Tag Archives: Centenarians

Smoking Is Bad / Exercise Is Good

How Smoking Affects Your Exercise

Smoking  reduces the amount of oxygen available in your body.When you exercise you need oxygen in your muscles. The more you exercise, the faster the oxygen is used up. Cigarettes contain carbon monoxide, which reduces the amount of oxygen available in your body as it binds to the haemoglobin in your red blood cells, preventing oxygen from getting to your muscles.

Benefits of Exercise For Smokers

“When you exercise, that improves your cardiovascular function and your HDL cholesterol, and generally, it’s just good for you,” says Dr. Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at UC San Francisco. “So if you smoke and exercise, you’re going to be better off than if you smoke and don’t exercise.” Exercise is medicine.

Doing some exercise while you’re still smoking can show you just how much the habit has affected you. As you cut down on your smoking, you should see an improvement in your ability to exercise. Having this kind of physical record can be a great motivator to help you quit.

Quitting is one of the most stressful things you can do but it means you’re actually removing one of your methods of coping with stress. Studies have shown that people smoke more when they are stressed. Exercise releases endorphins that help reduce your stress levels.

Cigarettes are seen as an appetite suppressant, people often put on weight when they’re quitting. By taking part in some regular exercise, you can help combat this side effect to quitting

How Exercise Can Help You Quit

Exercise is a great distraction from most day-to-day annoyances – the habit to light up being just one of them. Exercising while you are trying to quit can reduce the feelings of withdrawal.

Effect On Your Lungs

Smoking decreases your lung capacity, which can cause a smaller volume of oxygen to reach the bloodstream, resulting in less oxygen getting to the blood. Smoking is in fact the single biggest cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – a term covering for a number of conditions like emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

What is COPD?

COPD is a progressive lung disease that affects the airways in your lungs. COPD makes breathing more difficult and can significantly reduce your ability to do activities. Without treatment, your lungs will eventually only be able to do a fraction of what they used to. Thankfully, COPD symptoms can be treated.

Centenarians Of Other Countries

Why Quit 

To purchase our products click here.

 

Aging And The Environment

How The Environment Effects Our Aging

Environment-Aging: External environmental factors such as the sun, pollution, water, smoking, air conditioning, and central heating all play a major role in our over-all aging and well-being.

Research has shown that here are linkages between what goes on in the environment and its effect on the senior population. The United States is rapidly becoming a country of the aged. In 2006, the first of the nation’s baby boomers turned 60, and by 2030, the aging population will double to more than 70 million.

As our country ages, it is imperative that we examine the impact pollution is having on the world. Environmental protection, which focuses on the health of the ecosystem and the people within it, is necessary.

Environment-Aging: Pollution

Pollutants such as pesticides, and acid rain, have made their way into our food supply. Acid rain can be absorbed by both plants and animals. When we eat these plants and or animals, the toxins inside our foods can affect us. Brain damage, kidney problems, and Alzheimer’s diseases has been linked to eating toxic animals and plants.

  • Pesticides may also produce a rise in blood cholesterol, an increase in the metabolic rate, and interference with the lymphatic system.
  •  Every system in our body can be affected by pesticides.
  • Pesticides are also vitamin antagonists, and are cancer inciting.

Environment-Aging: Sun

The principal environmental factor is the level of exposure to the sun’s rays that we experience throughout our lives. Unprotected exposure to the sun can lead to the skin becoming dehydrated, the collagen within the connective tissues breaking down rapidly, and the appearance of wrinkles.

Environment-Aging: Polluted Water

Acid rain, pollution, and oil spills does not help our water supply.

Given that we are made up of 70 percent water, what we drink has a significant effect on how well our body’s age.  For our bodies to function at their optimum, we require six to eight glasses of clean water daily. Water is suppose to helps flush toxins from the body, not put toxins in.

When there is a build up on toxins in the body, dark circles under the eyes may appear, this is an indication that the kidneys are having a hard time eliminating the toxins from the body.

Smoking

Scientific findings show that smoking, whether active or passive, can age you just as rapidly as exposure to the sun. Smoking depletes the body of vitamin C a much-needed nutrient for anti-aging.

Air Conditioning And Central Heating

The air conditioning and central heating found in most offices and homes tend to dry our skin out. If you spend a lot of time in an air conditioned or central heating environment, make sure your regularly moisturize your skin and get plenty of fresh air, to counter balance the effect of an indoor climate.

For more information on aging click here.

To purchase our products click here.

Managing Your Lifestyle Choices

Lifestyle Choices

Your lifestyle choices should include good nutrition and exercise.  These two choices can slow, stop, and even reverse the changes in the body once blamed on aging.

Did You Know?

  • Researchers estimate that if people born today practiced good habits, the average life span could soar from the current 76 years to 100 years.
  • The older brain, when challenged with new activities, can continue to develop and learn until very late in life.
  • Lifestyle choices have a greater effect on aging than our genes.  Studies reveal that diet, exercise, social support, spiritual support, mental stimulation and a sense of self-efficacy are the key factors that determine how well you age.
  • People thinking positively about getting older live seven and a half years longer than those who think negatively.
  • Anticipating a happy, funny event can raise levels of endorphins, and other pleasure relaxation inducing hormones.
  • Laughter lowers the production of stress hormones.
  • At least fifty percent of age related change in muscles, bones, and joints are caused disuse.

Healthy-lifestyle-longevity-elderly-longer-life.

To purchase our products click here.