7 ‘Healthy’ Habits That May Actually Be Hurting Us

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Health has become the focus of millions of people in recent years which has turned it into a billion dollar industry. Gyms and wellness centers compete furiously with each other and try to have the most group fitness classes, the best price or the nicest facility in order to attract new members. Magazines advertisements and commercial breaks on television are saturated with devices and programs that claim to be able to help people lose weight, quit smoking or look like the doctored images of their favorite fitspo stars on Instagram. Plenty of people need little more than to hear the word “healthy” to decide that they need to buy whatever product is claiming to be able to improve their health. Unfortunately, those good intentions sometimes make things worse than ever as there are a number of so-called healthy foods and habits that are actually terrible for you. You think you are doing what you should to improve your health, but some things may be harming your body instead. Here are seven common “healthy” habits that may actually be hurting you.

Too Much Sunscreen

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Recent years have seen a much greater understanding of many things, one of which is how much damage overexposure to the sun can cause. Far from simply dealing with a few days of painful redness and some embarrassing peeling later, sun damage can cause everything from swiftly aging skin to lethal skin cancer. As that information spread, people began to wear more and more sunscreen or avoid going outside when the sun was at its peak. Although this has been good for people’s skin, it can cause a host of other problems. Most people already spend the vast majority of their days indoors. When they are then careful to avoid the sun on their downtime, they run the risk of suffering from a vitamin D deficiency. Exposure to sunlight is the main trigger for your body to produce vitamin D since few people consume enough of it to fulfill their need. When you do not have enough of this essential vitamin, you can suffer everything from chronic exhaustion to severe cornea damage.

Wiping Off Counters

Most people want to avoid having crumbs spread throughout their kitchens and dining areas. In addition to looking disgusting, crumbs and spills are siren songs for a host of bugs. The last thing anyone wants is to wake up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and find ants or worse, roaches, munching on the spilled spaghetti sauce you left on the counter. So, after eating, you take a towel or sponge and wipe down the counters. That’s a good habit, right?

Actually you may be doing more harm than good. If you consistently reuse the same sponge or towel, you are simply spreading bacteria over your counters. A damp towel or sponge that is covered with food particles is a haven for a variety of microbes. If you do not clean the towel or sponge, those microbes get spread all over your counters where they continue to breed. It almost makes you prefer the ants.

Catching Up on Sleep

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Western culture often sees sleep as a necessary evil, and those who sleep shorter hours are often seen as more dedicated and hard-working than those who manage a full night’s sleep on a regular basis. Between social pressure to avoid looking lazy, long working hours and the incredible number of blue-light screens a person encounters each day, most people end up shorting their sleep during the workweek. They then try to make up those lost hours during the weekend. On the surface, working off a sleep debt like this makes sense. In reality, it is a disaster waiting to happen. Having a wildly different sleep schedule on the weekend than during the week makes it very difficult for your body to form a consistent sleep-wake rhythm. Furthermore, it is almost impossible for you to make up all the sleep you miss over two days. Even if you only missed two hours of sleep each night during the week, you would need to sleep for 10 extra hours over the weekend in addition to the healthy amount required. So, if you get five to six hours of sleep during the week, you would need to get ten to eleven hours of sleep each night over the weekend in order to work off your sleep debt. This is unlikely to be something you can do on a regular basis, and a growing body of research shows that sleep debt cannot be worked off over two days anyway. Instead, it is far better to get an extra hour of sleep each night for several weeks and maintain a consistent sleep-wake schedule.

Going Gluten-Free

For some reason, the health gurus of the internet and self-help section of the bookstore have decided that gluten is synonymous with weight gain. It is true that gluten is largely found in bread and pasta, two foods that are relatively high in calories and usually eaten in large quantities, but gluten itself is not the enemy. Unless you are gluten intolerant or have celiac disease, avoiding gluten entirely is a bad idea. Gluten-free foods tend to be heavily processed and lack the nutrients that gluten contains. Those who eat a gluten-free diet risk deficiencies in nutrients such as iron, calcium, fiber, folate, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin. Those who choose to go gluten-free also run the risk of losing the ability to digest it. Although they used to be able to eat gluten, their body gradually loses the ability to digest it leading to a previously healthy person developing gluten intolerance.

Sugar-Free Sweeteners

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When people are looking to be healthier, sugar and fat are almost always the first two things they cut from their diet. Removing those two things from the menu, however, does not automatically make anyone suddenly like to drink their coffee black. As such, people tend to replace sugar with “healthy” alternatives such as Splenda. Sugar-free sweeteners, however, are actually worse for you in the long run than plain old sugar. Artificial sweeteners are just that, artificial, so they are far more heavily processed than white sugar which itself is already highly processed. Artificial sweeteners also do nothing to sate sugar cravings. Instead, they make them worse. As such, people who replace sugar with artificial sweeteners are more likely to overuse sweeteners and overeat in general. Artificial sweeteners also take longer to leave your system which means that your body will be jittery and unable to sleep for longer if you use artificial sweeteners than if you simply ate sugar.

Choosing the Salad Bar

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Salad is a healthy food. Spinach, romaine lettuce, spring greens, arugula and kale are all packed with nutrients and very low in calories. As such, a person can eat a boatload of salad for very few calories. So, most people who are trying to be healthy make it a point to eat from the salad bar when they go out for lunch or dinner. In theory, this is a wonderful idea. In practice, salad bars are nutritional disasters. Most salad bars are dedicated largely to the toppings you can put on your salad. These toppings often destroy any nutritional benefit you would receive from eating a salad. Between bacon bits, candied nuts, dried fruit and cheese, your “healthy” salad is no better for you than a plate of fried chicken and potatoes. Salad bar salad dressings only make things worse. Healthy salad dressings tend to be based on olive oil and various flavors of vinegar. Salad bar salad dressings tend to be made with cream and other fat-heavy ingredients. Do not be fooled by the “low-fat Italian dressing” either. It is likely still very high in calories and packed with preservatives.

Taking Supplements

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Almost everyone has heard the horror stories of what can happen to the human body when it is missing or deficient in important nutrients. As such, many people take supplements to help ensure that they are getting enough of the vitamins and nutrients they need. In theory, there is nothing wrong with this. If you have reason to be concerned that you are not getting enough calcium, then taking a supplement may be a good idea. The problem is that many people who take supplements assume that they are getting all the nutrients they need from their supplements. In reality, you are best served by consuming the proper foods in order to get the nutrients you need. While supplements may be necessary to control severe deficiencies, dietary changes are your best bet when it comes to ensuring you do not end up either overdosing on a nutrient or becoming deficient in it again later.

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