Smoking Is Also Hazardous to Your Urologic Health.

It is given that smoking is deleterious to your lungs and heart causing lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease, just to name a few of the common medical conditions causes by smoking.  There are also urologic conditions that are affected by smoking.

Bladder cancer is 4^th most common cancer in men with nearly 80,000 new cases each year in the united States.  Smoking causes harmful chemicals and drugs to collect in the urine.  These toxic chemical affect the lining of the bladder and increase your risk of bladder cancer.

Nearly 30 million American men have erectile dysfunction or impotence  This is usually due to a reduction of poor blood flow to the penis.  Smoking can harm blood vessels, when decrease the blood flow to the penis.  As a result, men will have difficulty obtaining and keeping an erection adequate for sexual intimacy.

Kidney cancer is in the top ten most common cancers in both men and women with nearly 60,000 new cases every year.  Smoking puts noxious chemicals from the lungs into the blood stream where it is filtered into the kidneys and can cause kidney cancer.

Kidney stones affect 1 million Americans and smoking is a known cause of having kidney stones and also for having recurrent kidney stones.

Painful bladder syndrome affects 12% of women.  The condition is irritated by smoking and produces more symptoms of pain and discomfort in the pelvis.

Overactive bladder (OAB) affects more than 30 million American men and women.  Smoking irritates the bladder and increase the frequency of urination.  Smoking also is associated with coughing that can increase urinary leakage.

Infertility caused by male factors affects 50% of all problems related to difficulty with achieving a pregnancy.  Smoking can harm the genetic make-up in eggs and sperm.  The infertility rate for smokers in nearly twice that for those men who do not smoke cigarettes.

Bottom Line:  Most people are looking for reasons to stop smoking.  There are so many medical conditions that are caused by or are made worse by smoking.  Talk to your doctor about some of the effective ways to achieve smoking cessation.

Secondhand smoke may be a risk factor for children’s bladder irritation

Parents smoke may be putting her children at greater risk for bladder irritation. Research from the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey surveyed children from age 4-17. All the children had symptoms of bladder irritation, such as frequency and urgency of urination,. Those with more significant urinary symptoms were more likely to have consistent exposure to secondhand smoke. Of these children, 23% had a mother who smoked and 50% were regularly exposed to secondhand smoke while riding in a car. If you are looking for another reason to begin a smoking cessation program, think about the health of your children and its impact on their bladder.

Your Chair May Be Hazardous To Your Health-The Sins of Sitting

You’ve seen that advice about smoking hazardous to your health which is posted on every package of cigarettes. Now they may be putting a similar warning on the very chair you sit on. It was just fifty years ago when half of American jobs involved moderate physical activity, often in manufacturing or agriculture. Today less than 20% are physically active at work. The rest spend most of their time sitting in a chair at work and at home. Most Americans now spend more time sitting than they do sleeping. Many spend 10 hours a day in a car, at work or at home in a chair. The problem is worse with older Americans. Nearly 75% of middle age and older Americans are sedentary, and more than 40% get no physical activity at all. Women who sit more than six hours a day outside of work had a 34% higher risk of death than those who sat fewer than three hours a day. Even physically active men were 64% more likely to die of heart disease if they sat more than 23 hours a week in front of the TV.

The Benefits
Going for a daily walk will immediately help you feel better. Regular walking can help protect the aging brain against memory loss and dementia, help cut the risk of heart disease, and reduce the change of developing type 2 diabetes in high-risk adults. You can reduce your risk of developing cancer by merely getting at least 30 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous exercise.

How to Get Started
Start by thinking of ways to add physical activity to your workday and leisure time. You might consider parking your car a few blocks away from where you work and walk to and from the office. Walk up a few flights of stairs a few times every day. Reduce TV viewing. There are many who will watch 10-12 hours of football games every weekend. During a commercial or time out, you can drop down and do 10-15 push-ups or sit-ups. The famous Heisman Trophy winner and professional football player, Herschel Walker, said he never lifted weights but did push-up and sit-ups during commercials while he was watching T.V.

Consider working on your computer while standing up.

Deliver message to colleagues in person instead of texting or E-mailing.

Set the clock in your computer to remind you to stand up and stretch every 30 minutes.

Train yourself to standup when the phone rings.

You can place the waste paper basket on the other side of the room, which forces you to stand up and walk a few feet to make a deposit into the waste paper basket.

If you have to use the restroom, walk up a flight or two instead of using one down the hall on your floor.

Take a brisk 20-minute walk at lunch and eschew the desert.

Bottom Line: Americans, we need to get moving and spend less time sitting. There are simple ways to get more exercise even if you have a sedentary job. Remember, your chair may be dangerous to your health.

Lighting Up A Cigarette Can Put The Fire Out of Your Sex Life

Smokers will often report that the zing has gone of his thing.  The desire goes out the window and so do the firmness of the erections.  By stopping smoking and beginning an exercise program, you can turn back the clock….the sex clock!

Being able to dump the cigarettes is a real accomplishment — especially when you consider how smoking can become intertwined with the intimacy of a relationship. Researchers at the University of Arizona began to study couples where at least one member of the relationship smoked.

Smoking has a direct, negative effect on the sexuality of a man on every level,” says Panayiotis M. Zavos, PhD, director of the Andrology Institute of America and professor of reproductive physiology and andrology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

From their work with couples being treated for infertility, Zavos and his fellow researchers have found that men’s smoking had a significant and negative effect on the ability to conceive. But they also turned up a surprise: Smoking significantly diminished a man’s sexual desire and satisfaction — even for young men in their 20s and 30s.

The smokers reported having sex less than six times a month, whereas the nonsmoking men were having sex nearly twice as often. This difference is especially significant considering that these couples were actively trying to conceive.

Smoking and sex drive

When diminished desire is combined with impaired performance, overall satisfaction is likely to suffer. When asked to rate their satisfaction with the sex they were having on a scale of 1 to 10, nonsmoking couples averaged 8.7, while couples with male smokers fared far worse with an average of only 5.2. Professor Zavos states, “that nearly any man’s sexual satisfaction and frequency [of having sex] would increase if he stopped smoking.”

Other experts agree that smoking can impair sexual performance. Smoking causes damage to smooth muscle inside the penis that interferes with erectile functioning, says Richard Milsten, MD, co-author of The Sexual Male and a urologist for more than 30 years in Woodbury, N.J.

Bottom Line: If your sex life has gone into the tank and you are a smoker, you might try a treatment that will not only jump start your sex life, but will add life to your years.

Excerpted from WebMD: http://men.webmd.com/features/want-better-sex

Charlotte E. Grayson Mathis, MD