Habits

Habits play an important role in preservation of health. They should be based on sound knowledge and information, and developed with regular practice. Once formed, they become part of your nature and the task becomes easy to perform. Proper health habit5 form the foundation of a healthy and useful life. Some of the activities which fall within the ambit of habits and which have a direct and very significant effect on health are the following : 

a)  Eating habits : Habits regarding the kind of food and beverages we like to take are laid early in childhood, and parental attitude as well as family environment have a great deal to do with it. Selection of nutritious food conducive to optimum growth, health and output of physical and mental work needs a conscious effort to begin with, but  eventually becomes second nature and habit. Liking for vegetables, cooked and raw, and other nutritious foods and drinks are instilled at a very young age. Not only the quality of.food but the quantity of it is also important. Over eating and gluttony can become a habit. It is easier to over eat than to remain hungry without any physiological or psychological reasons. The daily pattern of eating is also important  how many times you eat in a day and what kind of food you consume each time. The way you like your food to be prepared is important and very much a matter of habit based on the traditions of food preparation in the family. The availability to the body  of the inherent nutrients in food, depends to a very significant extent among other things, upon the methods used in cooking. Some cook rice by boiling in large quantities of water and then throwing the excess water away thereby throwing away all the thiamine; some cook their vegetables so much that they become a mush, thereby not only spoiling their shape, colour and texture but also ruining most of the vitamin C present in  them; some like to sieve the flour through a fine sieve for making roti thereby reducing the roughage so very necessary for the body. Many of us are not aware that giving chocolates or sweets to the children an hour or less before meal time kills their appetite for food. Drinking of plain water is necessary for the body particularly in the summer and one should have the habit of doing so, and not just consume sweetened and carbonated  drinks which can interfere with appetite and also increase the acid content of the stomach. Taking alcoholic drinks in moderation and only occasionally does not do harm but taking them regularly and excessively as a matter of habit is highly undesirable. The pattern of meals and also how you eat your food becomes a matter of habit. Since eating is only a part of one's daily activities, the day's food requirements need to be divided into meals in a pattern which suits the convenience of all members of the family. Adherence to this meal pattern would then be desirable. 

b) Smoking : Smoking is injurious to health and is a practice that very quickly becomes a habit. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes difficult, though not impossible, to get rid  of it. The best way not to smoke is not to start smoking. Smoking harms digestion, causes irritation in the throat, coughing and wheezing. The relationship between tobacco smoking and cancer, heart disease and emphysema-bronchitis is well established. Smokers are from 10 to 16 times as likely to die of lung cancer as non-smokers. Similar relationship exist. between smokers and non-smokers with heart disease and lung ailments. One of the possible, although rare, effects of smoking is the aggravation of symptoms of a particular insidious circulatory disorder known as Berger's disease. One of the effects of nicotine is a drop in skin temperature. Smoking a single cigarette can cause the temperature of the fingers and toes to drop as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit; the average is a little more than a 5'-  degree drop. The temperature change results from constriction of the blood vessels at the extremities. This may result in development of blood clots in the vessels that have been contracted, cutting off the flow of blood in the tissues of the area, causing numbness or pain. If not attended to immediately it can have serious consequences. Another effect of smoking is the accumulation of carbon monoxide in the blood-  it is a lethal gas. It gets permanently  locked into the red blood cell chemistry so that the cells can no longer perform their normal function of transporting oxygen to the body tissues. With the oxygen-carrying capacity of part of the red blood cells wiped out in this way brain cells and other tissues suffer a mild oxygen starvation. Abstinence from smoking over a period of time can bring the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood to normal.

In families in which either or both parents smoke it become a sign of adulthood  for the children to smoke. A parent who smokes will find it difficult to keep his children from doing so excepting perhaps by convincing them of his desire and efforts to stop smoking and making them see how hard it is, and how deleterious its effects are on health. Every effort should he made by parent5 and society to make children aware of this and to discourage them from starting to smoke. 

c)  Bowel Habits : After the food has been digested and absorbed into the body, the remaining solid material that passes into the large intestines consists largely of indigestible component of food, such as cellulose, and substances that have been broken down in the body in the normal process of cell death and renewal, such as bile components. The main component of the matter that goes into the large intestines, however, is water. The contents as they enter the large intestine are like a watery soup. The principal activity of the large intestines, besides eliminating body wastes, is to reabsorb water into the circulation through its walls. Since villi are absent in the large intestines the forward movement.of the waste matter is slow in this area, and water has chance to get reabsorbed. As water gets reabsorbed the contents turn from watery to semi-solid faeces.  Bacteria, which are present here in large numbers, begin to decompose the remaining solid material. These bacteria do not harm the rest of the body because they remain inside the large intestine and are eliminated with the faeces. Nerve endings in this part of the body give a signal to the brain that the bowels need to be evacuated. It you do not respond to this signal within a reasonable time and hold it back, more water will tend to be reabsorbed from the faecal matter turning it into a hard mass which is difficult to evacuate. This is what generally y causes constipation. 

Not every one has a bowel movement every day, and some have more than one a, day. There is a considerable variation in bowel movement patterns. However, any abrupt and very much out of the ordinary change in the normal pattern of bowel movement should be taken a note of. 

Constipation is the difficult or infrequent evacuation of faeces. The urge to defecate is normally triggered by the presence of faeces in the rectum and this in turn is the result of the intake of food into the stomach. Habitual disregard of the urge to empty the bowels reduces intestinal motion and leads to constipation. Cancer of the colon often produces changes in bowel habits that persist longer than normal constipation or diarrhoea, or even both alternating, hence any prolonged problems need to be investigated. Evacuating bowels if done at regular times each day becomes a habit and one's body system begins to respond accordingly. These patterns are also instilled at a  young age. 

Cleaning one's self well after bowel movement is very essential. water is the best medium. Girls should be taught to clean their anus from the back with the movement away from the vagina. This prevents bacterial infection of the vagina.