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Fixing health follies
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Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll -- most of us have taken health risks of one kind or another. You can't go back, but you can (in most cases) act now to neutralize your youthful indiscretions.
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By Paul Benedetti
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We've all done things we wish we hadn't. Some mistakes were harmless, such as that powder blue velour jumpsuit you bought in the mid-'80s. Other behaviours -- such as smoking cigarettes or baking in the sun -- could have long-term health consequences. You can't go back, but it's never too late to take action. Here's a list of seven youthful indiscretions, their results and advice for what to do about them now.
1. Rap sheet: Tattoo
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Unicorns were beautiful and spiritual and, well, deep. Why not have one tattooed in full colour on your shoulder?
Regrets: Well, as the CEO of your accounting firm, you're not so sure you want to wear a sleeveless summer dress to the annual picnic. You're so tired of explaining your tattoo.
A tattoo is created when a tattoo artist uses electric needles to inject pigment about 1/64th of an inch into your skin. The results are permanent. A few people become photosensitive at the tattoo site; others develop an allergic reaction to the pigment -- usually red. But the biggest risk is that you will wake up one day and simply wish it were not there.
What to do now: You basically have three choices: laser removal, dermabrasion (sanding the top layers of skin) and surgery. The laser uses light to destroy the dyes in the skin cells over several sessions, but the results are not perfect. "There is always some discolouration afterward," says Dr. Danielle Marcoux, a dermatologist in Montreal. Both dermabrasion and surgery leave scars, and the procedures are not usually covered by health plans, meaning removal will cost you anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
You can use clothing or makeup to cover the tattoo temporarily, or you can just learn to love that little unicorn as a symbol of your unique individuality.
2. Rap sheet: Ready to rock
Margaret Cheesman remembers going to her campus bar every weekend and rocking to loud music for hours on end.
Regrets: "I already feel I have difficulty hearing in noisy rooms," says Cheesman, who is now a researcher at the National Centre for Audiology at the University of Western Ontario in London. She's not alone. In one American study, 17 per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 44 reported having difficulties hearing. Many experts are blaming a noisier environment. Are you getting that? Would you like me to speak up?
The problem isn't just loud music but any loud noise, including snowmobiles or a noisy working environment. "If you expose your ears to a lot of noise, your ears will age prematurely," says Cheesman. "With this kind of hearing loss, we can hear all the low pitches of the sounds, but it seems muffled because the high pitches don't come through."
What to do now: Unfortunately, what's gone is gone. What you can do is protect the hearing you have left. Avoid loud noise; Cheesman says anything under 75 decibels (the level of loud speech) is probably safe. Normal conversation is 60. Yelling is about 85. The average rock concert is about 100, and a jet taking off clocks in at 160.
How can you tell if things are too loud? "My general rule is if you can't carry on a conversation about a metre away from somebody, things are too loud," says Cheesman.
You can still go to rock concerts, but wear earplugs. Musician's plugs cost a bit more, but they don't muffle the music like regular plugs. You can play your car radio loud, but just for a song or two, not all day long. Don't crank headphones all the way up; many portable music players can deliver music at 100 decibels or more.
"Lessen the exposure. Cut back. Everything in moderation," says Cheesman. "If you like music, save your ears for the music."
3. Rap sheet: Smoking cigarettes
The coolest girls were doing it. And the commercials told you that you'd come a long way, baby. So, you started smoking for fun and for fashion. And then you were hooked.
Regrets: The picture could not be clearer. Smoking kills. This year in Canada 45,000 people will die because of smoking, according to Health Canada. Smoking accounts for 85 per cent of all new cases of lung cancer in Canada. In short, it's the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Smoking is also directly linked to age-related macular degeneration -- a leading cause of blindness.
What to do now: Roberta Ferrence, director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit at the University of Toronto, says quitting, at almost any age, has huge benefits. "Your risk of having a heart attack drops by 50 per cent in the first year. Your cardiovascular and respiratory function return to normal quickly," says Ferrence, also a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. And "if you quit within 15 or 20 years, on average, your elevated risk for cancer, heart disease and other diseases will probably go back to that of a 'never smoker,'" she says. "You may have long-term respiratory effects, but most of the damage is not permanent, not enough to kill you."
Still, even a few years of smoking or a couple of cigarettes per day can hurt you. "I don't think it's appropriate to give a message that you're scot-free for the first 20 years," says Ferrence. Smoking can cause or worsen asthma. It damages your skin and gums. While you're smoking, it elevates your risk of cancer and heart disease and of getting colds and the flu. It reduces your ability to heal and increases your risk of infection. Quitting as early as possible is important, but quitting at almost any age is helpful, too. "If you smoke for 40 years, you can't reverse it all," says Ferrence. "But if you quit at age 50, even at 80, it makes a big difference."
4. Rap sheet: Smoking pot
Sure, back in university you smoked a bit of pot at parties. And there was that one time you tried magic mushrooms, or was it two times? It's kind of hard to remember, man.
Regrets: You're 40-something and you're starting to forget things, such as where you left your keys and whether you sent that e-mail yesterday. Could it be the drugs you did in university? Maybe you shouldn't have inhaled -- so much. Not likely, says Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. "If it is something you tried 20 years ago, it is unlikely to have any lasting effect."
There is some concern that drug use may trigger an underlying mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, but the evidence isn't clear. "Late teens is the time when people most experiment with drugs, and it is also the time that a lot of mental illness shows up," says Wood, but there is no evidence that such use has anything to do with psychiatric problems that emerge later in life. "We can't say 100 per cent for sure, because nobody has really done the studies. But if there were long-term effects, we would have seen it by now."
There's also the risk that experimentation could trigger a substance abuse problem, but that would likely be evident at the time, not two decades later.
What to do now: Nothing. Relax. Whatever you did in college that involved a bong or rolling papers is a memory, however blurry. Keep an eye out for your own kids though. Potent drugs, such as crystal meth, are very powerful and may affect the developing brain, though the research is still in its early stages, says Wood.
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