange in a day, makes the remotes dirty and laden with bacteria. Clean your remote at regular intervals.
But your kitchen sponges? Cleaning them when they get old is a bad idea. They were never meant to be kept for eternity. It is replete with bacteria which gets carried around spreading diseases. According to a study conducted by Markus Egert, a microbiologist at the University of Furtwangen in Germany and his team, kitchen sponges “contain the same density of bacteria you can find in human stool samples.” The study also suggests,
There are probably no other places on earth with such high bacterial densities.
Keep the sponge clean, let it air-dry after usage, wash it, and remember – they come with a shelf-life. Replace them every week. Really!
(With inputs from The New York Times)
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1. Using Your Phone in the Loo
This is something we have all been guilty of doing at some point in time. Or perhaps all the time. Sure, it’s a great time to play catch up without anyone bothering you. But it’s also unhealthy and unhygienic.
Toilet seats, flush, and your bathroom sink – they have dangerous bacteria crawling all over them. Touching your phone between pooping and washing hands might make it easy for the bacteria to get an entry in your life. There will be accompanying guests too. Think UTIs (urinary tract infection) and intestinal illnesses.
2. Not Decluttering Your Handbag
Women love their handbags. This is precisely the reason they love to carry almost everything in them. From cosmetics and combs to pepper spray and more, you name it, and you have it. While it may be convenient to have everything handy, it certainly isn’t healthy. Microbes such as norovirus, MRSA breed in the handbags if not decluttered for a long time.
Clear your bag occasionally and wipe it with a good antibacterial cloth. Also, pack light?
3. Not Changing Your Bed Sheets Regularly
Do you find yourself tied up at work so much that coming home simply feels like a stopover? It happens to so many of us with hectic schedules and erratic work lives. But what also happens to a lot of us is that we simply neglect changing our bed sheets and pillow covers. Our defence? The bed sheets aren’t dirty. But there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Dust mites love your empty, damp bed. The more you are away, the more they love it. Besides, sheets also accumulate a lot of your bodily secretions, sweat, dust and more. Sleeping on these may trigger allergies or asthma.
Change your sheets at least twice a week. Wash the used sheets in warm water and keep your bed sheets covered when not sleeping.
4. Eating at Your Desk
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Eating at your desk not only invites rats and rodents, making your workplace unhygienic, but also cultivates a very unhealthy habit. Sample this: You touch the keyboard, touch the food, and eat it. The bacteria from your keyboard and desk move to the food, and ultimately your stomach. Yuck!
Always eat elsewhere, and wash your hands before and after meals. There’s a reason we are taught this basic hygiene rule as a kid.
There’s more to it.
Eating in a relaxed and happy environment helps early satiety. Always eat at proper times, away from the desk as it is great to get off your desk and mingle with colleagues. The whole idea is to take a break , relax, refresh, and socialise . All of these add a lot more than just providing nutrients from your food.Dr Rupali Datta, Nutritionist, Consultant Nutritionist, Fortis Escorts
5. Not Cleaning Your TV Remote and Kitchen Sponges
Love binging while watching TV? Ever bothered to clean the remote? If you haven’t already, now is the time to do it. The frequency with which TV remotes are handled, the number of hands that they exchange in a day, makes the remotes dirty and laden with bacteria. Clean your remote at regular intervals.
But your kitchen sponges? Cleaning them when they get old is a bad idea. They were never meant to be kept for eternity. It is replete with bacteria which gets carried around spreading diseases. According to a study conducted by Markus Egert, a microbiologist at the University of Furtwangen in Germany and his team, kitchen sponges “contain the same density of bacteria you can find in human stool samples.” The study also suggests,
There are probably no other places on earth with such high bacterial densities.
Keep the sponge clean, let it air-dry after usage, wash it, and remember – they come with a shelf-life. Replace them every week. Really!
(With inputs from The New York Times)
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