7 Everyday Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Health And How To Stop

We all know what the big health no-nos are: smoking (obv), baking in the sun, eating loads of junk food… But what about all the little not-so-great things you do every day that could be just as bad?

- Liesl Robertson 

BAD HABIT 1

STAYING UP LATE TO WATCH TV

We’ve all been there: it’s getting late, but you’re still sprawled on the couch, flicking through channels because you don’t feel like getting up, tidying the kitchen and washing your face. Before you know it, it’s the dead of night and you’re still hanging in there, just to see who the killer is on a 1994 rerun of Law and Order (one of those where Chris Noth is still sexy and brooding). Or it’s 2am on a Wednesday but your Game of Thrones marathon is going strong, because the last one ended on a cliffhanger and you have to watch ‘just one more’. You are not alone.

‘People steal time from sleep just to have time to relax,’ says James Findley, PhD, clinical director of the behavioural sleep medicine programme at the University of Pennsylvania. Besides being bleary-eyed and sluggish the next day, lack of sleep can also affect your coordination and decisionmaking abilities, as well as your short- and long-term memory. Just one night without enough sleep can cause elevated blood pressure all through the next day, weaken your immune system and affect your mood, circulation and food choices. It also magnifies the effects of alcohol consumption and ups your chances of being involved in an accident.

A Harvard Medical School study estimated that sleeping less than five hours a night increases the risk of death by about 15%. Depriving your body of sleep over a sustained period of time can also cause weight gain, heart disease, depression and diabetes. And according to Anton Fourie, clinical technologist at the Milnerton Sleep Lab, about 40% of South Africans aren’t getting enough sleep.

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