June 12, 2017June 10, 2017 by Shalom A

How to Break Caffeine Addiction

Everybody is aware of the dangers of various addictions such as cocaine, weed, heroine, opiates, and other drugs. However, there is one addiction that almost everyone is unaware about. That addiction would be the caffeine addiction.

Caffeine is a stimulant for the brain. Caffeine is also the world’s most used psychoactive drug. However, unlike any other psychoactive drugs, it is commonly unregulated and accessible to anybody. One of the most common sources of caffeine is the consumption of coffee, or tea.

Getting hooked in caffeine can have various negative effects in both our body and mental state. What’s worse is that there is hardly any action done by any health organizations to inform people about the negative side effects of caffeine.

Negative Effects of Caffeine Addiction

1. Insomnia

Insomnia is a psychological problem where one has trouble sleeping or staying asleep. People that have insomnia are often not satisfied with their sleep,and usually experience some of the following symptoms: lethargy, fatigue, lack of concentration, mood swings, and lower performance in school or work. (1)

2. Anxiety

Caffeine-induced anxiety disorder is a disorder caused by the psychoactive effects of caffeine to the brain. People with a history and anxiety have a great chance of having a panic attack when they drink or consume foods high in caffeine. (2)

3. Irregular Heart Beat

Cardiac Arrhythmia, also known as irregular heart beat, is a potentially dangerous disorder. It is characterized by a person missing a heart beat or having multiple heart beats in a period of time wherein they should only have had a single heart beat.

Caffeine’s stimulating effects speed up the rate at which the heart beats. Doctors often advise people who are genetically predisposed to have heart diseases to avoid drinking too much coffee. Patients should, however, avoid drinking energy drinks completely. (3)

4. Headaches

Headaches are painful sensations that you can experience in various parts of your head. You can experience headaches almost instantly after drinking coffee. This is because caffeine narrows the blood vessels in your brain whenever you consume it. When you stop consuming caffeine, the blood vessels immediately expand and causes pain. (4)

Here is a short video that further explains the negative effects of caffeine addiction:

People, more often than not, deny that they already have caffeine addiction. Self assessment is also hard since symptoms of caffeine addiction are hardly visible. However, here are a few ways to know if your already have caffeine addiction.

Symptoms of Caffeine Addiction

1. You Experience Withdrawals Symptoms When You Stop Drinking Coffee

Caffeine causes our brain to produce a stimulant called Dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in control of the pleasure and reward centers of our brain. Excessive production of dopamine causes us to become dependent and addicted to its trigger.

Removing caffeine from your diet can cause several withdrawal symptoms such as lethargy or lack of energy, headaches, nausea, depression, vomiting, or muscle pain and stiffness. If you feel some of this symptoms when you forget your daily dose of coffee, then there’s a high chance you are already addicted to caffeine.

2. Your Desperate To Add Caffeine Rich Foods in Your Diet

If you notice that most of the food you consume are rich in caffeine, then you might have caffeine addiction. If you feel like drinking coffee for no reason, or eat coffee flavored desserts, then you probably have caffeine addiction. Caffeine addiction makes you both unconsciously and consciously crave caffeine rich foods.

Not being able to consume caffeine can feel like you are unsatisfied with the food you ate, or you could continuously crave the taste of coffee the whole day.

Now that you are able to determine whether or not you have caffeine addiction, it is now time for you to learn how to battle your caffeine addiction.

How to Break Your Caffeine Addiction

Getting over your caffeine addiction is no easy task. The following procedures are scientifically backed methods of how you can battle your sugar addiction. With discipline and will power, you can make sure that you’ll get over your addiction soon.

1. Slowly Remove Coffee from Your Morning Routine

We often drink coffee in the morning to jump start our senses. It helps us keep awake in our jobs or at school. However, it is also this routine that teaches our body that caffeine is necessary for us to function properly. This routine is the most common cause of caffeine addiction.

To effectively remove coffee from your morning routine, slowly lessen the frequency at which you do it. Start by drinking your morning coffee only every other day for a week. Then after the first week, drink coffee only after every three days. Follow this pattern until you stop drinking coffee every morning completely.

Doing it slowly is more effective than immediately stopping. This is because your body would feel the withdrawal symptoms less, thus the change would be hardly noticeable. This method would also lessen the possibility of you returning back to your old ways.

2. Clear Your House Of Any Coffee

After you have finally gotten rid of coffee from your diet with the above procedure, immediately dispose of any remaining coffee powders or beans in your home. Do not feel anxious about wasting a few bucks, the health benefits that you would get from it would definitely be more beneficial.

You can avoid the temptation of drinking a cup of coffee by removing every coffee at home. It will also help get rid of the stress that you would feel whenever you force yourself to not drink coffee. You should replace the coffee that you have disposed off with healthier drinks such as milk, or fruit juice.

3. Avoid The Coffee Section of Supermarkets

It is undeniable that a whiff of the bittersweet aroma of coffee can force anyone to buy a bag of it. The aroma of coffee is incredibly enticing to anyone who had a history of caffeine addiction. To prevent yourself from the temptation to buy coffee, make sure to avoid the coffee section of your local supermarket.

With all said and done, make sure to consult a health practitioner to help you better in your addiction. Self-help articles like these are great, but nothing can compare from asking a real professional.

June 8, 2017June 10, 2017 by Shalom A

How to Break Sugar Addiction

How To Break From Your Sugar Addiction

Ow that sweet, sweet sugar addiction most of us have. For most children, and even adults, sugar has been a big part of their daily diet. Some of us can’t even go through the day with stuffing our mouths with sugary treats such as candies and soft drinks.

Sadly, this guilty pleasure of ours is one of the greatest causes of diseases and deaths worldwide. It is one of the leading causes of obesity and diabetes globally. Dr Robert Lutsig, and expert in obesity among children, has stated that sugar is 11 times more likely to cause diabetes compared to other calories. (1)

The most common sugar, as known as the table sugar, is known to cause various health problems with long term consumption. Some of which include weight gain, increased low density lipoproteins (bad cholesterol), decreased High Density Lipoproteins (good cholesterol), high blood pressure, and much more. (2)

For us to live a longer and healthier lives, we need to rid ourselves with this horrible addiction. There are many tips and guides out there that show people how to kick this addiction of our’s permanently. Some even involve hypnosis, however, we shall focus on how to kick sugar addiction according to science.

First, we will discuss the symptoms to watch out for to know if you already have sugar addiction. Then, we shall discuss in depth how to effectively break your sugar addiction. Finally, we will discuss the possible side effects of consciously removing sugar from your diet.

Watch the trailer of the movie Fed Up by Stephanie Soechtig to get a glimpse of how sugar has damaged our society:

Symptoms of A Sugar Addiction

1. Not Being Able to Consume Sugar Can Affect the Patients Mood

Sugar like any other drug can affect the chemicals in our brain that determine how we feel, think, and act. Positive experiences, like eating sugar, causes a chemical called dopamine in our brains. Dopamine is a compound that makes you feel good and light.

Sugar addiction causes our body to be addicted and dependent that is provided by dopamine. When you remove sugar from your diet, the body will feel as if it was deprived of something positive. Thus, causing the patient to become irritable, or moody.

2. You Undergo Withdrawal Symptoms When You Stop Consuming Sugar

Secondly, sugar is a highly addictive substance, some even say that it is more addictive that cocaine. The reason for this addiction is that eating or even thinking about sugar can cause your brain to produce a powerful neurotransmitter called Dopamine.

Dopamine is controls how our body feels pleasure. Hence, removing it from our diet causes our body to react in negative ways so as to force us to go back to our addiction. Some symptoms include headaches, lethargy or lack of energy, muscle pain, anxiety, cravings, insomnia, nausea, and chills.

3. You Find Excuses To Include Sugar In Your Diet

Your brain, once addicted to sugar, unconsciously find ways to supply it with a hit of sugar. You may consciously or unconsciously choose diets that would provide you with the highest amounts of sugar.

Some of this may include you choosing to eat at a fast food rather than cooking a healthy meal, choosing soft drinks over water, rewarding yourself with sweets for the littlest of reasons, or simply eating a teaspoon of sugar because you believe it won’t harm you.

How To Beat Sugar Addiction

Now that you have determined whether or not you are addicted to sugar, you must now address the problem by following these following instructions. Make sure to be religious in doing so to obtain the best results.

1. Substitute Fruits For Sweets

Whenever you feel like you want to eat sweet foods or candies, substitute them with healthy fruits. To do this, always have a ready supply of fruits, and get rid of your stash of junk foods. Eating fruits will not only reduce the amount of sugar that you intake, it also provides you with healthier and more nutrients and vitamins.

However, keep in mind that not all fruits contain the same amount of sugar. Some fruits still contain high amounts of sugar such as lychees, figs, mangoes, cherries and grapes. While fruits such as avocados, and some berries contain considerably lower amounts of sugar. (3)

2. Always Check the Nutrition Facts Attached to Processed Food Products

Most countries regulate food manufacturers by requiring them to disclose in the packaging of their products that amount of nutrients, calories, and carbohydrates that their products contain. This can be an easy way for you to accurately control your diet.

With the help of the nutritional value label, you can easily compute how much sugar you have eaten or drank in a day. Make sure to follow the daily recommended value of sugar.

The American Heart Association recommends that adult men consume about 37.5 grams of sugar a day, while 25 grams for women. However, these are just rough estimates, thus it would be wiser to consult a health professional before making your own diet. (4)

3. Add More Green Leafy Vegetables to Your Meals

Vegetable are rich in nutrients and vitamins. They can provide you with the necessary nutrients to satisfy your body’s cravings. For example, vegetables such as spinach are rich in magnesium. A study have shown that eating enough magnesium everyday can fight a person’s craving for chocolate. Thus, more spinach means less chocolate cravings.

Abundance in fiber, and having to chew more makes vegetables good buffer foods. This means vegetables have the ability to make you feel fuller faster. Hence, when you eat vegetables, there is smaller chance that you’ll be looking for dessert afterwards.

Always Remember to Consult a Health Professional

Treating any kind of addiction is not a simple do-it-yourself project. It is important that you consult health professionals every time you decide to alter anything in your diet. There are a lot of diseases that require you to consume a specific amount of sugar.

For example, Hypoglycemia is a disease that causes our body to have low levels of sugar. If you are afflicted with this disease, it would be wiser to avoid completely removing sugar from your diet.

Sugar Addiction is truly a damaging disease, not just for individuals, but for the society as a whole. Realizing it sooner than later can help us improve our health, and reduce the lives that are destroyed by sugar addiction.

February 20, 2017February 20, 2017 by Luke Ruatoka

10 Most Common Addictions 2017

Addiction takes all that a person has in his life. Those who want take control of their lives should know about their addiction as much as possible.

The most common addictions encountered today are as follows:

Tobacco – Tobacco contains nicotine. It is often overlooked as a harmful drug. This is because tobacco products are easily available and are legal. However, tobacco produces some of the worst side effects which occur slowly over time. The use of tobacco claims more lives than any other of the addictive substance. There are millions of smokers that want to quit but just can’t despite understanding the tole tobacco will take on their life.
Alcohol – Drinking alcohol is socially accepted which makes alcohol addiction hard to spot. Alcohol abuse causes serious and deadly health problems and can also be highly addictive for some people. The consequences of alcohol abuse are numerous. Alcohol overdose, liver disease, and drunk driving claims thousands of lives every year.
Marijuana – Marijuana has become more socially acceptable over the years and has even been legalized in several states. While mostly harmless for the majority of users, marijuana can be highly addictive for some people. This addiction can be destructive to the drug abuser’s work and family life.
Painkillers – Drugs such as Codeine, Oxycontin and Vicodin are commonly prescribed for the treatment of excessive pain. The prescription for using painkillers does not make them any less addictive. Painkiller addiction can develop over time even from recommended and acceptable use. Many users of prescription painkillers become hopelessly addicted and don’t realize it until they attempt to stop using the drug.
Cocaine – The rate of cocaine addiction is sustained at a constant rate. There has not been an increase in use for years. Crack cocaine, cheaply available and more intense than traditional cocaine is the reason for many ruined lives and crippling addictions.
Heroin – The severe symptoms of heroine withdrawal make beating this addiction a very daunting task. The treatment of heroin addiction requires the combination of medications and therapy to help the management of symptoms for cravings and withdrawal. Not only is heroin use very dangerous and potentially deadly, there is also the risk of contracting life threatening diseases due to sharing needles with other users.
Benzodiazepines – Benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Valium, Klonopin and Diazepam are prescribed as mood regulating drugs for managing conditions such as stress and anxiety. Benzodiazepines are especially dangerous due to their powerful effect on the brain’s chemical framework. Withdrawal can be a deadly without any medical assistance.
Stimulants – Stimulants are one of the more common forms of addiction. They range from prescription drugs to illicit substances. These kinds of drugs are highly intense and addictive therefore, the withdrawal symptoms are quite difficult.
Inhalants – Addiction to inhalants is very dangerous because these are volatile toxic substances. Effects of these substances are intense and they can have an immediate consequence including death of hospitalization. Chemicals absorbed through inhalants could linger in the brain and body long after discontinued use. This makes recovery much more difficult.
Sedatives – Sedatives are commonly known as sleeping pills. They are used for the treatment of sleep disorders and tension. Their addiction can produce effects that could be mind altering leading to continued abuse.

Avoid using any kind of such addiction substances for a healthy life and your own good.

February 20, 2017 by Luke Ruatoka

How Much Does Addiction Treatment Cost

Price Variables Of Attending Rehab

Drug addiction is a debilitating and persistent disease. Drug abuse can increase fanatical thinking and inhibit normal functioning of the brain. It can also deteriorate the drug users personality and alter their personal morals and values which may cause the drug abuser to do things they normally wouldn’t.

Despite the fact that these substances can cause serious harm, drug addicts continue to use until they are so hopelessly addicted that they can’t quit without outside intervention. Drug addiction learn to lie to themselves and embrace their condition, justifying and supporting their decision to use.

The Cost Of Treatment

Drug addictions vary from person to person and drug to drug. Every addict’s experience is different and so not every treatment option will be equally effective for an individual. The price will of course vary as well depending on the services and amenities being provided to the patient. Some rehab clinics are lavish, almost like staying at a resort, while others may feel more like a hospital. It’s important to consider budget before making a final treatment decision.

Economic Concerns About Rehab Costs

Some addicts justify their inaction regarding treatment of their disease by citing the perceived high cost of rehab treatment. They will say it’s simply too expensive and thus continue to use. They are not wrong that treatment is potentially very expensive. However, continuing to use will often cost an addict their life savings, relationships, and even their life.

Rehab treatment is the best option for recovery. And there are numerous ways to mitigate the high costs through insurance, payment plans, and state run facilities. Price should not be a factor when making the difficult decision to enroll or not enroll in rehab.

Rehabilitaion In North America

The United States has seen a significant increase in the cost of rehab over the years. While years ago most rehab clinics offered very standard facilities, time has seen an increase in more lavish establishments. This has resulted in an increase in the average costs. One of the most famous addiction treatment provided is US is Hazelden. Promises Treatment Centers is a popular facility in the US among celebrities. There is also Meadows Clinic located in Arizona.

Categories Of Addiction Treatment

There are various types of addiction treatment and their costs vary from one to another. The kinds of treatment include Detox, which needs extra care for monitoring which can increase costs. Two other categories of rehab are inpatient and outpatient treatment. Inpatient is a type of treatment in which the patient lives at the treatment center for a period of days or weeks while outpatient treatment allows the patient to live at home during treatment. One or the other may be a better option depending on the individuals unique situation.

Some other items that can influence costs are:

Medications needed
Frequency and length of treatment
Type of addiction

February 20, 2017 by Luke Ruatoka

How To Stage An Intervention

What is intervention?

An intervention is a dialog between a drug or alcohol addict and the addict’s family or loved ones. Often, these conversations are supervised by a specialist who directs the conversation in the right direction. The purpose of an intervention is to allow the addict and family members express themselves in a productive manner.

Why intervention is important?

Intervention is one of the most important steps for rehabilitation. It is important to have a structured dialogue to prevent the interaction from degrading into blaming, arguing, and yelling. It may get very difficult to convince the addict to express himself or herself again. An open conversation that goes in the right direction will produce the right results and guide the addict towards recovery.

Staging an intervention

Setting up an intervention is important to make sure that it yields the desired results.

Setting up the intervention is important as it is not just any ordinary conversation that will start on its own. It has to be planned ahead of time and the parties to the intervention (addict and his or her loved ones) need to be taken into confidence that it is important for them to participate in it.
The most crucial step of staging an intervention is to find an intervention specialist who will direct the structured conversation. Intervention specialists will also help push the dialogue further in case of any awkward situation or a stalemate. It is the role of the intervention specialist to make sure that both parties feel confident in that they are not the ones who are being subjected to undue pressure.
Both parties should be encouraged to make notes of what they are going to say. This helps the intervention specialist in knowing how he or she is going to direct the course of dialogue. Notes also help in deciding how the desired outcomes will be achieved and how to determine what’s going on in the minds of the involved people.
Deciding on a neutral meeting place is important so that both parties are comfortable in that meeting place. If either one of the parties is uncomfortable, they will not be able to talk freely about their feelings openly.
Have a backup plan ready that in case things go unplanned or become violent. Decide ahead of time what should be done to counter the situation and its negative effects.
Setting up a follow up meeting is important. No matter what results from the initial meeting, it is important to follow up with constructive goals.

February 20, 2017February 20, 2017 by Luke Ruatoka

What Should I Know About Going To Rehab

Education, Rehab

Finding the right addiction treatment option is most likely the most important step in an addicts recovery journey. Every year, thousands of people enter drug rehab treatment for recovery. Rehab plays a huge role in guiding the addicted person towards a life free from drug abuse or alcohol. It can be overwhelming when making a treatment decision. That is why it’s so important to educate yourself on the options available.

Rehab may be a drastic life change

Desperate times call for desperate measures and rehab is no different. Treatment may call for a major overhaul of a persons life. Inpatient rehab facilities, which require the the addict live at the facility for a month or more, may cause the patient to feel afraid of committing to treatment. This fear is only exacerbated by the fact that the addict is most likely already mental and physically drained by their addiction. It’s important for the addicted person to understand that it is a disease they are suffering from. Sick people need professional treatment to recover. If an addict is not yet in rehab it is critical that they ignore their apprehensions and seek help.

In an effort to avoid treatment many drug addicts will try to beat the disease through sheer force of will. This absolutely won’t work. Doing so will ultimately result in relapse and the drug use will return with a vengeance. Each time the user returns to using it is often much worse than before. It may be painful but treatment is the only answer.

There are number of things you should know about when going to rehab. Some of them are as follows:

Follow the rules and regulations – First and foremost, you must follow the rules while enrolled in rehab. You should accept that the rules are there for a reason and the reason is your recovery. The rules in rehab provide a structured environment which allows the drug addict to focus every ounce of their energy and focus into recovery.
Follow the advice of the counselor – It’s important to follow all the advice provided by your counselor. They are professionals and have experience and success dealing with your exact situation. Your counselor’s instruction will speed up the recovery process as they have your quick recovery at heart.
Always ask questions – As stated, all your mental energy should be focused on recovery. That means any confusion, frustration, or fear will only slow down the process. In an effort to reduce stress, make sure to ask questions about anything you are unfamiliar with. This will help make your stay pleasant.

Try to be friendly – While in rehab try not to take out your anger and frustration on the staff. This will likely be a very difficult time for you and the staff is trained to handle these sorts of things, however the more effort they can focus on your recovery the more success you will have. On the other hand it is very important to find some outlet for your frustration so make sure to bring it up to your counselor so that he or she is aware and can help you work through it.