Growth, development and health Exercise.

There are other ways in which the decisions you make about your lifestyles can affect how

healthy you are.

1. Exercise

Taking regular exercise is a really good thing to do because.

 It helps to use some of energy in the food you eat each day, stopping you from storing too

much as fat.

 It also makes the heart and muscles work hard, so that they become strong.

 Exercise can also make people feel more cheerful and positive about life.

2. Smoking

Smoking cigarettes damages the smoker’s health.

Why is smocking bad.

Tobacco contains many different harmful substances.

Nicotine

 Tobacco smoke contains nicotine. Nicotine can help someone to stay alert. Nicotine is

addictive. This means that it is difficult to manage without it, once you are used to

smoking. This is why smokers find it so difficult to stop smoking.

 Nicotine damages the blood vessels in a smoker’s body. It makes them get narrower, so it

is harder for blood to get through them.

 Smokers are more likely than non-smokers to develop heart disease.

 Men who smoke tend to produce less healthy sperm than men who do not smoke.

 Smoking also reduces a woman’s chance of getting pregnant.

 Women who smoke before they get pregnant are more likely to have problems during

pregnancy, even if they stop smoking then.

 When a pregnant woman smokes, the nicotine gets into her foetus’s blood. This makes

the foetus likely to grow more slowly. It is more likely to have a low birth weight – that

is, to be smaller than usual when it is born.

 A foetus that is exposed to nicotine is more likely to develop diabetes when it grows up.

This is also true for a baby that is breast-fed, if its mother smokes.

 The brain of a foetus that is exposed to nicotine may not develop normally

Tar

 Tobacco smoke contains a mixture of dark, sticky substances called tar. Some of the

chemicals in tar cause cancer. Cancer happens when cells start dividing out of control and

spread to other parts of the body.

 Smoking increases the risk of getting many different kinds of cancer, including lung

cancer.

 Carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas. When it gets into the body, it

combines with haemoglobin inside red blood cells. This stops haemoglobin doing its

normal job, which is to combine with oxygen and transport it to all the body cells that

need it. So a smoker’s cells don’t get enough oxygen. They cannot carry out enough

respiration, so don’t have enough energy.

 Tobacco smoke contains tiny particles of carbon and other materials, called particulates.

They get trapped inside the smoker’s lungs. This makes the walls of the alveoli break
down. Instead of having millions of tiny alveoli in the lungs, the smoker has a lot of big

spaces. This is makes it difficult for them to get enough oxygen into their blood.