From sleep loss to screens: Daily habits hurting health more than we realise
Modern life has made unhealthy routines feel ordinary, but doctors warn it is these everyday choices that quietly shape long-term health outcomes
 "From sleep loss to screens: Daily habits hurting health more than we realise")
Taking care of your health should not make you feel different or out of place. Yet, in everyday life, habits that harm health have become so common that doing simple things for health now feels unusual.
A recent social media post by Mumbai-based orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist Dr Manan Vora highlights how many behaviours we accept as “normal” simply because “everyone else is doing them” may, in fact, be damaging long-term health.
Dr Vora underscores that the biggest threats to health today do not look like threats at all, they look like routine. According to Dr Vora, today’s biggest health risks often include:
- Staying indoors all day without getting enough sunlight or fresh air
- Going years without a full health check-up because you “feel fine”
- Eating processed or packaged food at most meals because it is convenient
- Sleeping less than six hours regularly because being busy is seen as normal
- Using your phone immediately after waking up and right before sleeping
- Treating real, unprocessed food as “dieting” or being unnecessarily restrictive
- Getting only around 4,000 steps a day and considering it acceptable
- Feeling odd or judged for not drinking alcohol at social gatherings
- Sitting for long hours at work and then spending the rest of the evening sitting at home
- Spending hours scrolling on the phone while saying there is no time for health
None of these raise alarm bells in the short term. But together, they quietly nudge the body towards metabolic problems, bone loss, vitamin deficiencies and undetected disease.
Dr Vora reminds that many lifestyle diseases, from fatty liver to diabetes to hypertension, remain silent for years before symptoms appear.
How convenience culture fuels unhealthy eating
According to Dr Vora, eating processed foods at every meal because of convenience has become so normal that choosing fresh, real food is now branded as “dieting” or being restrictive. What humans have eaten for generations is increasingly seen as inconvenient, while ultra-processed food is framed as “practical adulting”.
Why sleep deprivation is treated as a status symbol
Sleeping less than six hours because work is demanding. Wearing exhaustion like a badge of honour. Scrolling through the phone the moment you wake up and right before sleep.
Dr Vora highlights that society increasingly rewards busyness, not recovery. Biologically, however, the body keeps score. Chronic sleep deprivation raises the risk of obesity, insulin resistance, anxiety, depression and heart disease, even when people feel they are “managing fine”.
Why daily movement has been downgraded
Getting 4,000 steps a day or less now feels acceptable. Sitting for eight hours at work and then spending the evening sitting at home feels deserved.
But human bodies were never designed for this level of stillness. Low daily movement is linked to back pain, joint degeneration, poor circulation, low mood and early cardiovascular risk, even among people who exercise occasionally.
Taking care of oneself has, somehow, become counter-cultural.
Scrolling for hours while claiming there is no time for health. Time, Dr Vora argues, is not the real issue, attention is. The problem is not lack of motivation but illusions about where daily hours actually go.
Dr Vora says that if someone identifies with more than three of these habits, the effects are likely to catch up in the coming years.
So, what is your score?