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Saturday 20 May 2017

The Effects of Smoking on Sleep

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Overview

The effects of smoking on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems are well known, but there is another reason to consider quitting: your sleep health. Not only is smoking associated with getting less sleep, but it also is responsible for changing your sleep pattern so that even a full night in bed does not feel restful. Smoking tobacco prevents a full night’s sleep in several ways. Over the long term, it can also lead to a serious sleep disorder known as sleep apnea.

Reduced Deep Sleep

The Effects of Smoking on Sleep
Nicotine is a stimulant that lessens the quality of sleep. Photo Credit nicotine - nikotin image by Cornelia Pithart from Fotolia.com
The most dramatic effect of smoking on sleep is a reduction in the time spent in deep sleep, which is known for creating that “restorative” feeling people have when they wake up in the morning. In 2008, the journal "Chest" reported that chronic smokers spend more time in light sleep, especially in the early parts of the night. The culprit is nicotine, which has a stimulating effect on the nervous system. Ironically, as nicotine is reduced in the bloodstream throughout the night, withdrawal symptoms increase. Symptoms include restlessness and insomnia.
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Increased Sleep Fragmentation

The Effects of Smoking on Sleep
Smoking leads to sleep fragmentation and restless nights. Photo Credit the morning after image by weim from Fotolia.com
Because deep sleep is reduced in chronic smokers, the time spent in bed does not indicate a “good night’s sleep.” This is partially due to less deep sleep, but also to sleep fragmentation, or the increased likelihood of awakening in the night. Dr. Ron Kramer of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that, in 2006, the CDC completed a door-to-door survey of 87,000 individuals about their sleep health. Researchers found that smokers are heavily represented in the group of people who get less than six hours sleep, and also among those who get more than nine hours of sleep. Too much time in bed is often an indication that the restorative benefits of sleep are not being met. While the cause is not clear, the pattern is that smokers as a whole are not well-rested.

High Risk for Sleep Apnea

The Effects of Smoking on Sleep
Sleep apnea can make daily life difficult. Photo Credit sleeping on books image by DXfoto.com from Fotolia.com
Smoking is also an independent risk factor for a dangerous sleep disorder known as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). According to the Mayo Clinic, smokers are three times more likely to have OSA than people who have never smoked. During OSA, airways are constricted or clogged, preventing enough oxygen from reaching the brain during sleep. Extraordinarily loud snoring and waking up and gasping for breath are two common symptoms of OSA, which, if left untreated, can lead to pulmonary hypertension, heart failure and early death. Smoking increases the risk for OSA because the habit irritates the throat lining and leads to nighttime congestion.

Quitting and Sleep Health

The Effects of Smoking on Sleep
Sleep health improves as soon as nicotine leaves the body. Photo Credit broken lose cigarettes image by Maria Brzostowska from Fotolia.com
The good news is that quitting smoking can immediately improve sleep health. This has been known for decades. In a well-documented and influential 1980 article in the journal "Science," researchers found that sleep patterns improved considerably after subjects abstained from cigarettes. This is most likely due to the harmful effects of nicotine on the sleep-wake cycle. Once nicotine is out of your system, sleep improves and the restorative benefits of sleep return.
For further information log on website :
http://www.livestrong.com/article/95245-effects-smoking-sleep/

Smoking & Phlegm

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Smoking has a number of well-known health effects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that it causes lung cancer and increases stroke and heart disease risk. It restricts circulation and contributes to conditions like abdominal aortic aneurysm and peripheral vascular disease. Some effects are more subtle. For example, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, or UPMC, reports that cigarettes affect phlegm production.

Description

Mucus is a body secretion that helps protect the lungs by trapping foreign bodies that get in the nose while a person is breathing, according to Word IQ. Certain actions and illnesses cause increased mucus production. A large amount of thick mucus is known as phlegm. It can result from colds and respiratory infections, and the UPMC states that smoking can cause it.
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Cause

The UPMC explains that smoking leads to phlegm because of the way it affects the lungs. Smokers develop more mucus-producing cells in their lungs and airway. They have a greater mucus volume, which becomes thick phlegm. The lungs are normally cleaned by hairs called cilia, but their movement slows while a person is smoking and remains impaired for several hours afterward. Cilia cannot clean out the phlegm effectively, so it remains in the lungs and airway.

Short-Term Effects

Phlegm that stays in the lungs and airway clogs them and leads to chronic coughing. It can also cause respiratory infections, the UPMC warns. The problem often gets worse because cigarette use reduces the number of cilia and inflames and narrows the lungs and airway. Air flow is eventually reduced. Smoking Cessation, a stop-smoking website, states that smokers tend to cough in the morning because their cilia are very active in the morning. Their efforts to clear out accumulated phlegm causes coughing. Non-smokers who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke suffer from these same effects, according to the UPMC.

Long-Term Effects

Smokers have a higher risk of developing certain respiratory diseases like emphysema and chronic bronchitis over time. Phlegm complicates these problems, according to the UPMC. Both diseases cause breathing problems, and the increased production of thick mucus further restricts airflow. Smoking Cessation explains that smoking eventually thickens lung membranes. This change is linked to an increased throat cancer risk.

Prevention/Solution

People who stop smoking realize many benefits, including reduced phlegm. The UPMC explains that those who stop smoking can breathe more easily within three cigarette-free days. Phlegm is noticeably reduced within one month, and cilia regrow within one to nine months. Cilia regain the ability to handle mucus and clean the lungs efficiently, and coughing and infection risk drops.
For further information log on website :
http://www.livestrong.com/article/246639-smoking-phlegm/

A 4-Week Plan to Build Serious Muscle

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Overview

Hypertrophy. Jacked. Ripped. Diesel. Project Swolification. Whatever your preferred descriptor phrase or word of choice, adding appreciable size in the form of muscle mass is at the top of most trainees' goals list.
Certainly there are health benefits to consistently lifting weights and increasing muscle mass -- improved bone health and density, improved immune function, increased energy, reduced risk of injury, improved insulin sensitivity and a vast decrease in the incidence of metabolic syndrome, just to name a few. But at the end of the day, what really matters for many trainees is being able to walk down the street in a medium T-shirt on and know they look yoked, with large, protruding muscles.
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The problem is that while having biceps the size of Kansas and a chest that can deflect bullets are common goals for most guys -- and quite a few girls too -- many will never come close to achieving "the look."
Even if that's exactly what happened to you in the past, it doesn't have to happen again. Once you learn how to overcome the common sticking points, you can bust through and start building serious muscle.
Movements like chin-ups or deadlifts force your body to use a lot of muscle mass to get the job done.
Nick Tumminello, personal trainer

Replace Stagnation With Progression

A muscle will increase in size relative to the load that is placed upon it. It's as simple as that. If you want to get bigger, you need to make a concerted effort to lift more weight on a weekly basis.
Far too often, people use the same weight week in and week out. Then they're left dumbfounded when they look exactly the same as they did when they started going to the gym -- three years ago.
But the truth is, to make a muscle grow, you need to throw it a curve ball. You need to challenge it and make it do more work. Even if you only add 5 pounds to the bar, those additional pounds are moving you forward.
If there's one common mistake that many trainees make, though, it's assuming that training to failure on each and every set is, somehow, a way to make progress. These lifters believe that because they're training with such "intensity" -- so much so they're reaching the point of missing reps -- they will experience much more muscle growth.
This is flawed thinking.
It's true that at some point, adding five to 10 pounds every week will become a limiting factor. But when this happens, make use of the "two-rep window," which allows for some flexibility in your repetitions.
As an example, imagine that your program calls for 10 repetitions, but the weight you're using is proving to be a real challenge. Instead of missing reps, consciously shoot for eight to 10 repetitions. Likewise, if your exercise calls for five repetitions, the "two-rep window" would mean you would shoot for three to five repetitions.
So if you want to bench press five reps at 225 pounds, your first week might look something like this:
Set 1: 225x5
Set 2: 225x5
Set 3: 225x4
Set 4: 225x4
Set 5: 225x3
You can see that by Set 3, you are cutting your sets short because of fatigue or poor technique.
In this case, your progress challenge would be to try, in the following session, to hit the reps you previously left in the tank. So it may look something like this:
Week Two
Set 1: 225x5
Set 2: 225x5
Set 3: 225x5
Set 4: 225x5
Set 5: 225x4
Compared with the first week, the lifter did three extra reps in the second week -- to the tune of 675 additional pounds -- 225 times 3.
In the following weeks, the hypothetical lifter would continue with this weight until he was able to complete all the reps successfully. Once he accomplished it, he'd give someone a high five, up the weight and repeat the process.

Replace Isolation Exercises With Compound Movements

When it comes to building muscle, popular belief says that following a body-part-per-day split is the most efficient use of your time. Monday, therefore, is generally known as "National Bench Press Day," with many trainees targeting their chests on that day. The rest of the week is then broken down in a similar fashion, working one or two muscle groups each day. So a typical week's grouping might be as follows:
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back and biceps
Wednesday: Shoulders and triceps
Thursday: Hamstrings
Friday: Quads
Weekend: Off
But body-part splits are actually an inefficient approach. After all, you're only stimulating or targeting a muscle once every seven to 10 days. What's more, you're actually limiting the gains you could be making in the long run.
If you want to build slabs of muscle on your frame, you need to incorporate movements that not only utilize as much muscle mass as possible, but also provide the impetus your body needs to grow.
Instead of body parts, focus on compound, multijoint movements. Take it a step further: Instead of designating a particular day as "arm day," for example, make it a "chinup" day.
Nick Tumminello, a personal trainer and founder of Performance University in Baltimore, Maryland, noted that "movements like chin-ups or deadlifts force your body to use a lot of muscle mass to get the job done. As such, common sense tells you that the more muscle mass you recruit, the more potential there is for future muscle growth."
For a specific example, take a popular exercise like dumbbell bicep curls and add an average trainee wanting muscle growth. He's looking to put on some size -- any size -- and he's faced with two exercise options: an exercise that limits him to 25-pound. curls targeting one, fairly tiny muscle roughly the size of a tennis ball or chin-ups that not only force him to use much more weight, but also recruit muscles from his entire body. It's obvious the chinups are the more logical choice to meet his goal.
Another benefit of focusing on compound movements is that, by default, you'll be hitting certain body parts several times per week instead of only once, giving the muscles more opportunities to increase.
So nix the isolation exercises and focus more on compound movements. Instead of targeting specific muscles, target specific movements. Start each training session with a main movement, such as a squat variation, a deadlift variation or a bench press variation, then complement that particular movement for the remainder of your workout.

Include a Sets-and-Reps Inversion

Another aspect of building muscle that's often overlooked is the inversion of sets and reps. That is, instead of performing three sets of 10 repetitions on every exercise -- which, for some reason, has become the established golden rule of strength training -- you would perform 10 sets of three repetitions.
As strength coach Chad Waterbury, a neurophysiologist and author of "Muscle Revolution," noted, "In essence, you'll still be performing the same volume -- as dictated by the total number of sets and reps completed -- but now you'll be increasing the total tonnage of your workout, which will not only have a profound effect on the central nervous system -- and hence, strength gains -- but will also lead to unparalleled muscle gains as well."
So take the dumbbell bicep curls mentioned earlier and compare them with chin-ups.
Isolation Dumbbell Bicep Curl:
Weight Used: 25 lbs.
Sets: 3
Reps: 10
Total Volume: 30 repetitions
Total Tonnage: 30 reps x 25 lbs. = 750 lbs.
Chin-Ups:
Weight Used: 155 lbs. of bodyweight
Sets: 10
Reps: 3
Total Volume: 30 repetitions
Total Tonnage: 30 reps x 155 lbs. = 4,650 lbs.
A look at the numbers confirms the chin-up option will certainly lead to more muscle growth than the dumbbell bicep curls.
This does not mean, though, that you will apply this to every exercise you're performing in a day. For one thing, it would take an inordinate amount of time to train if you inverted the sets and reps for every exercise in your session.
Apply this inversion technique only to the main movement for that day -- in this case, chin-ups. Perform 10 sets of three reps of chin-ups, then use the more traditional set-and-rep scheme for the accessory movements.

Control and Explode to Grow

Generally the eccentric, or lowering, portion of the lift is considered the money component because that's the part that elicits the most muscular disturbance, the microscopic damage that prompts muscle growth. Using a controlled, slow eccentric leads to increased microtears in the muscle, which, in turn, provide the stimulus the body needs to repair and lay down new, stronger muscle tissue.
Consequently, many trainees automatically assume they should be performing the concentric, or lifting, portion of the exercise at a slow, deliberate pace as well. This is not true. It's best to explode, lifting the bar quickly.
Lifting with intent and purpose is a frequently ignored component of muscle growth. Unfortunately, that means many trainees leave untapped muscle growth on the table by not paying attention to how they perform the lift. But when they are cognizant of bar speed and focus on explosiveness while trying to exert force on a load, trainees will see increased strength gains as well as additional muscle mass.
Because of heavy weights, the actual lift of the bar won't always appear to be at high speed. But as long as the "intent" to be fast is there, the central nervous system will trigger your body to recruit more high-threshold motor units to get the job done.
And it's those same high-threshold motor units that have the greatest propensity for muscle growth. So for lifters who want an increase in mass, it's a win-win situation.
For further information log on website :
http://www.livestrong.com/article/533711-4-week-better-body-plan-muscle/

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