Today vices sometimes are not seemingly vices when the subject or the individual is ignorant about the lethal consequences due to wrong concepts and understanding. The below detailed descriptions will give a deeper insights.
CIGARETTE SMOKING
Nicotine prematurely ages the brain. Nicotine found in cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and nicotine patches, tablets and gums, causes blood vessels to constrict, lessening blood flow to vital organs. Smokers experience more problems with impotence because of low blood flow to sexual organs nicotine constricts blood flow the skin, making smokers look older than they are. Nicotine also constricts blood flow to the brain, depriving the brain of the nutrients it needs, and eventually causing overall lowered activity. If this substance is so bad, then why do people use it? In the short run, nicotine like alcohol and other drugs of abuse makes many people feel better. It stimulates the release of several brain neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, which improves your reaction time and your ability to pay attention. It also stimulates dopamine, which acts on the pleasure centers of the brain, and glutamate, which is involved in learning and memory (although high glutamate levels cause programmed cell death and is associated with causing Alzheimer’s disease). No wonder people use nicotine and have trouble quitting. But if you want a healthy brain, do what you can to stay away from it. Secondhand smoke is harmful to everyone, especially developing minds. Mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have children who have behavioral and learning problems. Additionally, secondhand smoke increases asthma, infections, and cancer, smoking is a very bad brain habit.
EXCESSIVE CAFFEINE
Found in coffee, tea, darks sodas, chocolates and pep pills, caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain and many other organs. A little caffeine a day is not a problem, but more than a cup or two of coffee a day can be trouble. Caffeine does four bad things to the brain. First, it dehydrates it, and anything that dehydrates the brain causes use to have problems thinking. Second, it interferes with sleep. Caffeine blacks adenosine, a chemical that tells us to go to sleep. By blocking adenosine, we can get by with less sleep. But as we have seen, sleep is essential for healthy brain function. No wonder so many people need a cup of coffee in the morning to get going. They are treating their sleep deprivation symptoms. Third caffeine also constricts blood flow to the brain, causing premature aging. Lastly, caffeine is addictive. Many people have significant withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches and tiredness, when they try to stop. Less caffeine is better.
EXPOSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL
Most people do not wish to think they are being poisoned or poisoning themselves on a daily basis, but the frightening fact is that they may be painting without appropriate ventilation, visiting nail or hair salons too often, breathing in gas fumes as you fill up your car, using pesticides and even remodeling your home have been implicated in brain damage. Understanding the sources of brain toxins can help you avoid them.
Breathing paint fumes and other solvents, such as hair and nail products are brain toxins to approach with care. As a group, indoor painters have some of the highest levels of brain damage, when once evaluated a famous movie director whose scan showed a toxic appearance. On questioning, it was clear he had been exposed to high levels of paint fumes on many of the sets he had worked on getting proper ventilation was one of the keys to helping him heal. He expressed, the painters were the nuttiest people he ever worked with. He said they often got into fights on the sets for little or no reason and were the most unreliable. “Even the women act crazy “, he said. No wonder, if they are exposed to chemicals that hurt the viability of brain tissue. A recent stvdy reported that hair dressers had a higher than normal risk for Alzheimer’s disease. When you go into a hair or nail salon, they often reek with fumes. Ensure they are properly ventilated.
EXCESSIVE TV
No matter what your age, watching too much TV, playing too many video games, or spending to much time on the computer is bad for your brain. Our brains were not developed or evolved for the rapid change in technology that is affecting us today.
Parents hoping to give their child an edge by using infant educational videos, such as brainy baby Einstein’s are actually holding them back. According to report in the journal of pediatrics for every hour a day that babies eight to sixteen months old were shown the videos they knew six to eight fewer words than other children. Parents are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these videos. “Unfortunately, it‘s all money down the tubes, according to one of the study authors, Dr. Dimitri Christakis , a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Christakis and his colleagues surveyed a thousand parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies’ vocabularies using a set of ninety common baby words, including mommy, nose, and choo – choo. The researchers found that 32 percent of the babies were shown the videos and 17 percent of those were shown them for more than an hour a day. The American academy of pediatrics recommends no television at all for children younger than twenty four months.
Another study published in the journal of pediatrics that for every hour day children watch TV there is a 10 percent increased chance of them being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This means that if the child watches five hours a day she has a 50 percent chance of being diagnosed with ADHD. According to the American academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, children spend an average of three to four hours a day watching TV.
In other studies, increased television watching in childhood put people at risk for brain problems as adults. Dr. R. J. Hancox and colleagues from the Department of preventive and social medicine in Dunedin, New Zealand, assessed approximately one thousand children born in 1972 – 1973 at regular intervals up to age twenty six. they found that there was significant association between higher body – mass indices , lower fitness , increased cigarette smoking , and raised serum cholesterol (all affect the brain). These are all factors that are involved in brain illness, such as strokes or Alzheimer’s disease. In yet another study adults who watched two or more hours a day of TV had a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer‘s disease. Watching TV is usually a “no brain “activity and less is better.
EXERCISE VIDEO GAMES
As a father of four children and a child psychiatrist, I have thought a lot about video games over the past twenty years. At first, I found them great fun to play. But soon thereafter, I started to worry. Action video games have been studied using brain imaging techniques that look at blood flow and activity patterns. Video games have been found to work in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, one of the pleasure centers in the brain. In fact, this is the same part of the brain that lights up when researchers inject a person with cocaine. my experience with patients and on of my own children is that they tend to get hooked on the games and play so much that their school work, job performance, and social time can deteriorate, a bit like effect of a drug. Some children and adults actually do get hooked on them.
There is also scientific that reports video games may increase seizure frequency in people who are sensitive to them. You may remember the seizure scare on December 16, 1997, when the Japanese cartoon pocket monster (Pokemon) showed an explosion to go to the hospital with new onset seizures. The condition is called photosensitive seizures (seizures triggered by light). I often think video games trigger sub clinical seizures in vulnerable kids and adults, causing behavior or learning problems.
Two studies from the University of Missouri examined the effects of violent video games (a significant percentage of video games) on aggression. On study found that violent real life simulation video games play was positively related to aggressive behavior and delinquency. The more people played, the more trouble they seemed to have. Academic performance deteriorated with increased time spent playing video games. In the second study, laboratory exposure to graphically violent video game increased aggressive thoughts and behavior. the results from both studies suggest that exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive behavior in both the short term ( e.g. laboratory aggression ) and the long term ( e.g. delinquency ) . In a comprehensive review of other studies it was found time and again that exposure to violent video games is significantly linked to increase in aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, and cardiovascular arousal and to decrease in helping behavior, none of this is good for overall brain health.
