Tag Archives: lung health

Avoid Gaining Weight After You Quit Smoking

If you quit smoking for your New Year’s Resolution, good for you, Quitter! This is one of the single greatest things you can do to improve your health. Dropping a nasty nicotine habit can be tough work, and most people end up replacing the oral fixation of smoking with something else oral- chewing and swallowing junk food.

On an average, people tend to gain 5 pounds during their quitting process. The action of lighting up, bringing the cig to and from your mouth and inhaling and exhaling the smoke is one that many people become addicted to just as much as the chemical addiction to harmful nicotine. In addition, when you smoke a cigarette, a chemical reaction occurs in the body and sugars are released into the blood stream. This is why many people consider cigarettes as an appetite suppressant. When cigarettes are removed, a former smoker may fiercely crave sweets.

The oral and chemical addiction can make quitting smoking a tough process, but there are things you can do to keep the cigarettes away and weight gain at bay.

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Posted on January 24, 2024 by Kelly

Casual Pot Smoking Presents No Harm to Lungs

The proof is in the pudding, or doobie, as it were. Despite all our preconceived thoughts about the lasting dangers of marijuana, it turns out it’s not that bad for you after all.

New research has concluded that casual pot smoking does not affect the functioning of the lungs. Casual is defined as smoking up to one joint per day.

These statistics were gathered from a two decade-long study of 5115 men and women. The study was conducted by the University of California, San Fransisco and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The results were published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association. (more…)

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Lacy

Jorge Cruise launches book tour

Jorge Cruise is currently on a 20 city tour at various Barnes and Nobles promoting his 10th book “12-Second Sequence”. As we were waiting for the discussion to begin Jorge came bursting through the doors of the Barnes and Noble in New York City, kicking of his book tour energetically, despite the frigid temperatures in the teens outside. His promotional tour is perfectly timed with the New Year as the majority of New Year’s resolutions center around health and getting in shape.

Jorge began his discussions by talking about his passion for health and wellness and spoke about his perspective on ridding the body of fat. “This does not mean having to starve ourselves or perform cardio for hours,” Jorge states. The key being to build muscle strength by fatiguing the muscles. You will not change the muscle or body composition without this key component. This compressed program touts the ability to create muscle quickly, which then directly impacts our resting metabolism (the state of our metabolism when we are well, resting) leading to more calorie burn throughout the day.

After an overview of the program, Jorge lead a sample lunge exercise from the 12-second Sequence with members of the audience spread throughout the store. The countdown to 12 began and the audience members participating confirmed feeling the burn that Jorge has spoken about. He also at this point spoke on a more personal level about growing up overweight himself and not having good role models to look up to. In this 10th book, that took 2 years to write, are pages on eating well, meal plans and an exercise tracker. In addition, the book provides a self-administered fitness test, which then leads the reader into his 12 second sequence 8-week challenge. As well as joining the 8-week challenge, readers have the opportunity to win $10,000 by signing up at www.12second.com and uploading their before and after photos. 10 winners will be selected.

Jorge ends by asking us all “Are we ready to take on the challenge?” Are you?

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Jimmy C

Three Cheers to New Study on Alcohol

There’s apparently more good news for those of us who like to imbibe. We already knew that red wine has been shown to improve your heart health. Now a drink or two a day may also help you breathe easier. Lung function seems to improve – even for smokers – for people who partake in moderate regular drinking.

“This is the biggest study that’s ever looked at the possible protective effect of alcohol involving the lung,” said study author Dr. Stanton T. Siu, chief of pulmonary medicine at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland, California.

Dr Sui goes on to say that he found that “if you drank less than two glasses of alcohol that you had much less likelihood of developing obstructive airways disease, which includes asthma and emphysema.”

He goes on to reveal some surprising news.

“You do seem to get some benefit if you drink three to five drinks per day,” added Siu.

“But it wasn’t as good if you drank just a little. And if you drank six or more, it actually had a bad effect. It made your lung function worse.”

Siu said light drinking’s protective effect roughly translates to a 20 percent reduction in the risk for developing lung disease.

“There was a little more of a positive impact for women,” Siu said, “but not a huge difference. And, in fact, when we looked at three to five drinks per day, then the men did better than the women.”

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Jason