There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ when it comes to smoking. It affects all of us.

Download this free e-book

As an ex-smoker I truly understand the ease in which smoking can change from a casual fling to a full blown addiction. And I know how very, very difficult it is to give it up.

But as a health professional, I have seen the damage that smoking can do.

Therefore, I’d like to recommend that everyone have a read of this free e-book Toward a Tobacco Free World, written by by Kaiser Permanente psychiatrist and UCLA researcher Dr. Michael Rabinoff.  It not only highlights the societal costs worldwide that stem from tobacco use but also outlines actions that can be taken immediately to help save lives worldwide.

Download it.

Read it.

And pass it on.

Let’s all work Toward a Tobacco Free World.

It’s a good month for coffee and chocolate.

First, there was news about a study that found that caffeine reduces muscle pain caused by exercise and now researchers in England seem to think that mental arithmetic becomes easier when chocolate is involved.

But before those of you trying to complete your tax returns go nuts on chocolate, you’d better have a good read of the study because it’s not as clear cut as us chocoholics would like it to be. Yes, it seems that the study participants, after partaking in large amounts of flavanols (the compounds found in chocolate), did do better when asked to count backwards in groups of three from a random number between 800 and 999. But when these same participants were asked to count backwards by sevens, the ingested chocolate was of no help.

According to the researchers, this is because this more complex task uses a different part of the brain. Huh?

Still, as tax day gets closer, I’m sure I’ll be eating a chocolate or two to help make the numbers look better.

(image from sxc.hu)

‘Just one drink. Okay, maybe just one more.’ Does that sound familiar? We have all been there at some stage or another. However, most of us never develop a drinking problem. We know when to stop and how much is too much. 

But even if you don’t have a problem with alcohol, it never hurts to learn more about what alcohol can do to your body and your life.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have created a great interactive website called  ”Rethinking Drinking” that’s definitely worth checking out. Aimed at helping people, especially those between 18 and 30, determine what type of drinker they are and whether they might be at risk of developing a drinking problem.

Rethinking Drinking asks (and answers) the following questions…

• Do you know how much US adults drink - and where you fit in?
• Do you know what counts as a drink?
• Do you know how many drinks are in common containers?
• Do you know why being able to ‘hold your liquor’ is a concern?
• Do you know the signs that alcohol is causing harm?

The site offers some great tools and resources such as the interactive worksheets let you do things like weigh the pros and cons plus calculators that can help you estimate drink sizes, cocktail contents, alcohol calories, alcohol spending, and blood alcohol concentration levels.

Today is the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout, an annual event that has been held for the last three decades. with the aim of encouraging smokers to quit by providing information, support, and resources.

An ex-smoker myself, I know how very, very difficult it is to give it up. But I also know the up side of giving up the smokes and I’d encourage anyone who has been thinking about giving up cigarrettes to stop thinking and act.  You’ll thank yourself in the end.

Healthbolt already has a fairly active support system going on at the comment section of a post - What Happens to Your body if you stop smoking Right now? - that was written by the Wade Meredith, the original Healthbolter. 

Here’s the highlights of that post…

• In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
• In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.
• In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
• In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
• In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
• In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
• In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by half.
• In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.
• In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
• In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.

Click here for a high-quality Graphic representation of this chart.

Does it help you make the decision to stop any easier ?

I sure hope so.  

If it does, head over to the Great American Smokeout for support and advice and have a look at.  And check out these 5 Smoking Gadgets That Might Help You Quit Smoking.

Good Luck…

Chocolate cravings are hard to resist, especially during the holiday season when chocolate seems to be everywhere, just tempting you to take a bit.

Not to worry. A new study has the answer. Just walk away and keep on walking – fast. They took a group of ‘known’ chocoholics (who usually ate at least two 50 gram bars of chocolate a day) and deprived them of chocolate for three days in an effort to induce the chocolate cravings. The participants were also not allowed to drink coffee or exercise in the two hours prior to the test period. 

On test day, one group sat quietly for 15 minutes while the other group spent 15 minutes walking briskly on treadmills.

After this, all participants were given a computerized test (the stressor) and had to unwrapped and handled a chocolate bar that they were not allowed to eat it.

Those who had been walking had significantly less craving for the chocolate as compared to their baseline response before the three day chocolate fast.

They didn’t mention how the other group did, but I’d imagine sitting there with an unwrapped chocolate bar in their hands was pretty torturous.

So remember, whenever that chocolate craving hits these holidays, take a hike.

Just make sure you leave the chocolate bar behind…..

(source)

Okay, I can see some of you scratching your head, saying ’suffering from…what???’

So let me explain.

Discomgoogolation is the ‘feeling stressed or anxious at an inability to access the internet.’ The term is the result of combining “discombobulate,” which means to confuse or frustrate, and “Google”.

Apparently, there are an awful lot of discomgoogolation sufferers out there. A recent survey done in Britain almost half of those surveyed feel somewhat discomgoogolated when deprived of internet access and just over a quarter actually suffer from increased stress levels when not able to get online.

Psychologist Dr David Lewis, who dentified discomgoogolation by measuring heart rates and brainwave activity, says “It was surprising to see the stress this led to brain activity and blood pressure in participants both increase in response to being cut off from the internet.”

Other interesting findings from the survey include…

• that over 75% of  Britons feel they could not live without the internet
• 47% of those polled believed the internet was more important in people’s lives than religion
• one in five people paying the internet more attention than their partner

Looks like the internet may be taking over our lives…

One day, we may all have to stand up and say ‘Hello, my name is…. and I suffer from discomgoogolation.’

(source)

Hey, Austin, Texas! You guys are topping yet another list. In addition to having some of the ickiest restaurants in the nation, you are also some of the hardest partiers (maybe that’s why you don’t notice if a restaurant is filthy, eh? Um, sorry, bad joke.)

Anyway, Texans may be the toppers, but Midwesterners aren’t far behind. In fact, Midwest towns capture close to half of the top 15 slots. Who else made the list? Check them out here, adapted from a Forbes.com slideshow (complete with awesome photos):

1. Austin, TX

2. Milwaukee, WI

3. San Francisco, CA

4. Providence, RI

5. Chicago, IL

8. Seattle, WA (tie)

8. Cleveland, OH (tie)

8. St. Louis, MO (tie)

9. Boston, MA

10. Cincinnati, OH

11. Pittsburgh, PA

12. Virginia Beach, VA

13. Portland, OR

14. Jacksonville, FL

15. Detroit, MI

Is your city on the list?

For an extremely detailed explanation of how Forbes arrived at these findings, check out the full article.

Bottom’s up!

That’s what the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research, wanted to find out. So they did a systematic review of 17 relevant studies that had taken place in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

These studies had used mostly monetary incentives to help encourage participants to quit smoking.

Incentives such as …

- being rewarded with one lottery ticket per day if they tossed their cigarettes down the toilet.
- being offered cash incentives of $10 per month and participation in a monthly worksite lottery.
- being offered cash prizes ranging from $100 to $250, along with certificates of recognition.

Did it work?

Not according review co-auhor Kate Cahill at the Univeristy of Oxford…

“In my view, none of them was effective. One of our main conclusions was that if incentives work at all, they only work while they’re in place; if you revisit those quitters 12 or 24 months down the line, they [smokers offered incentives] were generally no more successful than counterparts not offered incentives.”

I wonder if that’s what the Scottish Health Board is also finding? Last month, they announced a three month quit smoking incentive plan in Dundee. Smokers who signed up and passed a weekly carbon monoxide breath test proving they had not been smoking would be given around $24 a week in the form of a grocery credit.

It will be interesting to see what sort of success rate they have…

(source)

If you’re married to former supermodel Christie Brinkley, do you cheat? Do you spend scads of money on porn? Do you broadcast yourself masturbating to a live internet audience?

Um, maybe if you’re a sex addict.

And so go the theories about Christie’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Peter Cook. Say some experts, all these behaviors point to someone who has an addictive sexual personality. Someone who has such low self-esteem that he chooses to indulge an 18-year-old mistress instead of forming a sensual and mutually-respective relationship with his spouse. Someone who likely looks to porn and unrealistic standards to get his engine running.

Naturally, none of these experts have treated Brinkley or Cook, but it stands to reason there may be something wrong with this guy’s gray matter if he is not satisfied with a beautiful model for a wife.

Of course, there are two sides to every story, but wow. Just wow.

For more on this story, visit ABC News
For more information on sexual addiction, visit Sex Addicts Anonymous

Image details: Vegas or Bust served by picapp.com

You think you have weight loss goals? Well, I’m guessing Manuel Uribe has you smoked. His goal is to be able to walk down the aisle at his own wedding. And we’re betting he’ll do just that.

The 43-year-old Uribe has dropped an astonishing 550 pounds over the last two years after breaking the Guinness World Record of 1,235 pounds. He’s now down to about 700 pounds and has dreams of whittling down further.

Currently living in Northern Mexico, Uribe attributes his obesity to the American way - a nonstop diet of soda and junk food - after he came to the US in 1988 to live for a few years. He also claims that a liposuction surgery gone bad left him with huge tumors on both legs weighing a total of 220 pounds.

Now, the cause, I ’spose, is beside the point. The fact is that Uribe is currently sticking to a doctor-monitored diet and exercise program which he does in bed (he hasn’t been able to leave his bed in 6 years) is what’s important. His fiance is thrilled with his progress and can’t wait to tie the knot.

We wish him luck in all his weight loss endeavors and hope to hear the happy follow-up news of their wedding.

Source

Are you looking to lose weight? Be sure to visit one of the latest and greatest blogs in our channel, Weighting Line, where the awesome Hope makes it her mission to inspire you throughout your quest for health.