cardiovascular disease and smoking

16 Dec cardiovascular disease and smoking

The hangover, of course, comes from dehydration, and the fact that alcohol is a diuretic, meaning that it makes you go to the bathroom more. Also, the acetaldehyde which is produced as a product of your liver breaking down the alcohol has a toxic effect on your cells. This can be worse if you drink dark drinks with lots of tannins, or sweet drinks, due to the fact that the sucrose competes with the alcohol for processing.

A hangover can lead you to think more intensely about your health when you wonder what it is indeed that a person is doing to themselves in this culture, day and age!

Would you like some saturated fat with that?

Smoking and the circulatory system

I think smoking cigarettes does damage to your circulatory system and creates nicks and grooves in your blood vessels. I also think that the cholesterol which is circulating in your body sticks to these damaged areas to try and patch them up, and as I mentioned in the saturated fat and heart disease post, this cholesterol can then build up, and form blockages, which can break off and become dislodged and enter the brain for a stroke, or the heart for cardiovascular disease.

This can’t be good! There are two things going on. One is that smoking does the damage. I would give all the wishes in the world to be able to give up smoking RIGHT NOW! I wish that I had not ‘bought into’ those stupid thoughts last week, that said I couldn’t do the Christmas chaos without them. It is a fallacy. You can do ALL that and more!! It just takes a lot of motivation to give them up!

The second is that your body produces cholesterol because it needs it and uses it for cell structure among other things. As I understand it, eating a diet high in saturated fat can increase the risk of these kinds of cardiovascular diseases as well.

Upstream health promotion

I wish that they would just take them off the shelves! We would be OKAY!! We would have nicotine replacement, and we would get used to it. There might be a black market, but most people would forget about these toxic evil DEVIL sticks, and we would all be a lot healthier, at least the proportion of people who are under the spell!

The about.com smoking cessation board is a GREAT place to start, but how am I going to let people know about it unless we get together, here in this community, and help others to give up this awful insidious habit?

Knowledge is power so they say

It is amazing how a little bit of insight into the effects of smoking and tobacco on the body can really MOTIVATE you to give them up! It is scary, but it is good to know!