How To Kill Your Brain With Bad Habits

How To Kill Your Brain With Bad Habits

Bad Habit #1
That Kills Your Brain: Recreational Drugs
Most people already know that recreational drugs ‘fry’ the brain, triggering the reward pathway that triggers addiction and results in altered levels of serotonin and dopamine.
Recreational drugs such as methamphetamine, heroine and cocaine age your body rapidly, bringing you closer to the rocking chair long before your time because of the effects of the drugs as well as the high concentrations of toxic chemicals in them. These drugs also weaken your immunity and make you more susceptible to serious infections.
Drugs like Ecstasy and crack can permanently alter moods, excitability, and cause anxiety, insomnia and restlessness while increasing the risk of developing mental illnesses such as depression later in life.

Bad Habit #2
That Kills Your Brain: Alcohol
When alcohol is consumed in higher amounts, there’s no desire to eat. The alcohol replaces the feeling of hunger because it’s high in calories. However, it’s low in nutrients and uses up the body’s store of vitamins and minerals.
Two common deficiencies found in alcoholics are thiamine (vitamin B1) and magnesium. Thiamine deficiency causes decreased mental alertness, emotional instability, confusion, memory loss, and decreased coordination. Magnesium deficiency causes symptoms such as confusion, depression, disorientation, apprehensiveness and irritability.

Bad Habit #3
That Disrupts Your Brain’s Functioning: Bad Diet
What do foods high in sugar and processed foods have in common that makes them bad for your brain? It’s their content of advanced glycation endproducts, or AGEs. These molecular fragments act like miniscule terrorists tying up your cells’ DNA so that it’s useless. After enough of the DNA is bound up in a gnarled mass, organ failure can set in. Foods high in sugar or highly processed such as pizza or hot dogs have the highest level of AGEs. Once they get into your digestive system, their effects are amplified.
AGEs have been linked to every degenerative disease including diabetes, diabetes complications, high blood pressure, arthritis, cancer, heart disease and dementia.