Surprising Ways To Manage Your Weight

Flossing and Facebook-ing might already be parts of your daily routine…but did you know they could also affect your odds of becoming obese?

Don’t Forget To Floss
A couple of months ago, Q by Equinox reported on the strange yet surprising connection between flossing your teeth and maintaining a healthy weight. While most of us are aware that flossing regularly prevents the gum inflammation that leads to gingivitis, these findings suggest that reluctance to floss could be a trigger of weight gain, according to animal trials.

In a press release earlier this year, Nicolaas Geurs, D.D. S., chairman of the Department of Periodontology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry reported that when the animals being studied had inflamed gums, they were more likely to be obese, and when their gum diseases were treated, they were able to lose weight. When your gums enter a state of inflammation, the rest of your body follows them into stress mode, and when your fat cells become stressed, they find it difficult to control insulin—which is needed to remove sugar from your blood cells and store it for energy. According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, fat is meant to be stored in the body as an energy reserve, and without the proper amount of insulin, your body begins to rely primarily on the fat, rather than the glycogen from the sugar, as an energy source.

In short, daily flossing does more than eliminate the fear of finding out you had broccoli stuck in your teeth during that important meeting. The act ensures that your digestive system is working properly, and that your body is maintaining energy levels correctly.

Health-ify Your Facebook Profile
Last spring, a study team from the Boston Children’s Hospital’s Informatics Program sought out a connection between a population’s Facebook preferences and the corresponding obesity rate for the region that they lived in. The researchers found that if any specific population (be it a city, a town, or even a neighborhood) tended to favor and share health-oriented content on their Facebook pages, the area had a significantly lower obesity rate. Further, the study team found a higher obesity rate in regions where the population gravitated more toward television-based content. Since social media has proven to be an increasingly influential force in our lives over the past few years, putting a healthy spin on your Facebook page could be what it takes to get you off of your laptop, and out the door for a workout.

When it comes to maintaining appearances, both online and in real life, it’s often the littlest thing that makes the biggest difference.  Flossing your teeth and tailoring your social media pages to be more health-focused are just a few healthy tweaks to add throughout your daily routine that could eventually count in a big way towards your overall health and fitness goals. Click here for some more tips on healthy living day-to-day!