Bad Habits That Can Speed Up the Aging Process
Look, we all are guilty of one bad habit or another, but did you realize that some of those bad habits are going to actually help speed up the aging process? So, if you are trying to stay young a little bit longer you might want to take note of some of your bad habits and if any of them are mentioned here you might consider revising some of them in the future.
One common bad habit a lot of people tend to participate in is keeping hours like you use to do when you were in high school and college. You find yourself on the go all day and then when it comes to going to bed at a responsible time you might find yourself staying up and watching some late night show every night.
Not everyone of course is always going to get that perfect eight hours sleep each night but you really should try to achieve at least 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. It is suggested that a person should try turning off their alarm one night and just sleep, to see just how much sleep you do get before you are awakened by that alarm each morning. God to bed at a reasonable time and your body is going to love you for it and reward you.
If you have a sweet tooth you may be helping the hands of time to operate a little bit faster on your aging clock. If you diet is packed with sugars it will not only take it's toll on the old waistline but some believe that I actually begins to make the skin get dull and causes wrinkles. This is because as we age we have a process going on inside of our bodies called glycation and this is where the sugar that is in your blood begins to attach to the proteins and then they form harmful molecules that produce what they call advanced glycation end products or AGE for short.
So the more sugars you put into your body the more AGE you are going to produce. This will eventually damage the collagen and elastin proteins that are in your body and this is what keeps the skin firm and elastic like. To fix this habit you should try to limit your sugar intake to about 10 percent of your total calorie intake. Remember that every 160 calories is like adding 10 teaspoons of sugar to your diet.
Stress, we all have it, but we do need to try and lower it big time. Simply put when you are stressed out you just don't feel good mentally or physically. It is a proven fact that an over amount of stress will increase the hormone cortisol and norepinephrine in the blood and this will increase the blood pressure and slows down your immune system. Stress will also over time, begin to slow down our healing process as well as make the arteries of our body begin to harden and can even shrink some areas of the brain that control our learning and memory processes and change our mood leading us to feel older as well.
We know that we can't get rid of stress completely but we can teach ourselves how to manage it. Just teaching yourself simple breathing exercises can help lower the effects of stress.
Blasting your Mp3 player, iPod or stereo too loud may help you rock out when you are in the mood, but it really isn't doing your ears any good. Your parents knew what they were talking about when they'd always yell at you saying "Turn that stuff down!". Hearing loss does develop over many, many years but can be sped up if you are continually exposing yourself to high decibels of sound, such as prolonged exposure to very, very loud music.
If you set your Mp3 or iPod at even 50 percent it's volume you can actually be exposing your ears to over a 100 decibels of sound! So, lower the music to a comfortable level and use the type of ear buds that will block out the outside sounds so you can hear your music better. And make sure to wear earplugs when you happen to be around machinery that produce loud noises like a lawn mower for example.
There are a lot more bad habits out there that could be covered, but these are just a few that you may not even have realized were bad habits, let a lone ones that could actually take away the ability for you to stay young longer.
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