Bad evening habits must be broken

Brushing teeth after dinner, spending little time sleeping, watching TV and using mobile phone a lot,... are bad habits that shorten your life.

Brushing teeth after dinner

Dentists warn that brushing teeth immediately after dinner or having drinks of high acidity levels can lead to dental erosion. They recommend that you should brush your precious teeth after at least half an hour or optimally an hour.

Too little sleep

lf your sleep doesn't last up to 6-8 hours per day, your look will be considerately deteriorated.

However, puffy eyes and sallow complexion are not the main concern that lack of sleep brings about. A three-year research on 5600 people with normal weight and stature shows that lack of sleep increase the risk of stroke and heart disease by 25 %.

 Too little sleep and too much sleep do harm to your health.

 

Watching TV too much

Australian scientists discovered that each hour spent on watching TV deprives you of 22 minutes of your longevity. Meanwhile, those who watch TV 6 hours per day on average live 5 years shorter than who don't.

 Using mobile phones

Many people take advantage of bedtime to play games, read information and chat with friends on mobile phones. This cannot make you more relaxed but it can make you tired on the contrary.

 

A recent research column on Chinese journal of "Preventive medicine" says: 20-minute use of mobile phone after 9 p.m will increase the level of tiredness, and even have bad effect on the ability to concentrate on work the next day.

 

The result of a study on 2000 peole in England shows that 50% of them every night after getting into bed still spend at least 30 minutes using mobile phones, decreasing time for sex, sleep, and sharing of  feelings. This may affect their married life.

 

Therefore, the best way to cope with this is turning off your mobile phones after 9 p.m and putting them far away when sleeping.

 

Watching thrilling TV programs

 

 11 p.m to 6 a.m is the golden time of sleep. In order to have a healthy sleep, you'd rather go to bed before 11 p.m.

Traditional oriental medicine shows that heart sleeps before eyes - in other words let your heart fall into sleep calmly then close your eyes and deep into your sleep and as such you certainly fall into a sound sleep.

Therefore, you should avoid watching thrilling fillms or the ones with episodes of high tension, fighting, gun fights. You also should not sing karaoke, play mah-jong which makes your brain overactive, difficult to end the excitement of cerebrum in time, leading to hard sleep and dream.

 

The next day you wake up, you will feel mentally tired. Before going to bed, you can listen to some soft music, read books to make you easy to be deep into sleep.

 

Taking calcium and vitamin supplement

Many people take calcium and vitamin supplements before bed but this will make your stomach work continuouslywithout rest. 

Experts recommend that you should take calcium and vitamin supplements before/with/after 3 daily meals. (depending on the type of vitamin)

In principle, apart from medical advice of taking medicine for disease treatment in the evening, the best thing to do is not taking supplements and eating nutritious food after 9p.m.

Moreover, when you sleep, your body parts also fall into sleep's state, and their functions start to "rest" so it's not a good idea for food intake at night.   

Eating late at night

 According to traditional oriental medicine, disturbed stomach can cause sleeping problems. Comfortable stomach will ensure a better sleep

Thus, 2 hours before bed, do not eat anything more to avoid more excretion and more work of stomach.

 If you feel so hungry before bed, you can have a light meal like bread. In addition, you shouldn't eat too much and eat hot food. Instead, you should have   a snack.

Food such as potatoes, onions, kinds of beans, nappa cabbage should be eaten little in the evening. You also shouldn't eat hot spice such as chillis, garlics to avoid making your stomach uncomfortable, influencing on your sleep.

Overthinking of work

Many people have habits of recalling what they have done in a day before bed, then they start to think of work plan for the next day.

 Someone even remind themselves "there will be an important meeting tomorrow, so I must have enough sleep today". As a result, they keep thinking about it, and it makes it hard to sleep. 

Your cerebrum also needs enough rest for tomorrow's work. The best way is to completely isolate you from your work before bed.

 Also, it helps us to escape from pressure at work, and recover our health.

Drinking too much water

Drinking too much water before bed will make you awake to go to toilets at mid-night, which affects your sleep. lf you are thirsty, you can drink a little. A lot of people have habits of drinking milk at night. 

Not to get up at night, you can drink little or half a cup of milk before bed.

Food which contains caffeine will excite nervous system and benefit diuresis at some certain points, leading to insomnia. Therefore, the best thing is not to drink coffee after 9 p.m

Many people used to think that drinking alcohol before bed would make it easier for them to sleep but some researches prove that it can cause broken sleeps, and it's hard for them to have a sound sleep.

Physical inactivity

 Those who sit for a long time may take high risk of lung disease, heart disease, cancer disease and obesity.  Doing exercise regularly, activities will help prevent you from those diseases and live longer.

A study of the British journal of sports medicine shows that those who exercise more than 150 minutes/week live up to 10-13 years longer than those who lack physical activity.

When you sleep, you shouldn't think of anything. If you want to recall what you have done or work out a plan for tomorrow, the best thing to do is rewriting these things before 9 p.m, then going to bed.

Source: Ngay nay online

Translated into English by Tran Thi Hong Phuc and Luong Minh Dieu.