The modern world offers us all kinds of benefits. We’re more affluent than ever before, have more opportunities and can hop on a plane and fly wherever without bankrupting ourselves. It seems like everything should be perfect. But it is not. We all know that society comes with a cost. Interacting with it can damage us in some ways – many of which never enter our conscious awareness. In this post, we ask the question “is society making you sick?” and offer advice for taking back control.
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Light Pollution Is Affecting Your Sleep
Those of us who live in cities have this vague notion that it gets dark at night. But studies by astronomers suggest that only a tiny minority of people under the age of forty have ever experienced real darkness. Light pollution from our towns and cities means that light levels remain elevated around the clock – including in the middle of the night.
Why is this a problem? It’s an issue because it disrupts our ability to get a good night’s sleep and plays a role in making you sick. During our evolution, our bodies developed the ability to sense light levels. The reason you wake up in the morning is partly down to the morning sunshine streaming through your eyelids into your retina, telling you it is time to wake up.
The problem in cities is that the light never goes away. It comes through the curtains all night long, and that affects a person’s ability to sleep. The brain is continually getting signals telling it that it is time to wake up. And that means that any shut-eye you do get is less restful.
Sugar Is In Everything
According to the data, the average person eats around twenty-eight teaspoons of sugar per day. That’s a heck of a lot. But people aren’t buying packets of granulated sugar and dumping mountains of it into their morning coffee. Instead, they’re getting it primarily in hidden forms in the food that they buy.
Take condiments, for instance. You’d think that something as simple as ketchup would contain very little if any sugar. Manufacturers pump their products full of the stuff, leading to calorie overload. The same goes for processed foods, bakery items, ice cream and even some meat products. Soft drinks are the worst culprits.
Sugar is a big problem because it undermines the human body’s calorie-sensing mechanisms and can making you sick. Usually, when we eat foods containing lots of fibre, our stomachs evaluate whether we have eaten enough by judging the amount of fibre and bulk in the food. Even people who energy-dense whole-food items, like nuts or dried fruits, soon begin to feel full.
The same doesn’t happen with many products that contain sugar. Sodas are devoid of fibre, and yet they have enormous quantities of energy. People who consume them typically find themselves guzzling down hundreds of calories without even realising it.
Phones And Tablets
Phones and tablets have come to define the modern era. For most people, they are the most significant advance in technology in recent times, thanks primarily to the way that they’ve affected our lives which can making you sick.
The problem with these devices is that they deny us the opportunity to experience downtime. We feel like we are always on the go and can never switch off. When we get an email from our boss at 9 PM, we feel like we should respond to it. Twenty years ago, that sort of thing would sound outrageous. Any boss demanding that workers return to the office to reply to emails would have been excoriated. Things today, though, are very different from the past. Many companies have cultures where they expect people to respond instantly, no matter what the time.
Social media apps are among the worst offenders when it comes to our smartphones. We believe that everyone we know is living a fabulous life, going on vacations and spending time partying every night. Deep down, we know that’s not the truth – yet we feel like we have to live up to the image anyway. And that’s the problem. It is virtually impossible to attain the standards that people present on social media.
The solution here is to manage access to your devices as you would anything else problematic in your life, like chocolate. Having the odd conversation with somebody on social media at the weekend is okay. Spending hours and hours on Facebook every day is not.
Noise Pollution
The other thing about our society is that it is very noisy. Traffic rumbles past our homes twenty-four hours per day if we live in cities. And just generally getting around exposes us to sounds that are well above the baseline noise of the quiet settlements in which our species evolved.
For many people, this causes high levels of anxiety which can play a part in making you sick. Occasionally, we want to be able to switch off from the sounds in our environment and just enjoy the sensation of silence. But modern civilisation denies us that opportunity.
A lot of people find that CBD oil helps them to combat their anxiety. Other people travel to yoga classes or take part in spiritual pursuits. The best solution, though, might be to install things like double-glazing or sound-proofing around your home. That way, at least you can experience silence when you’re inside.
Retirement
Our lives are supposed to follow this format: you’re born, you get educated, you work hard, and then, eventually, you get to enjoy the fruits of your labour in retirement. Finishing work and finally “relaxing” is seen as the ultimate goal of existence. It’s what makes all the effort worthwhile. Unfortunately, though, it is a bad idea – both for our physical and mental health.
It turns out that retirement can making you sick because it almost always leads to a decline in a person’s wellbeing. Stopping the constant activity of a lifetime without preparation is a major shock to the body. Most people have no idea how to deal with it. And they wind up wondering what the heck it is that they should be doing with their time.
Humans, it seems, need constant resistance. We need something to struggle against to be at our best. We have this idea in our heads that things should be easy. But science shows that when we become comfortable, we struggle.
Perhaps the trick here is to learn moderation. Many people spend upwards of fifty hours per week working. That’s a tremendous amount. Wouldn’t it be better to work, say, 35 hours per week and then sustain it for longer? That way, you could have the best of both worlds – something to give your life purpose and keep you mentally healthy at the same time.
Antibiotics
Antibiotics were one of the great breakthroughs of the 20th century, perhaps responsible for saving more lives than any other kind of medicine in history, save for vaccines.
Antibiotics, though, have a dark side. While they kill harmful bacteria in our bodies, they also kill the good ones. And, it turns out that we need them. If you have tuberculosis, going on a course of antibiotics is a good idea. Similarly, if you have a toothache, spending a week on these drugs to get rid of it isn’t going to damage your long-term health.
But today, many people take antibiotics for long periods to fight acne and other conditions. And that is putting the good bacteria in their bodies at risk. When it disappears, they are at higher risk of obesity, depression and a range of other ailments which can making you sick. Problems typically start in the stomach and then fan out to the rest of the body.
