College student self-care

Author: Cai Ming / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Statistics show that 65% of college students have the habit of reading in the toilet, and among "toilet bookworms," 87% are male. In reality, reading in the toilet is harmful to health. The defecation process is a reflex action. When feces stimulate the rectal wall's sympathetic nerves, it triggers the urge to defecate and the defecation reflex, causing the colon, sigmoid colon, and rectum to contract, while the internal and external anal sphincters relax. The abdominal muscles and diaphragm also contract, increasing abdominal pressure to facilitate fecal expulsion. This entire process involves direct participation from both low- and high-level central nervous systems, making it a whole-body action. The cerebral cortex significantly influences defecation, and consciousness can either enhance or inhibit it. If you read while defecating, it can disrupt the defecation process. Over time, the rectum may gradually lose its normal sensitivity to fecal pressure stimuli, causing feces to remain in the colon for too long, leading to excessive water absorption and the formation of dry, hard feces. This makes defecation difficult, prolongs defecation time, and can result in pelvic congestion, varicose hemorrhoids, and ultimately, hemorrhoids. Constipation and hemorrhoids mutually influence each other, severely affecting health.
Some people often read newspapers or magazines while eating. From a nutritional perspective, this habit is not scientific. The color, aroma, taste, and appearance of food can stimulate the senses, triggering conditioned reflexes that enhance appetite and ensure the body receives adequate nutrients. When eating, if you are also reading or reading newspapers, your main attention is not on the food, making it impossible to appreciate its taste, no matter how delicious it is.
The brain works very hard and requires a significant amount of blood and nutrients to maintain normal activity. If your eyes constantly receive signals from newspapers and books, the brain is forced to expend energy to process, analyze, synthesize, judge, and process these inputs, consuming certain amounts of energy. This demands more blood flow to the brain, reducing the blood flow to the gastrointestinal tract and impairing digestion and absorption.
1. Avoid Reading While Eating
While it's fine to occasionally read while eating, making it a habit can lead to gastrointestinal diseases. Surveys show that a considerable portion of people with gastrointestinal diseases enjoy reading intently while eating. Between meals, the digestive system is at rest, requiring minimal blood flow to maintain basic metabolism. During meals, the gastrointestinal tract expands, moves, and secretes large amounts of digestive juices, significantly increasing blood flow. If you read while eating, the central nervous system and the digestive system will compete for blood flow. Insufficient blood supply to the brain reduces learning efficiency, while reduced secretion of digestive juices can cause belching, burping, bloating, and eventually lead to gastritis and ulcers.
2. Avoid Touching Books with Saliva-Coated Fingers
This is an unhygienic habit that can transmit many diseases. Book pages are contaminated with bacteria, viruses, and parasite eggs. Studies have shown that a single newspaper, after years of circulation, can contain hundreds of thousands or even millions of E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and fungi, along with numerous parasite eggs. Additionally, the ink used in printing newspapers and books contains large amounts of harmful substances like lead and benzene. When fingers touch these pathogens, eggs, and toxic substances and then come into contact with saliva, they are ingested and enter the body, causing illness.
3. Avoid Reading While Lying Down
People who often read while lying in bed are prone to nearsightedness and varying degrees of nervous exhaustion. Those who read in bed usually do so while, causing both eyes to be, and the distance between each eye and the book is different, leading to eye fatigue. When reading in bed, the book is held close to the eyes. Long-term reading in this position can alter the shape of the eyes, resulting in nearsightedness, with different degrees of nearsightedness in each eye.
When lying in bed, muscles relax, brain activity gradually decreases, and the central nervous system enters a state of inhibition. Breathing and heart rate slow down, making it easy to fall asleep. However, reading in bed requires mental engagement, as it involves following the plot or questions in the book, triggering complex emotional changes, and engaging in thinking. Thiss the brain's nervous system, conflicting with the natural physiological inhibition of lying down. Not only does it impair memory and cognitive ability, but it also disrupts neural activity. Over time, this can lead to insomnia, difficulty sleeping, and other symptoms of nervous exhaustion.
The correct way to read is to sit upright in a chair, with a viewing distance of at least 30 centimeters between the eyes and the book or newspaper. The lighting while reading should not be too dim; if the brightness is less than 50–100 lux, the eyes will have to strain to see, increasing the workload on the eyes. However, overly bright light is also harmful, as it can be glaring and easily cause eye fatigue.
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