Most of us probably have a solid, big picture idea of behavior that isn’t good for our bodies. Of course, human health is a pretty broad spectrum, so there are all sorts of things we not only don’t consider, but don’t even know exist.
Someone asked “Doctors, what’s the worst thing you can do to your body?” and healthcare workers shared their thoughts. So get comfortable as you scroll through, check your posture, drink some water, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own thoughts and experiences to the discussion in the comments section down below.
#1
Applying cow dung to an open fracture. Not my idea. Saw it happen. Dude died to sepsis in less than 24 hours.
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#2
Not enough sleep. Think of sleep like recharging your phone. Without it, you can’t function.
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#3
Nothing.
Being stagnant with your body will literally end you. Move around. Go walk. Bend your knees. Stretch. Do alladat.
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#4
Ignore a clear, concise and increasing sign that something is going wrong. You have a weird pain in your stomach? ok, can be anything, no worries. You have a new pain, that stays the same or begins getting worse and worse, and after a long period of time it’s still clearly there? Then go check.
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#5
Drink alcohol for a long period of time. Cirrhosis and ultimate liver failure are one of the worst deaths I can imagine. Long and slow while you get to think about the consequences of your actions while you lose your mind and/or bleed until you pass.
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#6
Smoking.
Lung cancer is really the least of your worries. Smoking *destroys* your arteries. I do cardiac and vascular anesthesia and every day is a parade of amputations, bloody disgusting arterial leg bypasses, gross non-healing leg ulcers, hearts that barely work, etc etc. smoking is a major factor in the vast majority of these.
It also just *wrecks* your lungs. Cancer or no, the progressive destruction of your lung tissue leading to oxygen dependence, constant shortness of breath, inability to walk to your car without having to stop and rest, etc, is just horrible and debilitating.
Wrecks your teeth and skin on top of all that.
Smoking is so bad. Don’t do it.
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#7
Eat a rock.
Note that I have a PhD in geosciences.
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#8
Knowing all the doctors I know… probably whatever they’re doing themselves: drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, etc.
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#9
It’s no secret.
Smoking is responsible for the highest number of preventable deaths.
Beyond that, it also lowers your quality of life badly. It increases your risk of a host of diseases and complicates many many others.
Aside from lung cancer, it aggravates the risk of cervix, colon, skin, esophagus, larynx, liver, mouth and throat, pancreatic, stomach, and leukemia cancers.
It’s awful for your risk of stroke, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease. It accelerates bone breakdown. It can weaken your immune system and increase your risk of infection. It can aggravate auto immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
And, of course, it just beats the hell out of your lungs. COPD can reduce your quality of life to nearly nothing. You wind up wheelchair bound, dragging an oxygen tank around, and essentially leaving the house only to check into the hospital every few weeks for a severe exacerbation.
It is also known to cause type 2 diabetes, and all the stuff that entails.
Vascular disease means poor wound healing, even in the absence of diabetes; impotence; activity intolerance; blindness, etc.
And most of these risks are observable at levels as low as a quarter pack (5 cigarettes) daily.
So while there are many habits that are deeply unhealthy, I cannot think of any that is as singularly unhealthy as cigarette smoking.
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#10
Not a doctor but a nurse so I hope my answer still counts: untreated diabetes. I often joke with my friends that I’d rather have a brain tumor than diabetes I wasn’t able to treat. Essentially it’s a gateway to some of the worst possible things to experience. From flesh rotting away/dying to coma, anything is possible. Studying as a healthcare professional goes something like this: “oh this illness? who has a predisposition for it? you’ll never guess!” People often overlook how serious diabetes is and how important it is to properly manage it. I saw someone mention chronic hypertension, also a good answer! basically in a similar category as diabetes in a way that it comes with a long list of complications that can be pretty severe and even lead to heart faliure.
english is not my first language so if I got something wrong fellow healthcare workers please don’t chew me out :(.
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#11
As soon as I started working as a nurse on an a vascular surgery unit, I lost weight and stopped eating suger. I really really really never want to end up having diabetes, my god so much horror comes from that.
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#12
Not a doctor but a nurse. My tops are: leave any chronic condition unmanaged (think diabetes hypertension and high cholesterol) because they can cause serious, potentially fatal complications if left untreated or poorly managed. Next would be the obvious things like smoking, excessive alcohol intake, illicit d***s, etc. and my most controversial thing that is 1 of the most dangerous things you can do is bed share with your newborn.
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#13
Being obese.
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#14
Google symptoms of every small problem you have. Will definitely give you high blood pressure while solving nothing.
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#15
Inactivity.
Most people barely move. Or consider a slow walk exercise. Daily physical activity of doing chores, walking to the store etc are the bare minimum amounts of movement. People use lifts to go up 1 or 2 flights of stairs, get delivery, use drive through etc to avoid doing even that. Let alone purposeful exercise that would make you out of breath and get your heart rate up.
Cheapest way to reduce obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, cancer, strokes, sleep apnoea, joint disease, mental health disorders and pretty much most other disorders? A brisk walk/jog of 30-60minutes 5 times a week.
And then society treats people who exercise regularly and prioritise it like they have some kind of disorder.
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#16
Actual doctor here, and most of these top comments are pretty accurate — smoking, drinking, etc. It’s fine to have a few drinks a week, maybe enjoy a cigar on the weekends, but the kind of s**t people do with 12 beers a day or a pack a day of smokes is destroying their bodies beyond repair.
One thing I will add: m**h. That s**t is one of the few substances you can put in your body that can irrevocably change the core of who you are. Every time you do m**h you’re a little (or a lot) different when it wears off.
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#17
Overuse antibiotics.
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#18
No particular order:
Alcohol excess – decompensated cirrhosis with encephalopathy and ascites, alternatively, alcoholic hepatitis but miss out on transplant. Also alcoholic cardiomyopathy. Also early onset alcohol induced dementia and alcohol related brain injury – more on the frontal lobe, so more impulse control and other executive functioning problems than standard Alzheimer’s. Also Korsakoff’s psychosis
Smoking (including tobacco, cannabis and recreational d***s) – end stage COPD, bronchiectasis, smoking related interstitial lung disease, lung cancer and its various complications. Also increases cardiovascular risks which stacks with diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol
Intravenous recreational d**g use with dirty needles and needle sharing – endocarditis, septic thrombophlebitis, injection related pseudoaneurysms/mycotic aneurysms, blood borne viruses including HIV and hepatitis B and C
Other carcinogenic activities eg sunbathing
Occupational inhalation hazards – mining, asbestos from shipbreaking and construction etc – mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis
Obesity – chronic inflammatory state, venous thromboembolism risk, malignancy risk, obesity hypoventilation syndrome and sleep apnoea, non alcoholic fatty liver disease
Consequences of uncontrolled diabetes – retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy (both sensory and autonomic,) diabetic ulcers, diabetic foot infections, peripheral vascular disease, amputations, cardiovascular risk
Consequences of uncontrolled chronic hypertension and hypercholesterolemia – stroke, myocardial infarction, chronic kidney disease, mesenteric ischemia, peripheral vascular disease, aortic dissection, aortic aneurysm
Internal medicine doc
Edit: if you are interested in optimizing for the “endgame” – going into your elderly years without a physically fit body and mind, because you won’t be able to survive the increasingly extreme medical treatments and procedures (eg chemotherapy, major surgeries) required to extend your geriatric life.
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#19
Not a doctor, but from personal experience: anorexia. i had it for a mere 2 months before i was hospitalized for a heart rate of 45 and a blood sugar of 30. even putting the health aside, people didn’t like how i looked when i was very underweight. told me i looked like i was from a “third world country” and talked about how flat my a*s was. recovery is worth it.
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#20
Untreated hypertension and diabetes. Oh and stimulant substances, the coronary vasospasms will do a number on your heart.
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#21
Dentist here. STOP SMOKING. Smoking leads to bad oral health and mouth cancers. Bad oral health can lead to blood infections, endocarditis, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, pregnancy complications, etc. Just stop smoking. And yes, that includes the green stuff.
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#22
Shooting yourself is pretty high up there. I saw a fair amount of NDs on trauma rotation because people treat guns like toys rather than highly effective ending machines.
Remember, never point the barrel at anything you don’t intend to shoot and always keep your finger off the trigger unless you’re ready to shoot. If you have a semiautomatic handgun you follow those two steps, drop the magazine, rack the slide to clear the chamber (I always look through) and some people may or may not choose to dry fire a few times while pointing at the ground to make sure it’s unloaded. Make sure you follow those steps in that exact same order. Never carry in anything other than a holster and make sure you know where your firearm is at ALL times because it’s ultimately YOUR responsibility.
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#23
I’ve switched to edibles in the last couple days (second time in my life I did, the first was a couple of months in 2022) and I think this thread is helping me to validate that decision. People say smoking weed isn’t as bad for you, and I never believed it. That didn’t stop me from smoking, of course, but it’s stopped me from being okay with it and just wallowing in my a*******n. So maybe I need edibles now to keep me away from the smoking, I think that’s better than the smoke.
Edit: Y’all haters. It’s not about the m*******a itself, just because I take something a lot doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad for you. I’m also a******d to sushi and I’m not ashamed of that either. It’s that I believe smoking, whether m*******a or tobacco, is so so so much worse for your body and lungs, than just eating a bit of candy and having some psycho active effects. But I’m glad every single other person here has unlimited control over their vices.
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#24
Not a doctor, but a critical care pharmacist:
1. Smoke
2. Alcohol misuse
3. Uncontrolled diabetes.
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#25
Orthopaedic surgeon here. T2DM or smoking. Poorly controlled diabetes is one hell of a way to go. I’ve lopped off more feet/legs than I can count secondary to diabetic foot wounds gone awry. Smoking negatively impacts tissues and healing. Obesity up there too. Every surgical and medication condition is made worse by obesity.
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#26
I am not a doctor, but I am in healthcare, and some of you m***********s really need to cut back on alcohol
At least half of you reading this comment who think you don’t drink too much, do. Assume you’re one of them.
Also, you people need to walk more. No, the walk to and from your car, and around the house, or around Publix, is not enough. “but America isn’t walkable, though” brother, the floor is not made out of lava – every now and then you need to get up and actually walk. You have 15 minutes to scroll TikTok, you have 15 minutes to walk.
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#27
Being alive has a pretty high chance of d***h.
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#28
Used to work in Radiology. We had a patient with cirrhosis from drinking. Patient was 16 yrs old.
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#29
Stress.
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#30
Poorly manage your diabetes with morbid obesity.
You’ll go blind, end up with renal failure and require dyalysis, have limb infections that become permanent with ever present open skin ulcers, silent heart attacks, early strokes, and every time you get sepsis or need to be operated the morbid obesity and your slowly failing organs from destroyed microvasculature will both try to k**l you.
Proof is in the pudding, regional and/or demographic plots of life expectancy vs obesity, and morbidity in non-compliant diabetes.
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#31
I’m not a doctor but do work in vascular operating theatres. Majority of the patients are poorly controlled diabetics getting their toes removed, feet debridements, legs chopped off, infected non healing ulcers etc etc. And 80% of them would not put any effort to control their glucose levels by making healthier life choices. They would come back over and over again to get more of their body removed.
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#32
Dentist here! I’ve put more people in dentures from Mountain Dew than M**h/d***s. It’s addictive and so bad for your health and you teeth. Avoid that stuff at all costs!!!
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#33
This is what recently happened to my friend. His family was begging him to get a blood test because he was looking awful. Swollen legs and bad vision.
When doctors took his BP it was hovering at 200/. Couldn’t get enough meds in him to lower it. Ran a gamut of tests. His brain was like 50% white matter from
His drinking. And the hypertension is what was causing the bad eyes.
Few months later he started to get tingling in his face and arm. Vision started going bad again so he went back. He had suffered an Ischemic stroke. He’s been slowly getting better. Thankfully his therapy just involves his eyes. He can see but has trouble focusing or making images out right away.
He’s 37. Totally preventable and terribly scary for him to go through. So people. Take care of yourselves. 🙏🥰.
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#34
Im not a doctor and I can tell most of these answers dont come from doctors either. The worst thing you can do to your body is nothing. Don’t exercise. I work with construction workers in their 70s who smoke like chimneys, drink beer, whiskey and tequila like its a health potion, and live on either BBQ they made or gas station food. The second they stop, they d*e. Maybe the worst thing you can do to your body is lack purpose, and stop moving.
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#35
Not a doctor, but not getting your yearly mammogram is one of the worst things you can do. I was diagnosed w breast cancer last year and they caught it early. Went for my yearly MRI last month and they found a tumor in the other breast, caught it early again. Catching things early is so important.
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#36
There are so many but I will add one that most others won’t add.
I suggest don’t play sports that involve getting hit in the head.
If you don’t plan on your kid going professional at sports don’t risk all the injuries and future pain from bad joints and old injuries.
I’ve treated many ex professional athletes. Unless they make it big and sock it away they end up broken and poor. CFE is no joke.
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#37
Drive a motorcycle; it’s one of the fastest ways to go from young and healthy to organ donor status.
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