Doctors have shared a series of ‘quick and simple’ changes you can make to your daily life that could add years to your life. In a viral Reddit thread, healthcare experts expressed their frustration over the vast numbers overlooking their straightforward, but critical, guidance on health and fitness.
In reply to a Redditor’s question: “Doctors and nurses of Reddit: What is an important health tip that nobody follows?”, one clinician emphasised the importance of hygiene, saying: “It isn’t enough to just wash your hands after toileting.
“You should wash your hands before eating, or food preparation. You should wash your hands when you come home, from anywhere. Wash hands before touching a baby. Also, after doing housework, or yard work. The more washing, the better.”
Echoing this sentiment, another chimed in with: “Wash your hands before messing with your contacts and replace your contact case/lenses. I’m a medicine doctor – not optometrist, not ophthalmologist, but I’ve still seen my fair share of terrible eyeball infections from poor contact hygiene.”
A user highlighted the broader implications of dental care on health by sharing: “Brushing your teeth affects way more than you know. After a heart surgery my uncle was told by the surgeon to keep his teeth clean.”
Another medical professional said: “Brushing your teeth is only half the job. Flossing removes food particles that are stuck between tooth and your gum. If left too long they break down and become acidic, slowly eroding away at your enamel.
“Mouth washing after vomiting will exacerbate the damage to your teeth from the stomach acids. Rinse your mouth with warm water and bi-card soda to prevent any further damage.”
Meanwhile, an ER doctor shared their top four habits to adopt for a healthier life, including 20 minutes of daily walking, attending follow-up doctor’s appointments, addressing pain or concerns promptly, and adhering to prescribed medication regimens.
They said: “Too many to count, but here’s my greatest hits list from the ER:
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Exercise will improve your health. Doesn’t matter how much you do, as long as it is more than zero even 20 minutes of walking will make you feel better long term than doing nothing.
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Follow up with your doctors: If I tell you to go see someone, you need to do that. The reason your condition gets worse is because you don’t know really anything about it, so you can’t tell when you need intervention or not. That’s what your doctors are for, and that’s why I tell you to see them even if you feel fine now.
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The second I hear you say “this has been going on for X months/years” you drop several places in how seriously I take your complaint, and how high I will prioritize your case. If you have had the same issue for months, it is almost certainly not critical, not something I will be able to diagnose in the ER, and definitely not something I can fix in a couple hours. The ER is not for diagnoses. It is there so that if you are about to die….you don’t. And if it has been going on that long, I don’t care how busy your PCP is they definitely could have seen you already. You just never tried.
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Take your medicine if it is prescribed to you. I can’t count the number of people I see that have a known issue, have some other thing that pops up, and when I ask if they are taking their medications they say “Well I didn’t think I needed them so I stopped”. I don’t care if you felt fine, if your blood pressure is 200/110 you can go from “fine” to “haemorrhaging into my brain” in a second.
“My biggest one, and I can’t believe I even have to say this anymore: Don’t smoke. Just don’t do it. There are absolutely zero reasons to do it, and even fewer to start if you aren’t smoking already. It’s unbelievable to me that this is still an issue.”