13 toxic Habits that are sending you to an early grave
Toxic habits are not just bad habits. They are dangerous habits that are every day taking us closer and faster to the door of death than we realise.
I wrote this short article after writing 103 bad habits you need to quit to be happier, healthier, and more productive. Here, the discussion is more serious.
It is unfortunate that the lifestyle of the average person today makes it easy to fall into many of the toxic habits listed below.
For the sake of our physical and mental health, we need to make effort to keep these behaviours from becoming our habits. Being self-aware and vigilant about your habits will help prevent that.
Perhaps there are people, environments, circumstances, etc. that are pushing you or making it easy for you to develop such toxic habits. Whatever the case may be, you need to find ways of breaking away from these toxic habits forever.
These habits are divided into toxic habits ruining your physical health and those ruining your mental health. Though I will say, many of the habits that affect physical health also silently impact our mental health
Let us begin:
Toxic habits ruining your physical health
- Alcohol- Drinking alcohol more than 14 units of alcohol in a week or 6 units of average strength beer and craving for it often. This also binge drinking of alcohol.
2. Smoking cigarettes – Including nicotine addiction leads to too many diseases to count including lung cancer, brain shrinkage, Alzheimers disease in your later years, diabetes, arthritis, etc.
3. A high sugar diet – White sugar in particular is the most dangerous type of sugar and is, unfortunately, the most used sugar. The white poison as my uncle calls it leads to diabetes, accelerated aging, increased cellular aging, increased risk of depression, cancer, etc.
It is best if you can reduce sugar intake and find healthy alternatives to white sugar there are many of them
4. A poor diet with little to no nutrients – A poor diet is becoming more common every day as people become more used to eating out and adopting junk foods as their daily diet.
Such diet causes obesity, tooth decay, various cancers, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.
5. Stimulants such as coffee, weed, etc. – Stimulants are known to be addictive but that is not the worst part of their side effects. It also damages the brain, causes seizures, headaches, mental illness, damage to the learning and adapting faculty, etc.
6. Chronic stress – Living a high-stress life is all too common now. You simply have to figure out how to stop the stress by changing careers, changing your circle or environment, etc.
If not, will probably end up with mental health problems, personality disorders, heart attacks, heart diseases, stroke, inability to think clearly, etc.
7. Sleep deprivation – This leads to a weakened immunity hence, you keep getting sick, mood instability, memory and concentration issues, being prone to accidents, etc.
8. Sitting all day – This is the big one we are all guilty of. We probably know of the consequence hence why we try to exercise and stay active throughout the day. But the desk jobs will not let us achieve this fully.
Living a sedentary life – where about 80% of your day was spent sitting – will cause diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, heart diseases, anxiety, and depression, etc.
You can combat this by making more effort to stand or walk on your way to your job or at your job, having lunch outside away from your desk, exercising at your desk, replacing your sitting desk with a standing desk, etc. Better health has more suggestions for you
9. Overeating – This is a silent killer for many even if you are eating healthy foods. Overeating significantly contributes to reduced brain function, obesity, the stomach getting ruptured or bursting, fatigue, sleep disorder, etc.
Toxic habits ruining your mental health
- Pessimism – Numerous reserach has shown that negative thoughts and negtive emotions leads to stress, heart attacks, high blood pressure, reduced lifespan, etc. You can find suggestions to improve yourseld on Inc.com.
2. Perfectionism – perfectionists are not the same as high-achievers. perfectionism is when you have an all-or-nothing mindset combined with a crippling fear of failure. Studies have shown that it leads to increased occurrence of anxiety, depression, procrastination, low output, etc.
Perfection doesn’t exist which is why you need to seek help
3. Toxic relationships – Toxic relationships with those close to you pose the most danger. \It cause much internal damage especially to your psyche such as chronic stress, headaches, depression, anxiety, anxiety, low self-esteem, etc.
Being in such a negative place mentally can send you to an early grave.
4. Loneliness and living in isolation – Not having meaningful connections and relationships with other people where we feel heard, important, and a sense of belonging is detrimental to our health. It can lead to low self-esteem, high blood pressure, early dementia , stroke, suicidal thought, depression, etc.
Final thoughts
This is a short post that I thought I should write on habits that are not only bad for us, they can lead to an early grave. It is not an option or a matter of decision. You have to stop doing these toxic habits and seek help if it is beyond your control.
You can seek assistance from a doctor and/or a pyschiatrists. These are habits that are often ingrained in us or our environment and it can be very difficult to stop them alone.
I hope you enjoyed this short post. See you in the next
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
