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Five
Unhealthy Practices You Can Live With
You started your day looking forward to a couple of cups
of coffee and ended it really looking forward to a cocktail
or two. You had eggs for breakfast and a steak for lunch,
and you spent more hours at work yesterday than you've spent
at the gym in the last two months.
You know better, and you really want to do better, but
you assume being healthy demands the kind of time and energy
you don't have — and the type of sacrifices you'd rather
not make.
Every year it's the same thing: Your doctor lectures you
about your cholesterol or your weight, and you leave his
office determined to change.
But improving your health doesn't necessarily mean you
have to live on bean curd and wheat grass. In fact, some
of the indulgences you count among your bad habits —
liquor, caffeine, fatty foods — may actually help extend
your life.
Drink Up; Fight Back on Fat
For example, even though Americans have long been warned
against the evils of drink, a growing body of evidence suggests
that having a glass of wine with dinner, or an after-work
cocktail, may actually make you healthier than the abstainers
of the world.
A study published in January 2003 by The New England Journal
of Medicine showed moderate drinkers had a 30 percent to
35 percent lower incidence of heart attack than nondrinkers.
In February, researchers at Tulane University's School
of Public Health found light drinking can reduce the risk
of stroke by 30 percent. (And, no, your odds of reducing
the risk of a stroke don't increase if you drink more.)
Similarly, the perils of fat have been blown out of proportion.
Unlike mankind, not all fats are created equal. Consumption
of unsaturated fats may actually lower cholesterol levels
and decrease the risk of heart disease.
Even the dietary guidelines of the American Heart Association
recommend that about 30 percent of your calories come from
fat — meaning there's room for the occasional indulgence.
A Little Exercise Won't Hurt You
But it's not just about consumption. Americans not only
tend to eat and drink more than most other people, we also
tend to exercise less and stress more than those in other
cultures.
(Thanks to the global economy, the rest of the world is
catching up to us here. The traditional Spanish siesta,
for example, is nearly as extinct as the Spanish empire.)
The good news is that you might not be as unhealthy as
you think. Not only is a little booze good for the old ticker,
but it's much harder to get a compound stress fracture sitting
on your couch.
Bear in mind, every year millions of Americans spend millions
of dollars visiting emergency rooms because of everything
from shin splints to heart attacks in their quest for better
health.
So, while many of us would like to shed a few pounds and
make our cardiologists smile, it doesn't have to be as grueling
as you would imagine. In fact, anything that allows you
the occasional martini can't be too bad.
Now, for the Five Unhealthy Habits
You Can Live With:
Unhealthy Habit, No. 1
Caffeine's Fix: Turns out that cup of java does more than
just keep you from dozing off and drooling on your desk.
Coffee can enhance exercise performance and concentration
and, because of the metabolic effects of caffeine, can help
prevent gallstone and kidney stone formation and reduce
your risk of colon cancer. A 2000 study published in The
Journal of the American Medical Association even found a
lower incidence of Parkinson's disease among coffee drinkers.
Be warned, however, that too much caffeine can cause sleep
problems and jitters — and sodas and gourmet coffee
drinks can be loaded with extra sugar and calories.
Unhealthy Habit, No. 2
Fat. … So?: "Not all fats are bad," says
Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, associate professor of medicine and
human nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, "and there are some that seem to have
a protective effect." Fat is also a vital part of satiety:
A 2001 Harvard study found that adding fat to low-calorie
diets actually helped participants lose weight. The key,
Cheskin stresses, is to limit the amount of saturated and
trans fats you take in from rich dairy products, full-fat
meats, and packaged cookies and snacks; consume more of
the unsaturated fats found in olive oil, nuts and fish.
Unhealthy Habit, No. 3
The Good News on Booze: Cheers! Numerous studies have shown
moderate drinking can raise good-cholesterol levels, reduce
precancerous growths in the colon, lower the risk of cardiovascular
disease, and even protect against senility and Alzheimer's
disease. The National Institutes of Health define moderate
drinking as two drinks a day for men and one drink daily
for women. The caveat is that drinking can quickly go from
healthy to harmful. Heavy drinking increases your risk of
accidents, liver and heart disease, many types of cancer
and acting like a buffoon at office parties. So drink to
your health, not till you're hung over.
Unhealthy Habit, No. 4
Safety in Sloth: The Consumer Product Safety Commission
estimates that 1 million 35-to-54-year-olds sustained medically
attended sports injuries in 1998 — a pile of stress
fractures, broken bones and muscle tears that cost more
than $18.7 billion. If your goals are simply health and
the ability to button your pants, abandon the notion of
competing in a triathlon and find a way to fit in some activity
every week. "Don't consider modest amounts of exercise
to be a waste of time," says Dr. Cheskin of Johns Hopkins.
He says walking throughout the day, taking the stairs and
just getting off your duff every so often can add up and
provide the health benefits of a trip to the gym.
Unhealthy Habit, No. 5
Stressing the Positive: Stress is actually a useful reaction
that helps the body prepare to deal with physical and mental
challenges. Bouts of it can make you more productive, sharper
and far more interesting than someone who exists in a constant
state of calm. Stress only becomes a negative when it's
constant rather than episodic, but stressing about the stress
in your life is hardly a productive exercise. Identify something
or somewhere that relaxes you and carve out time for it
every week to counter the tensions in your life.
Article Source: ABCNews.com
Article Author: N/A
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