Research has shown that oral health impacts the wellness of the entire body. While it’s common knowledge that everyone should clean the teeth every day,     1     .

Treating your teeth as tools

One of the biggest causes of structural damage to teeth is to use them as tools, such as bottle openers and package rippers.     2     “I’ve seen many patients who crack their front teeth because of trying to open something with them.” a dentist said.

    3    

Brushing your teeth twice a day is key to good dental health — but too much force can backfire. Many people think that brushing harder will help remove all the plaque (牙斑) and bacteria, but it can cause tooth wear and sensitivity.

Biting your fingernails

Up to 30% of the population bites their nails.     4     Nail-biting can also chip the teeth. Even though your teeth are harder than nails, they have thinner edges that can chip easily if you bite your nails the wrong way. A few good ways to kick this habit are to keep your nails trimmed short or apply bitter-tasting nail polish.

Snacking all day and consuming too much sugar

    5     — especially now that so many of us work remotely — but when we eat, it triggers an acid release to aid digestion. The frequent acid breaks down teeth and can cause decay over time. Certain foods, particularly sugary substances like soda and candy, are harmful to the teeth.

4 . You’ve most likely heard the news by now: A car-commuting, desk-bound, TV-watching lifestyle can be harmful to our health. All the time that we spend rooted in the chair is linked to increased risks of so many deadly diseases that experts have named this modern-day health epidemic the “sitting disease”.

Sitting for too long slows down the body’s metabolism (新陈代谢) and the way enzymes (酶) break down our fat reserves, raising both blood sugar levels and blood pressure. Small amounts of regular activity, even just standing and moving around, throughout the day is enough to bring the increased levels back down. And those small amounts of activity add up — 30 minutes of light activity in two or three-minute bursts can be just as effective as a half-hour block of exercise. But without that activity, blood sugar levels and blood pressure keep creeping up, steadily damaging the inside of the arteries and increasing the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other serious diseases. In essence, fundamental changes in biology occur if you sit for too long.

But wait, you’re a runner. You needn’t worry about the harm of a sedentary lifestyle because you exercise regularly, right? Well, not so fast. Recent studies show that people spend an average of 64 hours a week sitting, whether or not they exercise 150 minutes a week as recommended by World Health Organization (WHO). Regular exercisers, furthermore, are found to be about 30 percent less active on days when they exercise. Overall, most people simply aren’t exercising or moving around enough to counteract all the harm that can result from sitting nine hours or more a day.

Scared straight out of your chair? Good. The remedy is as simple as standing up and taking activity breaks.

6 . The majority of people are unable to commit to a healthy long-term lifestyle — although they are somehow willing to! There seems to be a paradox here.

We become more aware of the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle on a regular basis. Yet, we just don’t manage to. We may engage in a variety of short-term projects: 1-week detox retreats or 1-month severe diets. But the benefits these short-term activities produce are quickly lost as we are dragged back to our “bad” habits in the longer-term. The inability to stick to a healthy lifestyle makes us feel frustrated and unhealthy. What is the way out then?

The first step is to understand the problem more deeply: What are the main obstacles of pursuing a healthy lifestyle? Which are the fundamental aspects to a healthy lifestyle? How are they interconnected? If we understand the problem and its components more deeply, we are one step closer to coming up with a solution.

Surveys show how in 85% of cases in the US and Europe, the main obstacles to pursuing a healthy lifestyle are to be found among lack of awareness, time, self-control and guidelines.

“Humans tend to heavily discount the future, meaning things that we have now are more valuable to us than things we’ll have in a few years.” said A. Braun in 2019. For this reason, we cannot correctly weigh the costs and consequences of choosing unhealthy habits today, and we tend to give in to short-term pleasures, although this means reducing longer-term benefits.

We deliberately choose to experience and enjoy short-term pleasure, mainly because of a stress condition we may have, or because of personality. The underlying reason for these behaviors is primarily stress, as neuroscience discoveries in fact suggest, “In general, stress results in habit behavior in humans, so dealing first and foremost with stress is probably advisable when you are looking to make lasting changes. Luckily, your brain can change throughout life. Decreasing stress could finally help your brain become less easily influenced by habit.”

8 . It’s an age-old question: How can we extend our lives and make the years we have as disease and pain-free as possible? If you look on social media, any number of so-called experts are providing quick-fix tips for extending longevity. One suggestion, according to experts is that if you want to extend your life, you need to start today.

LeBrasseur is the co-director of the Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. He says that without question the research shows that exercise is the most effective and healthy means to extend healthy aging. The goal, he says, is to decrease disease rate until the very end of life and exercise is a great tool for this. According to LeBrasseur, exercise seems particularly effective at prevent aging. Extensive evidence has shown that exercise like running, swimming, biking and lifting weights extends heart and cognitive health.

But while structured exercise is important, daily nonstructural movement is also key to living a long and healthy life. Online shopping, screen time and virtual everything have engineered movement right out of our day, which works against healthy aging, says LeBrasseur. From grocery shopping to walking to the mailbox to parking further away from your destination, expanding daily movement is best if you want to prosper in later years. “Physical inactivity is one of the biggest challenges to healthy aging,” he says.

Beyond movement, LeBrasseur says those with positive attitude in their life also tend to be happier and healthier. This is hard to quantify compared to exercise and we don’t know the working system, but it could be related to the fact that positivity contributed to health.

The third leg to our healthy aging stool is, not surprisingly, diet. Three times a day, every day, your diet is your daily medicine if you choose the right foods. And according to an abundance of evidence, the Mediterranean diet — a way of eating inspired by those living near the Mediterranean Sea — is the healthiest way to live a long life.

In the end, longevity is about the long game. Exercise, movement, a positive outlook and a Mediterranean diet are simple enough, but it takes efforts to make them happen. Still, being able to move, love, eat and enjoy yourself later in life, now that’s a worthwhile devotion.

9 . Everyone wants to have a healthy heart. The good news is that some simple, everyday habits can make a big difference in your ability to live a healthy lifestyle. Here are the worst habits for your heart, and how to avoid them.

1. Leaving depression unchecked

    1     It can cause damage to your heart. Everyone feels this way some of the time and how you handle these emotions can affect your heart health. Those who are likely to internalize (使内在化) stress are in greater danger. Research has shown the benefit of social support.    2    

2. Withdrawing from the world

It’s no secret that on some days, other human beings can seem annoying and just difficult to get along with.    3     People with stronger contact with family, friends, and society in general tend to live longer, healthier lives. You should reach out to others and keep in touch whenever you can.

3. Overeating

    4    Try to eat less, avoid oversize portions, and replace sugary drinks with water. Doctors also suggest cutting portion sizes for high-calorie carbohydrates (碳水化合物) and watching out for foods labeled “low-fat”, which are often high in calories.

4.    5    

“The most heart-healthy diet is a plant-based diet”, Dr. Ostfeld says. That means loading up on fruit and vegetables, nuts, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and protein, and keeping junk food to a minimum. Research has found that people who eat more than five servings of fruit and vegetables a day had about 20% lower risk of heart disease and stroke than people who ate less than three servings per day.

10 . Our working lives are becoming more flexible. For many, working from home has become the new trend, with some people finding the coziest place to do this is in bed! But is this really the best place for your mind and body to carry out your job?

A “duvet day” used to be an informal way of describing taking a day off sick from work, but with improvements in technology, such as good Wi-Fi, you can now do most of your work tasks in bed covered with your duvet or wearing your nightclothes. The benefits are obvious: no travel time to work, no need to get dressed or even get out of bed-unless you want a cup of tea!

The trend seems to be growing. But for some, it’s not a matter of choice-it might be the only spare space in their home where they can work. In the UK. workers aged 18 to 34 are the least likely to have a proper desk and chair and are twice as likely to work from bed than older workers.

Online sellers have reported a huge increase in people searching for laptop stands and support pillows. Despite their convenience for your work, the reality is that your long-term health could suffer.

Working from bed can also affect your mental health. Sophie Bostock, founder of The Sleep Scientist, told the BBC, “If you don't have a good day at work, influenced by stress, deadlines, an awkward conversation with your boss, you start to change your connections with your bed.” Stress, of course, can lead to sleep difficulty and the only cure for that is a long Zoom work meeting to help you doze off!