As goes the body, so goes the brain. Or something like that.
The image above is from a study looking at the brains of adolescent smokers. Clearly, smoking is bad for the brain - and the brain is already malfunctioning, adding smoking just makes it worse (imo).
This article looks at the high incidence of poor lifestyle choices in the severely mentally ill (smoking, drinking, drug use, obesity, etc.). The paper suggests "the benefits of lifestyle interventions based on diet and exercise designed to minimize and reduce the negative impact of these risk factors on the physical health of patients with severe mental illnesses."
I would add that a healthier body can contribute to a healthier brain - it's time to end the body/brain split (mind = body/brain and a whole lot more), and this is a small step in the right direction.
Efficacy of lifestyle interventions in physical health management of patients with severe mental illness
Fernando Chacon, Fernando Mora, Alicia Gervas-Rios and Inmaculada Gilaberte
Annals of General Psychiatry 2011, 10:22. doi:10.1186/1744-859X-10-22
Published: 19 September 2011
Abstract (provisional)
2 comments:
Before we can realistically expect many of the "seriously mentally ill" to exercise and stop smoking we need to stop poisoning them long-term with neurotoxic drugs that makes it extremely difficult and often pretty much impossible to MOVE.
Insisting people exercise and then shaming them when they do not, when they are drugged into a stupor doesn't work, and that is what I saw perpetrated again and again when I worked with that population.
Smoking too seems to go hand in hand with neuroleptics and the sedentary lifestyle that is essentially imposed on them once neuroleptics are prescribed.
When we start offering alternatives to medications that seriously and deeply harm the bodies of these people (and yes, their minds too!!) then we can more realistically hope to engage them in other healthy pursuits.
No argument here Gianna - I see the same thing in some of the clients I work with, and most of them are not SMI.
Too many drugs and too high of doses - that needs to change.
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