If you think that video games are for lazy teenagers or adult couch potatoes only, think again. Once you start reaching your ‘golden’ age or if you are way past your 60s and 70s, your heart, body and mind can use the adrenaline rush brought about by the modern gaming devices which are available today.

Why Video Games Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore?

So what exactly are the benefits that grandma and grandpa can get from playing Wii, online games, PlayStation 2 or similar gaming devices? There’s actually a lot more to video gaming than you may actually think.

A good number of studies in the past have shown that playing video games has many positive benefits to senior health. For young people, one of the benefits of playing video games is to sharpen their problem-solving abilities. Video games are even known to improve the skills of a surgeon in the operating table.

Now, to give you an idea about the health benefits that older people will enjoy, take a look at the following list:

1. According to the Psychology and Aging magazine, playing complex video games after receiving training may improve the cognitive functions of seniors. This is one the functions which typically decline with age. (more…)

In the first three parts of this article series, we have discussed how the reasons a person started smoking at an early age helped to build the psychological smoking mechanism. This mechanism begins to operate beyond conscious control because the smoker has long since forgotten why they started smoking. The first part of the process to remove smoking is to use special techniques to recall these early reasons. The second part of the process is to examine and remove the reasons a person continues to smoke.

In this article, we will discuss why smokers ignore the serious health consequences of smoking.

What Would You Do?

You’ve been smoking for over 25 years. Your mother has been a smoker for over 40 years. She calls you on the phone one day and says she’s been diagnosed with lung cancer. You watch your mother deteriorate and a few months later, she passes away. As a smoker, what would you do?

If you are like a client of mine, you’d keep right on smoking!

How Could This Be?

If you are part of the 76% of the population who are nonsmokers, you probably think this is outrageous. How could a person see what cigarettes did to their mother and continue to use them?

It’s the same reason that people have a hard time simply quitting cigarettes:

The Psychological Smoking Mechanism

This mechanism is created in most people before the age of 18. The average age is around 15 although some people start smoking even earlier. It is no accident that smoking starts during the time of puberty and the identity crisis. The identity crisis is an unpleasant period of childhood where there is confusion of self. The person is not a child, but not an adult either. They struggle to define themselves. (more…)

Health ministry in Austria imposed an immediate ban on the sale and distribution of the herbal incense “Spice“, which some people have taken to smoking for its hallucinogenic and psychodelic effects.

Smoking mixture Spice, which is sold legally in a number of countries as an exotic herbal smoking blend that releases a rich fragrance when burned, would be banned from sale immediately in Austria because a cannabis-like substance, synthetical cannabinoid JWH-018, had been found in it, the ministry said in a statement.

While the effects of taking the substance JWH-018 had not yet been fully determined, the risks were deemed to be high, the statement added. Thus, an immediate 14-day ban had been imposed until a more permanent ruling could be reached, the statement said. (more…)

The fact that cigarettes contain cancer causing chemicals is not anything new. For years, cancer experts have been advising the public to kick the habit and decrease their cancer risk. The connection between alcohol and cancer, however, is not as well known. Skin cancer is only one of the many cancers that can be caused from smoking and alcohol use.

Actinic cheilitis is a condition that affects the lips. Affected lips become puffy, dry, cracked, or ulcerated and change color, often to bright red or white. It is considered to be a pre-cancerous condition. In six to ten percent of cases, it develops into squamous cell carcinoma. The condition can affect people of all ages, regardless of sex, but typically strikes men over fifty. Risk increases with age. Actinic cheilitis is caused by a lifetime accumulation of UV damage. Smoking, alcohol, and poor oral hygiene are also believed to increase the risk of this condition. (more…)

Stopping Smoking

We are told constantly how bad it is to smoke and we should give up. How many times have you heard from non smokers

“Oh that games killing you and burning a hole in your pocket you should stop”.

Now if you are like I was you probably wanted to use abusive language at these people and tell them it’s not as easy as they like to think. I sometimes used to look at them while they were telling me the “horrible things “ that smoking was doing to my body and imagine rolling them up into a nice fat rollup.

Anyway to the point. If you’re a smoker you know as well as I do that it is not easy, It took me 8 attempts over 6 years to finally kick the habit and those that claim it is easy should think again. People who want to stop smoking more than anything else need encouragement and a solid reason to give up as well as deep down wanting to give up.

The below is taken from Wikipedia on nicotine.

“Research shows that by increasing the levels of dopamine within the reward circuits in the brain, nicotine acts as a chemical with intense addictive qualities. In many studies it has been shown to be more addictive than cocaine and heroin.”

So show them that next time someone tells you it’s easy.

My problem was I did not really want to give up I enjoyed smoking, I was not naive I knew I was killing myself but really didn’t care. For me I need a real good reason to stop and one day I was playing in the lounge with my 1 year old son and it hit me

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In many instances, quitting smoking is just so much easier when you become aware of the ugly contents of the cigarette itself. Yes, I mean chemical content. Did you know that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins?? These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

We know that nicotine is highly addictive and smoke containing nicotine is inhaled into the lungs, where nicotine reaches your brain in just 6 seconds. In small doses nicotine acts as a stimulant to the brain but in large doses, it’s a depressant, inhibiting the flow of signals between nerve cells. Nicotine in the bloodstream acts to make the smoker feel calm. When you smoke a cigarette, the amount of tar inhaled into the lungs increases, and the last puff contains more than twice as much tar as the first puff. Carbon monoxide makes it harder for red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. Most of the chemicals inhaled in cigarette smoke stay in the lungs. The more you inhale, the better it feels—and the greater the damage to your lungs. (more…)

Smoking has its innovations, however, hardly you hear a smoker who still likes what they are doing – smoking. I bet smoking behavior has its own stages as starters may not like dagga and other strong leaves. Even when you try warning them of the dangers of smoking, they’d still want to do it. It is surprising how people behave when warned of hazards in their practices. You’ll find the obese eating chocolates and cake, the diabetics having some salty snacks, youth engaging in unprotected premarital sex, students not studying for exams, managers embezzling funds, etc. Its not surprising that despite millions spent on trying to control the HIV/Aids pandemic, people still have unprotected casual sex.

In my post ‘Beware of Some Business Marketing Tricks’, I put upfront a good but simple tool of how you can guard against participating or acquiring nicely advertised yet deadly products. Deadly in this case is more about the consequences as opposed to literal death. Smoking is one problem that not only affect the person that does it but also people around them, yet Inventors continue to bring smoking catalysts into the market. (more…)

Over the years I have noticed how everyone’s beliefs can differ in relation to whether they think that smoking is an addiction or simply a habit. This core belief has a missive impact upon how easy or how difficult you find it to stop smoking. If you think that you are addicted to smoking then you will find it more difficult than if you thought it was just a habit. Your thoughts and beliefs shape your experiences about everything in life, not just stopping smoking.

Not only will believing in the addictiveness of smoking impact upon how easy you find it to stop smoking, it can also create a justification for remaining a smoker. It becomes easy to say to yourself “I’m addicted now so I can’t stop smoking” and then not even try. Also, if you think that smoking is an addiction, it is easier to fool yourself into the belief that continuing to smoke is not your fault – that you cannot help yourself because you are the victim of an addiction. This thought pattern is anything but empowering!

To stop smoking easily you have to get your mind around this subject. It is important to ask yourself why you assume that smoking is an addiction. We know that innumerable chemicals are produced as you smoke even a single cigarette and this may lead one to believe that smoking must therefore be addictive. But we also know of many people who have decided to stop smoking and have done exactly that; they stopped smoking and didn’t get withdrawal symptoms, not a single symptom. We know others who tried to stop and didn’t manage it. We know people who got angry when they stopped or put on a lot of weight.

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Saving money and getting healthier must certainly rank in most people’s top 10 list, not only smokers’. I’m surprised more people aren’t smoking, especially with America still stuck in the quagmire of a recession, unemployment squeaking up close to 10% (an indicator of a depression), and a stimulus plan from our Administration that can only cause greater inflation and a huge tax burden for future generations. I offer this article as a light-hearted, potentially useful post to cheer up an otherwise dreary economic outlook.

Being as I’m heavily involved with the barter industry and saving my clients thousands of dollars via my Merchants Barter Exchange companies, I’m always on the lookout for helpful tips and suggestions for people to become more efficient and save money. I’ve read many money-saving tips online, some ranging from very useful, all the way to the ridiculous. I’ll let you decide which are which! (more…)

This notorious white powder that cocaine is, has its origins in leaves derived from the South American coca plant. Leaves that were being freely used by the Mayans for their stimulating qualities became known to Europe following Spain’s conquest of that continent.

Described as a stimulant, cocaine can be ingested in many ways, be it smoking, injection into the veins, or what is called snorting via the nose. No matter how it is consumed, its effects of this highly addictive drug are the same. However, it is known that no fewer than 90 percent of the people who use it do so occasionally; it is only the remaining 10 percent that are known to be addicts, or those who use it at a frequency that is equal to or exceeds once a week.

Effects of cocaine addiction: In the short run, the effects a cocaine addict feels on the body are unreasonable irritability, excitability to the extreme, uncontrollable restlessness and difficulty in sleeping. In the next state, the cocaine addict experiences fretfulness, anxiety even when there is no reason for it and importantly, delusions in the sensory perceptions and a feeling that insects crawl on the surface of the skin.

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