Tag: smoking

All physical activity has benefits for the body and mind. View exercise as a break from your day. Use this time to focus on the present, instead of past or future problems and worries. What are your favorite ways to be physically active?

Physical activity can help you quit and stay quit. It can also improve your energy level, ability to learn, and focus.

Emotional Health

Exercise releases endorphins and increases levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. These brain chemicals help create feelings of happiness and euphoria. You may start to feel these benefits after just a few minutes of moderate exercise. This leads to a happiness buzz and overall mood boost!

Stress Management

Norepinephrine is a chemical that can moderate the brain’s response to stress. Exercise helps to increase that chemical. Exercise can decrease worry and tension. These may be triggers for you to smoke, dip, or vape. Exercise also enhances the mind’s ability to deal with daily stressors. Managing stressors can reduce urges to reach for your old habit. The calming effect of exercise can last at least four hours after the exercise is over.

Physical Health

Exercise helps strengthen your muscles and bones. This helps you have good posture and keeps your joints and body more aligned. Exercise strengthens your heart muscle so your heart is more efficient. This also helps reduce your risk of having a heart attack or blood clot. Exercise can also help lower your blood pressure. Your ability to breathe also improves, especially as you reduce and eliminate smoking. Exercise improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood that fight off viruses and bacteria. Exercise also helps combat damage done to cells, tissues, and organs.

Recommendation: Be physically active for at least 2 ½ hours (150 minutes) per week. You can do this for 10, 15, 20, or 30 minutes at a time. Consult your doctor before beginning an exercise routine if you:

*  Have a chronic health problem, such as heart disease or diabetes.

*  Have high blood pressure.

*  Feel faint or dizzy when you try to exercise.

*  Have an injury or bone or joint problems, such as arthritis, that have been or could become aggravated by exercise.

Reduce Sit-Time

Find ways to move more throughout the day.

*  Set an alarm on your watch or phone to get up every hour, if sitting.

*  Stretch and walk for a few minutes to get more oxygen flowing through your body.

*  Drink water regularly so you need to use the bathroom every few hours.

*  Get up during commercial breaks on TV to tidy up a room or dust.

*  Walk outside for a few minutes. Take a deep breath of fresh air.

*  Walk to get lunch.

Move in Different Ways

All exercise and movement help give you the benefits. Finding activities you like doing and that you will keep doing is important for long-term success.

Cardiovascular (cardio) training uses large movements that involve multiple muscle groups, such as your legs, buttocks, and abdominals, all at once. Popular aerobic activities are brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, and dancing.

Resistance training uses body weight or weights to build muscle. Move slowly through exercises, breathing regularly. Squats, lunges, push-ups, calf raises, and bicep curls are basic resistance movements.

Stretching helps your body be more flexible. This helps you prevent injury during exercise and everyday activities. Stretching can also help you relax.

Secondhand smoke is the smoke that occurs when a cigarette, pipe, or cigar is lit. The secondhand smoke going into the room from the end of a burning cigarette is not filtered. People breathing in secondhand smoke are breathing in this smoke, as well as what the smoker blows into the room. Secondhand smoke puts non-smoking bystanders (maybe your loved ones) at risk for the same health problems as the smoker.

Some of the toxins found in secondhand smoke are tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, cadmium, benzpyrene, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, acetone, pyridine, and formaldehyde. Although secondhand smoke becomes mixed with the air, there are safety risks for both the smoker and non-smokers, as well as pets who breathe these vapors in.

Infants & Children

Children of smokers are at a higher risk for respiratory infections, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, and middle ear infections. Asthma can become more severe. Children of smokers are also much more likely to start smoking.

Pets

Your beloved fur ball can develop serious health problems, including nose and lung cancers, from secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke can also cause respiratory illness in cats and dogs and make skin conditions worse. Thirdhand smoke, or the smoke residue that settles on surfaces, can be especially damaging to cats. When cats lick their fur to clean themselves, they lick the toxins from smoke. This makes cats more than twice as likely to develop malignant lymphoma, a type of cancer.

Protect Your Loved Ones

To protect others from secondhand smoke, avoid smoking in enclosed spaces that you share with others, like your house or car. If you are going to smoke, go outside and make sure windows are closed to the house near the area you are smoking. Avoid using a “smoking room” in the house or smoking in an attached garage-smoke will still get into the rest of the house.