“Being Stagnant”: 37 Doctors Share Things They Believe People Really Shouldn’t Do

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.

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.

Being obese.

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.

Not enough sleep. Think of sleep like recharging your phone. Without it, you can’t function.

Nothing.

Being stagnant with your body will literally end you. Move around. Go walk. Bend your knees. Stretch. Do alladat.

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 :(.

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 w**d 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.

Applying cow dung to an open fracture. Not my idea. Saw it happen. Dude died to sepsis in less than 24 hours.

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.

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.

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.

Being alive has a pretty high chance of d***h.

Drive a motorcycle; it’s one of the fastest ways to go from young and healthy to organ donor status.

Knowing all the doctors I know... probably whatever they're doing themselves: drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, etc.

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.

Google symptoms of every small problem you have. Will definitely give you high blood pressure while solving nothing.

Stress.

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.

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.