Soccer or Cigarettes?

Exercise in youth has lasting bone benefits

"Men who participate in athletics in their late teens experience bone-building benefits that last for years, even if they are no longer training intensively, a new study shows.

"Osteoporosis or brittle bone disease is most common among women, but also occurs in men, with the incidence expected to triple over the next fifty years, Dr. Anna Nordstrom and colleagues from Umea University in Sweden note in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism..."



Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Drinking and Smoking

"Not only might cigarettes prompt more drinking by lowering blood alcohol levels, said psychologist Saul Shiffman of the University of Pittsburgh, but drinking actually seems to spur smoking.

" "When people are drinking," he said, "they're more likely to smoke."

"Some of that association, Shiffman said, is psychological—resulting from lowered inhibitions and a conditioned association between cigarettes and bars or drinking—but some is pharmacological: A 2004 study from Duke University suggests that even small amounts of alcohol can intensify the pleasurable effects of nicotine.

" "There's some evidence that smoking is more rewarding when you've had alcohol," Shiffman said. "It's a self-perpetuating phenomenon." "

"So when we are children, innocent, we have no bad habits, but as we grow and associate with bad company, we also acquire all these bad habits. So to give up all these bad habits means we have to associate with sadhus or devotees, saintly persons. Then we can give it up. This is called anartha-nivrtti, means giving up all unwanted bad habits. These things are not wanted. Nobody dies if he does not smoke or drink. Nobody dies."

Bhagavad-gita 2.11 (with Spanish translator) -- Mexico, February 11, 1975