Weird But Works: 13 Unexpected Health Tips

Every­one knows how to lead a healthy lifestyle and avoid seri­ous dis­eases. You need to eat right, exer­cise, deal with stress and get enough sleep. But besides these rec­om­men­da­tions, there are oth­ers that seem illog­i­cal, but they work. It is about them that Med­AboutMe talks about today.

If you want a pearly smile, don’t brush your teeth after eating

After eat­ing, tiny rem­nants of food remain on the teeth and gums, which you want to remove so that your smile is snow-white and your breath is clean. But brush­ing your teeth right after a meal is a big mis­take.

The acids found in many foods, from soda to berries and fruits, help soft­en tooth enam­el. If you brush your teeth imme­di­ate­ly after eat­ing, the tooth­brush can con­tribute to tooth dam­age. The cor­rect tac­tic is to rinse your mouth with water and brush your teeth after 30 min­utes.

Fight extra pounds — eat more

Do you think a small bag of chips or a small cake are great snacks? You are wrong! A small serv­ing of treats con­tains a lot of calo­ries that will be deposit­ed on the sides if they are not burned in a time­ly man­ner.

At the same time, a large por­tion of veg­eta­bles or cere­als with a small slice of lean meat will have few­er calo­ries, but they will pro­vide a feel­ing of sati­ety for 4–5 hours. As a result, a per­son will not overeat and will not send extra calo­ries to the “fat depot”.

Dreaming of becoming a size smaller — gain weight

Those dream­ing of a thin waist and strong hips that fit in any jeans should go in for sports to build mus­cle mass. A kilo­gram of mus­cle and a kilo­gram of fat weigh the same, but dif­fer in vol­ume.

If you active­ly engage in the gym and do it reg­u­lar­ly, you can build mus­cle, but at the same time decrease in vol­ume. Thus, despite the increase in weight, you can eas­i­ly “squeeze” into your favorite out­fit.

Very tired — give up energy drinks

One can of ener­gy drinks con­tains more caf­feine and sug­ar than sev­er­al cups of strong cof­fee. It also con­tains a ner­vous sys­tem stim­u­lant called tau­rine. Work­ing togeth­er, they pro­vide a pow­er­ful boost of ener­gy, but it quick­ly melts away, leav­ing behind side effects in the form of irri­tabil­i­ty, heart pal­pi­ta­tions and ner­vous­ness.

After drink­ing a can of ener­gy drinks, a per­son will feel tired and dizzy after 20–30 min­utes. At the same time, adding anoth­er pow­er engi­neer will only aggra­vate the sit­u­a­tion.

Suffering from the heat — drink hot tea

Not cold soda helps a per­son to “cool down”, but a cup of hot fra­grant tea. Dur­ing and after its use, the body increas­es sweat­ing. This process quick­ly cools the body and returns it to com­fort.

After work, you run out of energy — go in for sports

The lack of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in the dai­ly rou­tine makes a per­son with lim­it­ed mobil­i­ty and quick­ly deprives him of strength. Per­form­ing rou­tine tasks is a bur­den, and a feel­ing of fatigue rolls over after min­i­mal effort.

But if you find time to exer­cise, it will increase endurance and ener­gize the body. In addi­tion, dur­ing exer­cise, endor­phins, the joy hor­mones, are pro­duced, which great­ly increase mood.

Need to increase mental capacity — take notes

Dur­ing busi­ness meet­ings, lis­ten­ing to lec­tures and learn­ing some­thing, many peo­ple make notes in a note­book or diary. And researchers sup­port them. The fact is that such notes help to bet­ter struc­ture infor­ma­tion and remem­ber it more effi­cient­ly. And also — to find new solu­tions based on the data received.

If you want less pain, forget about antibacterial soap

Even if a per­son uses antibac­te­r­i­al soap dur­ing flu and cold sea­son, this does not pro­vide him with the best pro­tec­tion against infec­tion. Sci­en­tists came to such con­clu­sions. It turned out that ordi­nary soap, with the right wash­ing tech­nique, wash­es bac­te­ria from hands and oth­er parts of the body no worse than antibac­te­r­i­al ones. But at the same time, it does not have such seri­ous side effects as, for exam­ple, the devel­op­ment of antibi­ot­ic resis­tance.

The lat­ter phe­nom­e­non com­pli­cates the fight against dis­eases so much that one of the most author­i­ta­tive over­sight bod­ies in the world The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA)) banned the free sale of antibac­te­r­i­al cos­met­ics.

Planning to take a nap in the middle of the day — drink a cup of coffee

In one Japan­ese study, sci­en­tists stud­ied how easy and pleas­ant it is to take a nap dur­ing a noisy day. The sci­en­tists con­clud­ed that the best sleep was after drink­ing 200 mg of caf­feine, which is equal to 1–2 cups of cof­fee.

Par­tic­i­pants in the exper­i­ment who took caf­feine imme­di­ate­ly went to bed and dozed off for 20 min­utes. After this time, they woke up cheer­ful and active. This is because the dream end­ed just at the moment when the caf­feine was includ­ed in the work and acti­vat­ed the brain.

Need to get rid of itching — scratch elsewhere

If a per­son is tor­ment­ed by itch­ing on the right hand, the researchers advise stand­ing in front of the mir­ror and scratch­ing the same place on the left hand. And it will work, a 2013 study found.

Sci­en­tists attribute the effec­tive­ness of this advice to a psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non called “mir­ror scratch­ing.” When the brain receives infor­ma­tion from the mir­ror, it thinks that a per­son is scratch­ing an itchy limb, and there­fore the man­i­fes­ta­tions of itch­ing become weak­er or dis­ap­pear alto­geth­er.

Complain of a bad memory — chew gum more often

The ben­e­fits of chew­ing gum go beyond improv­ing breath fresh­ness. Stud­ies have shown that fre­quent use of chew­ing gum improves brain func­tion and has a pos­i­tive effect on con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry. And chew­ing gum, espe­cial­ly mint-fla­vored gum, effec­tive­ly reduces the feel­ing of fatigue and signs of fatigue.

And a 2009 study found that peo­ple who chew gum often tend to have bet­ter mem­o­ries.

Suffering from hypertension — get a pet

And the best choice would be a dog. Research shows that hav­ing a dog at home is asso­ci­at­ed with low­er high blood pres­sure, low­er stress lev­els, and bet­ter car­dio­vas­cu­lar health.

Dog own­ers are less like­ly to have heart attacks. And if they do, then peo­ple with pets show a high­er sur­vival rate after a seri­ous con­di­tion.

Need to get rid of hiccups — eat sugar

In one small exper­i­ment involv­ing 20 peo­ple, a tea­spoon of sug­ar washed down with a lit­tle water helped 19 out of 20 patients get rid of obses­sive hic­cups. And this is anoth­er tip in the trea­sury of odd­i­ties that are very effec­tive.

Use these tips in your life and get great results!