When you are born, you are given all the brain cells that you are ever going to have with that being said we need to be more conservative about them because once you lose them you can never regenerate them. Since it is coming close to the weekend I wanted to post this to make you think a little more about the decisions you make as a college student.
So yes we are all independent now and is exposed to lots of new things. Drugs and alcohol is a major problem in campuses in the U.S. Drugs and alcohol can be found anywhere and this is alarming to think about for many reasons but one in particular would be since your amount of brain cells is limited, how does these substances affect your brain cells.
First, alcohol has not major effect on the brain if you drink occasionally. Even if you go hard one night and get a nasty hangover it still will not have an effect on your brain cells. However, regular habits of drinking a lot and hangovers will cause some of your brain cells to die. When you wake up with a bad hangover and have a high fever can be deadly and if you survive it can still leave your brain in critical condition. In fact, 10 minutes of a fever at 106 degrees Fahrenheit kills about 50 million brain cells.
Second, I want to talk to you about is weed. Weed has been found to kill brain cells too. More and more people are starting to smoke weed because it is readily available, it is a cheep buzz that relaxes you, and people try to fit in with the crowd. However, you should think about what are the effects on your brain the next time someone offers you a puff of weed. Ask yourself am I in college to build my knowledge or am I here to smoke and lose it?
Learning about these effects on your brain cell by abusing alcohol and weed made me very curious. So curious, that I decided to look at other drugs that kill your brain cells that people may use and/or abuse most importantly with us “College Kids.” The information that I found was astounding, we are the future and as the future doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientist, technology designers, etc. we need to be more aware of the risk we are taking by taking drugs and alcohol.
Coming to college I have learned that Adderall is a drug that can make you smarter or study smarter, something like that. It is now one of the most major drugs taken on campus. If you have 4 exams this week, take Adderall and you will focus more and do well on the tests. That is just one of many scenarios why one will find a necessity to take the drug. Adderall is so easily available on campus that someone can even get it at the substitute for it. If you guessed the library then you were right. I watched a video in high school were kids randomly asked another kid for Adderall in one of the isles in the library and that same kid sold them some. But what I did not know but I found in my research is that Adderall actually kills brain cells over time if abused.
Other drugs that has effects on your brain cells are steroids, nitrous oxide, and ecstasy all kill your brain cells. Inhalants such as inhaling paint, whiteout, and I even heard about huffing coolants from central air units also kills your brain cells. In addition, PCP causes lesions on the brains of rats, and , methamphetamines causes effects to your brain similar to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, and ketamine is linked to the death of neurons. Moreover, Xanax or Valium used over time kills blood cells and can even cause dementia, cocaine kills cells that cause pleasure, and cigarettes and tobacco products cause white blood cells to attack brain cells.
In conclusion, I believe that students should try to better evaluate the risk of taking these drugs and alcohol because it is not just the short term affects that should be of concern but also the long term affects, more specifically with the brain. From my research these substances are dangerous when abused and have a correlation with the killing of brain cells.
Gloom. “List Of Things That Kill Brain Cells: The Death of Neurons.” List Of Things That Kill Brain Cells: The Death of Neurons. Mental Health Daily, 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
I found this interesting to read because it’s relatable to us college students. The commonly talked about thing in college students are drugs. Of course college students are going to abuse drugs in this new environment we’re in. Therefore, because of this we see uneducated college students making poor decisions. I agree with this topic, there is no way drugs can have any beneficial side to them so it makes sense that it kills brain cells. The idea that our brain cells do not regenerate is kind of crazy to think about because we can loose brain cells everyday from the littlest things, like inhaling gasoline when at the gas station. Here is a link to what I found.