No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
- William Feather
Smoking
Smoking causes cancer. This is a very well-known fact. But how many people know that it has negative effects on body weight? I think most people don’t know. Well here we discuss about smoking and its effects.
When a person smokes, the nicotine suppresses the activity of brain. Simply if a person feels hungry, if he smokes, the nicotine suppresses the brain making the hunger to disappear. In this case, now the person will not able to eat as he does not feel the urge to eat. So, smoking people won’t feel the hunger to eat at correct times. This will make the person slimmer as his intake of food is cut off. This is the reason why people who are chain smokers appear slim in nature. When a person smokes, the depressing activity at the brain makes every part of the body to slow down. Eventually the heart too slows down, achieving a lower blood flow in blood vessels which finally decreases the blood pressure.
This is the reason why many people smoke when they have a heart attack or experience a critical situation in job environment. When they smoke, the depression achieved through smoking, makes them to feel like being relaxed. They get into smoking whenever facing those critical times, and eventually become chain smokers. Some people tell us that, when they quit smoking, they gain weight. Fact is that only a small fraction of the people gain weight. It doesn’t match everyone. If you were one among those who gain weight by quitting smoke, I would tell, “Read this book again”. Surely you will lose weight if you do practice properly.
See-two-h-five-oh
Nowadays we can see more people engaging in drinking. Whatever the drink be, a beer or brandy, they surely destroy your health. Alcohol is harmful for health. Let’s see how this alcohol impacts body health.
So why do people behave like junk, when alcohol goes in? Let’s take a look of how alcohol does the work.
Food in the diet must be digested before being absorbed by the cells, but alcohol included in the diet flows directly through the body’s membranes into the bloodstream, which carries alcohol to nearly every organ in the body. The alcohol flows through the stomach walls into the bloodstream and on to the small intestine. From there it flows through blood vessels to the liver. The normal, healthy liver can process about 1/2 ounce of pure alcohol (that’s 6 to 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of spirits) in an hour.
The rest flows on to the heart. Entering the heart, alcohol reduces the force with which the heart muscle contracts. Heart pumps out slightly less blood, blood vessels all over the body relax, and the blood pressure goes down temporarily. The contractions soon return to normal, but the blood vessels may remain relaxed and the blood pressure lower for as long as half an hour. Meanwhile, alcohol flows in blood from the heart through the pulmonary vein to the lungs. Now when the person breathes out a tiny bit of alcohol every time, the breath smells of liquor.
Alcohol also makes blood less likely to clot, temporarily reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Alcohol makes blood vessels expand, so more warm blood flows up from the centre of the body to the surface of the skin. The person feels warmer and, if the skin is fair, he may flush and turn pink. When it reaches the brain, it slows the transmission of impulses between nerve cells that control the ability to think and move. That’s why people become fuzzy, tongue twisted, have their vision blurred, and loss control.
Alcohol contains empty calories and has no nutritional value. Not only does alcohol not contain any nutrients of its own, but it can impair your body's ability to absorb nutrients and vitamins from the food you eat. Alcohol irritates your gastrointestinal tract, and can damage your body's ability to absorb nutrients, vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. Alcohol is toxic to your liver, and if you drink heavily for a long time you can experience cirrhosis of the liver and death.
Heavy drinking over the long term can also impair your liver's ability to activate vitamins, which contributes to the malnutrition often suffered by long term alcoholics. when you drink alcohol, maintaining healthy blood sugar levels is one of the first elements of metabolism to be shoved aside in your body's rush to excrete the toxins as efficiently as possible. Alcohol inhibits your body's ability to make glucose and to maintain healthy levels of glucose (or blood sugar) in the blood. Over time, heavy drinkers develop glucose intolerance and can even become diabetic. Even occasional alcohol consumption can cause dangerous drops in blood sugar levels, especially when consumed on an empty stomach. That's why drinking alcohol can be very dangerous for diabetics and hypoglycaemic.
Because your body can't store alcohol and must metabolize it right away, other metabolic processes suffer. Your body won't metabolize sugars and fats as efficiently during the metabolism of alcohol, and drinking heavily can cause your metabolism to slow. This can contribute to weight gain.
So, now you have known the effects why alcohol causes weight gain. Let’s see the last part…drugs!
Drugs
There are different types of drugs. They can be classified under different categories such as sedatives, inhalants, hallucinogens, stimulants, tranquilizers, pain relievers etc. So, how do these function in weight gain?
Guess what? The answer is similar to that of the smoking and drinking. In smoking the nicotine depresses the brain activities and in drinking the alcohol that is taken does the work. In drugs, similar to the former cases, a chemical present in each of these drugs depresses the brain.
Tobacco contains Nicotine. Marijuana is a cannabinoid. The main psychoactive substance in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol and there are at least 66 other cannabinoids present in marijuana, some of which are also psychoactive. Heroin is a kind of opioid, which is metabolized into 6-monoacetylemorphine and morphine, which brings the excitement effect. Cocaine is a stimulant, basically a hydrochloride salt, when inhaled, can bring the excitement-relaxing effect within 10 seconds. Some drugs depress the central nervous system and in most cases the brain gets depressed.
Think a while, what will happen when if all the wires in an electronic device get damaged? The same happens in the body. If the nervous system gets damaged, then the whole body losses control. When the control system itself gets “out of control”, every other systems (digestive, circulatory, excretory etc.) gets damaged, not able to perform up to the level. So when the balance is lost, it causes improper digestion leading to improper nutrition absorption and improper blood circulation. So totally the health collapses and causes the fat to be stored in the blood. This is the reason why drug addicts gain body weight.
By now you have known the ways how these habits affect our health. But now, you must also know the methods to stop and say good bye to these habits, if you are an unhealthy person. The case I mention as “unhealthy person” and not as a “fat person” is that, a slim drug addict is not a healthy one. Anyone who is addicted to “any of these” or “all of these!” is an unhealthy person. So say no to smoking, drinking and drugs.
How to stop and escape from addiction?
Anyone can quit and say “no” to smoking or alcohol or drugs. All they have to do is to have a strong desire to quit the habit and believe that they can quit those habits even it is too hard to quit.
7 habits of highly “quitting” people
Commitment
Commit yourself and engage fully in the program and work for it. Every second remember that these will destroy your health, happiness, peace of yourself and also your family, friends etc.
Will
Every New Year, we all take a resolution to do “this” or “that”. But many can hold that only for a day. So think that you have everyday a new year.
Inspiration
Read some books on people who quit these and how they become successful. If you get a chance to meet such person, then never leave the chance.
Friendly
Whether it’s a Facebook page or a local community, whatever it be, it’s better to have a company. Join a group of people who try to quit smoking, drugs or drinking.
Win
Set a plan to quit and if you do it, you must celebrate it. Start with a week plan to quit and if you do, reward yourself with something special, such as a dinner at a restaurant.
Consistency
Remember the tortoise who won the hare? If you constantly put effort without quitting, surely you will win.
Restarts
If you have failed in quitting, never say “I quit doing quitting”. Just start from the start. I have read in a book that if a man practices a habit for just 23 days continuously, it will become a routine habit. So if you fail, just plan for 23 days. Say that you don’t quit without winning! So, if you have been addicted, start to quit smoking, drinking and drugs. If you are not addicted, say no to anyone who offers you these in future. Always remember the hazards of these habits.