The doctor avoids evaporation, all-nighters, inactivity, junk food

She’s giving her TikTok followers the 4-1-1 on four bad habits to avoid.

Dr. Jess Andrade, a sports medicine specialist and pediatrician in Massachusetts, is sharing the four activities she won’t do: drinking, pulling an all-nighter, exercising less than 150 minutes a week, and consuming many artificial ingredients and preservatives. .

Vaping

To prove her point, Andrade showed a picture of popcorn lung — the nickname for bronchiolitis obliterans, a lung condition that makes breathing difficult due to damage to the small airways.

Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that the culprit is diacetyl, a chemical that was widely used to give popcorn its buttery flavor. It is now added to the liquid in some flavored e-cigarettes to evoke a buttery or creamy taste.

It seems some teenagers are already taking Andrade’s advice to quit vaping.

Data from September show that 1.63 million US middle and high school students (5.9%) reported using an e-cigarette in the past 30 days compared to 2.13 million (7.7%) in 2023.

This is good news because in addition to bronchiolitis obliterans, vaping can cause lung cancer, organ damage, heart disease, asthma, breathing problems and other conditions.

I don’t sleep for 24 hours

“Pulling an all-nighter or not sleeping for 24 hours – same as being legally drunk,” Andrade wrote in her post in June.

Driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or more is considered drunk driving.

Being awake for 17 hours mimics a BAC of 0.05%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says that being awake for 24 hours is similar to a BAC of 0.10%.

Experts recommend that you sleep seven to nine hours a night. A study published this week reveals that the effects of a restless night can linger in our brains for days.

In the long term, poor sleep has been linked to a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety and other chronic health problems.

By not exercising enough

According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, adults should aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and two days of muscle strengthening per week.

Andrade said not reaching that threshold increases the risk of several diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon, breast and uterine cancer, along with obesity, high blood pressure and stroke.

Consuming too many artificial ingredients

Artificial ingredients and preservatives are often found in processed foods – the bad apples in the diet.

Eating too much ultra-processed food can lead to obesity, diabetes, depression, heart disease, heart attacks, strokes and high blood pressure.