Tag: Effects Of Alcohol

Better Your Brain Performance: Stop IQ Deficiency

You may have personally experienced, or just heard from other people, of the mental boost that they get from smoking. Perhaps, for a short period of time such boost may be true, however in the long run, the effect of the tobacco consumption may be more dangerous to your brain than what you have expected. If you want to better your brains well-being, you have to worry about what affects your IQ.

An Addiction Research Center conducted a research regarding the long-term effects of alcohol on an alcoholics brain functioning. As expected, alcohol was found to be associated with mental problems and lower IQ scores. And as an addition to their findings, they also found out that long-term smoking has an effect on decreased brain power.

The results showed that alcohol has more severe effects on the thinking skills of alcoholic men who have been smoking for quite some time already. It has an adverse effect on memory, problem-solving skills and even the IQ of these men.

Among these alcoholic subjects, cigarette smoking was seen to be related to reduced mental functioning. However, even though the cause and effect relationship between smoking and the decreased mental performance was not clearly established, there are still some things which point out to the fact that cigarettes are the cause to such effect. In order to prove this point, more studies will have to be conducted.

Aside from these bad vices, there are still other things which may cause the reduction of your brain power.

Other Short-term Causes for Poor Thinking Performance

According to some more studies, foods which include artificial food coloring and sweeteners may be bad for the brain, more especially if they are consumed in large quantities. Usually, the children are the ones more affected negatively by these artificial flavorings and colorings. Examples of these kinds of foods are colas, white bread and hydrogenated oils.

The hydrogenated oils may cause the clogging of the arteries, and thus may result to heart diseases. Because of the clogs, it would be harder for the blood to flow to the brain. Artificially sweetened foods are unhealthy as well because they can cause fluctuations in blood sugar levels. These fluctuations may cause short-term brain fogging and even diabetes. Thus, it would be wiser for you to stay away from excessive sugar products.

Aside from these foods, other intangible things are believed to cause decrease of brain power. Personal problems such as egotism may be a factor. Because of egotism, a person may limit his ideas into just one view, which is his own. Because of egotism, he becomes settled with just his original thought and he would think that since his thoughts are more important than others then there is no more need to look at the ideas that come from others.

As you may have noticed, the effects of the bad eating habits as well as the personal problems may just be temporary. Thus, if you stop eating all those junk foods and start eating healthy; and likewise stop being so egocentric, then your brain functioning may just return to its normal performance. Fortunately, these factors affect the brain efficiency temporarily; unlike with alcoholism and smoking wherein the effects really do affect the IQ.

However, despite the effects permanence, the fact still remains that you should take care of your brain. You should keep it healthy all the time by doing things beneficial to your mental health. Whether or not the efficiency of your brain is affected temporarily or permanently, the truth is that it is still harmed for a certain period of time. You should know better, your brain performance should always be at its prime.

Helping teenagers to get better sleep

With so many gadgets to play with and use and with so many parties to attend who would want to sleep? With so many distractions today, peopleespecially the younger ones or the teenagersare having a hard time to get better sleep. This should not be a problem but it goes to show how poor the quality of young people is today. Many of them do not perform well in school because they rarely get sleep due to all these distractions.

If you are one of those parents who are having problems that their teeners are not getting the right amount of sleep that they should have, here are some tips that you can share to them.

1. Ask them to cut out on too many caffeine intakes. If you are doing the grocery, then you should be the one who have taken out of the list the foods and drinks that contain caffeine such as coffee, chocolates, sodas and teas. But since you cannot monitor their routines outside your home, it is a must to remind them to cut out on these foods and drinks. You can do this by telling them the bad effects of caffeine not only in sleeping but in their overall health as well.

2. Tell them not to resort to alcohol as a “sleeping aid”. Many adults resort to alcohol to sleep fast. Since their bodies are much older, they can tolerate the effects of alcohol but this should not be the case among the younger ones. If you are a parent, try to tell your child that although alcohol may help him or her to fall asleep, it may cause disturbances that may lead to lesser quality of sleep. Aside from not really helping them to get better sleep, it may also affect their overall health and physical appearance since alcohol may cause early aging.

3. Teach them how to relax before their bedtime. Although this is much easier to do when they are toddler, parents should still try to teach their youngsters how to relax a bit when they are about to go to sleep. You can do this by spending time with the teener and talk about how he or she should handle the everyday stress either in school or in growing up. If the child is able to talk about these things before bedtime, he or she will have a peaceful sleep without thinking of so many things. You can also ask her or him to do relaxing activities such as reading a book or practicing yoga if you are not around to talk to.

4. Ask them to have regular exercise. If regular exercise helps older people to get better sleep at night, what more to the younger ones? Explain to your child the importance of having just the right amount of exercise in getting better sleep and achieving optimum health. To make it more effective, join your teener in doing regular exercises such as light jogging or brisk walking. If he or she sees that you are “walking your talk” there is greater chances for him or her to obey you.

5. Give enough hours for television or for Internet. For a teener to get better sleep, there should be less hours for him or her to spend watching TV programs or browsing the Internet. Since these two are major distractions, it is a must that parents restrict them with too much time on these activities so can sleep better at night.