I Will Quit Smoking – With determination anyone could do it!

Archive for December, 2008

Heart disease is very serious and over and over we hear how smoking can cause it. But how? How can smoking lead to heart disease? In fact, what exactly is heart disease?

Heart disease is when one of your major arteries that lead from your heart and carry needed oxygen to the blood becomes partially blocked. If the blockage worsens it can lead to a heart attack or a coronary meaning your coronary artery is blocked and the flow in that artery stops. That is why another term for heart disease is coronary artery disease.

Smoking makes a person’s chances of having coronary artery disease or heart disease much greater for a variety of reasons.

Carbon monoxide is present in cigarette smoke. It binds with hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that helps transport oxygen throughout the body, including the heart. Reducing the oxygen to the heart ups the odds of heart disease.

Cigarettes also contain nicotine which works against the heart because it robs the blood of oxygen that the heart needs. It also makes the blood clot easier which increases your risk of a heart attack.

But even more subtle, yet still dangerous, effects are produced by nicotine. One of the most serious, long term, is that it encourages the growth of fatty deposits on the arteries, constricting blood flow and hardening the blood vessel.

Arthrosclerosis is a condition where good cholesterol called HDL (high density lipoprotein) is decreased in the blood which allows for fat deposits to form on the arteries. Smoking greatly encourages and feeds this condition.

Reducing the diameter of the artery increases blood pressure. That makes it more likely that any weakness present in the artery wall, something termed an aneurysm, will lead to a rupture. That leads to oxygen starvation to the brain, resulting in a stroke. That’s why one so often sees ‘raises the risk of heart disease and stroke’ discussed in the same sentence.

When your arteries become hard they are not able to perform their tasks without extreme stress.

Blood will not flow properly through arteries if there are holes in your arteries. Also, if your blood does not continue to flow freely through your arteries the results are always damaging but can be deadly. Every living tissue in your body is depending on the blood it needs survive and that blood is delivered through the arteries of your heart.

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Where do you get your stress? Family? Work? Money? Yourself? All of the above?

How much of your feeling of stress is based off of your current situations, and how much is based off of your past situations? You probably know what I mean by that, but the answer is not always clear when you’re in the middle of it.

You are aware that managing and reducing stress can prevent lots of problems. Problems with health, sleep, poor diet potential addiction, and more. Stopping these problems before they start is just smart.

You know you would not choose to have trouble sleeping well or problems with your blood pressure. But, choosing to ignore your stress level is almost like that.

Many people with high stress look to avoid the discomfort by looking for things to make them feel “better”. If you’re hot, you want to be cool, if you’re cold, you want to be warm. When feeling stress, you might look for short term relief like watching TV, movies, prescription medications, cigarette smoking, eating, and other addictions.

Many people think medication is the only alternative, and try to avoid that. If there were a simple, clinically studied and proven method to relieve stress, would you use it?

Yes, you would, if it really worked.

You’ve probably watched a movie or television to relax. Does it really help? Probably most of the time you’re watching it you feel relatively more relaxed. Something else to focus on and think about? But there really isn’t much “thinking” going on… it just helps you make a more relaxed state of mind.

Many people go through great lengths and complicated processes to achieve this state of mind. Creative visualization, meditation, yoga, deep prayer, etc…

These things technically achieve a mental state of hypnosis. Since it is a natural state of mind, it takes very little practice to regularly get this hyper focused state.

You are in a different states of hypnosis many times during a normal day. To hypnotize yourself on purpose, with the purpose of reducing stress, is easy and shown to be very effective.

There are medical clinical studies in the National Library of Medicine you can research on www.pubmed.gov.

Physical and mental stress reduction is possible in just a few short minutes.

Getting help from an appropriately trained hypnotist or using a quality self-hypnosis audio to reduce general stress are perfect alternatives. They have a higher rate of long-term success than medication and hypnosis has no potential for side-effects.

Note: Even though hypnosis has been an approved by the American Medical Association since 1958, it does not replace conventional medicine.

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Comfort food is something we crave when we are tired, sad, lonely, stressed or even happy. We all have our own favorite comfort food, for me it is Jack in the Box tacos. If you had this food as an adult for the first time, you would never eat it again, but still you are drawn to it. It is just not logical!

Here is the logic, the addition and craving you are feeling is emotional. You, like myself, can justify eating it because you think you will feel happy, content or calm. Deep down you know it will not make you feel better, but think it will subconsciously. After a while you actually start to believe it will make you feel better and because our minds believe this, you do feel better, but only for a short time.

As the taco is disappearing, a bite at a time, the guilt kicks in. You might have guessed this does not stop me from eating one taco, or even my second! I am sure you know this feeling, and it is very frustrating. I know I should not be eating the greasy and oddly textured taco, but I really feel like eating it. I have the same cravings, longing and urge to devour that taco, the same as you.

Annihilating the taco, is a habit and this habit was learned through different ways. For me, I remember being very young, seven or eight years old maybe. I was on the way to the beach in Southern California with my family. I remember my mom and aunt, talking about Jack in the Box tacos. They talked about how good and greasy they are. They would especially be perfect to buy and take to the beach to eat. We were all happy and having a good time. It was a warm, sunny day at the beach, and we were going to play and enjoy ourselves. We got the tacos and they were the most delicious tacos in the world. I remember some gritty sand getting onto some of my taco but it didn’t matter, we were having a fantastic day. Important memories which are vivid typically are more influential than the everyday mundane memories.

Today, just the anticipation of getting the tacos triggers good feelings which are associated with this memory. Sometimes the memory comes with it and sometimes not. It is important to understand how we relate feelings to different things in our lives, things like food, music or a voice.

For example, I used to love Aerosmith. I would listen to their songs over and over again, but never get sick of them. All this changed in the early 90′s when I took my then girlfriend to an Aerosmith concert. Things did not get well and since then I don’t care for Aerosmith much, each song reminds me of her.

I have been able to conquer my embarrassing fear of spiders, thank goodness. I managed to trace it back to a time when I was six or seven and had a run in with a black widow spider. The spider was inside of a rear window in our van. I remember the van had pin striping and the interior was tangerine orange with matching carpet. Try not to laugh too hard, it was SoCal in the 70′s. My parents were freaking out and they made my brothers and I quickly evacuate the van. Now I am able to kill spiders but if I see a big one, still gets my heart racing.

Other memories we associate with feelings or emotions might be something as simple as a voice. I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear a stern voice, like my wife saying, Patrick Michael Glancy, I know I have either done something wrong or need to find something to do and fast! Most people feel like a child when they hear this tone of voice. Especially when someone uses your first, middle and last name!

Enough about me. The point of all this is to show you common sense examples of learned behaviors. Emotions associated with memories trigger very powerful, behind the scenes reactions and decisions in our minds.

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