Surviving Exhibition!!!

EXHIBITION!!!

Last week we finished Exhibition (YAY!!!). My topic for exhibition was the dangers of smoking, drugs and alcohol.  Exhibition is the big culminating project for all of elementary school here at AIS.  We spent almost 3 months working on doing research and then putting it all together into a persuasive essay and then a presentation which we had to give to two different sets of parents, including using a presentation board.  Here's a video that tells you a bit more about Exhibition.

Video About Exhibition Where I'm Interviewed
https://youtu.be/xsGeKA2Kqg8


Jake's Exhibition Presentation Video

And a video of my final presentation:

Here's my persuasive essay... Are you persuaded by it?

Unhealthy Habits Affect Your Mental and Physical Health

By Jake Bilotti

Every cigarette you smoke reduces your expected lifespan by 11 minutes. Unhealthy habits affect your mental and physical health. To begin with, drugs have a negative impact on your well being. Secondly, alcohol makes you lose control of yourself and is dangerous for your health. Lastly, smoking has harmful effects on your body. Imagine if there was a world where no one had these bad habits. Would you try and make that world?

I believe that it’s not okay to take drugs. Imagine if you were a kid that was encouraged to take drugs by their friends? What would you do, would you say no even if it means they won’t be your friends anymore? In my opinion, you shouldn’t take drugs even in that situation. Kids who are called “cool” sometimes tell other kids that they will be cooler if they had drugs and some kids would do it just to be popular. Everyone knows how bad drugs are for you body but so few know how bad they really are for you. Drinking alcohol can damage your brain and make you have special needs. Marijuana gives you short term memory and can cause other brain issues. It also increases your heart rate, can harm the lungs, and can increase the risk of craziness in people with vulnerability. Research tells us, when people start using drugs, 56.2% of the time they start with marijuana.

Inhalants, the kind of drug you sniff, are really poisonous and can damage the heart, kidneys, lungs, and brain. Even a healthy person can suffer heart failure and death within minutes of the first use of inhaling a lot of a poisonous substance. Steroids are commonly misused by athletes to get stronger and to give them an advantage over the other competition in the sports they compete in. They have serious side effects like severe acne, heart disease, liver problems, stroke, infectious diseases, depression, and suicide. Even knowing those risks the temptation is still so strong that even famous athletes can't resist using it. Like Lance Armstrong who denied doping but was caught and disgraced.

Without doubt, many people use alcohol. The fact is, it’s fine unless you have too much. Even though it's not that bad if you don’t drink a lot, there are always risks to drinking. There are also many problems you can get from alcohol like liver and heart diseases, cancers and strokes. Now I learned that the more you drink the greater the chance of developing alcohol related problems or long term health conditions. Even small amounts of alcohol can affect your ability to drive.

Every day, 28 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve at least one car where the driver was drinking alcohol. This means one death every 53 minutes. Alcohol also costs our society a lot of money. Alcohol-related crashes alone can cost more than $44 billion a year. There are some inventions that police can use (like roadside alcohol breath analyzers) that can help get people off the road that are drinking and driving, but it's not enough.

Smoking impacts your mental and physical health. Cigarettes contain about 600 ingredients. When they burn, they generate more than 7,000 chemicals. Many of those chemicals are poisonous and at least 69 of them can cause cancer. Smoking increases risk of macular degeneration, cataracts, and poor eyesight. Smoking weakens your sense of taste and sense of smell, so food may become less enjoyable. In a condition called emphysema, the air sacs in your lungs are destroyed.

The Main Ingredients in a Cigarette.

Over time, smokers are at increased risk of having types of heart  disease. Smoking damages your entire cardiovascular system. Nicotine causes blood vessels to tighten, which restricts the flow of blood (peripheral artery disease). Smoking lowers good cholesterol levels and raises blood pressure,smokers are at greater risk of blood cancer (leukemia). Smoking also increases risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, and esophagus. Smokers have higher rates of kidney cancer and pancreatic cancer. Smoking also has an effect on insulin, making it more likely that you’ll develop insulin resistance. That puts you at increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.  

The good news, however, is that it’s never too late to quit!  The effects of quitting can be felt in only 20 minutes and it only gets better from there.  All you have to do is get started.

 
It is vital that you don’t smoke if you are pregnant. Children whose parents smoke are more prone to coughing, wheezing,and asthma attacks than children whose parents don’t. Children of smokers have higher rates of pneumonia and bronchitis.  

Pregnant mothers who are exposed to secondhand smoke are also more likely to have a baby with low birth weight birth defects, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Even with all these risks parents still smoke around their children.

 

In conclusion, unhealthy habits affect your mental and physical health. Share with your friends, family and community how smoking, drinking and taking drugs is bad for your health. Instead of smoking, drinks or taking drugs likes your friends, tell them it's not good for them and create awareness. Another thing you can do is help encourage people to quit. In the future, wouldn’t you like to think “I helped someone quit”. If you get someone to quit an unhealthy habit, and they start feeling healthier. Then they might do the same for another and this creates a chain reaction and then everyone would feel good and healthy. After all, isn’t that what we want?

Noodletools Bibliography

Works Cited

“Does Drug Abuse Cause Mental Disorders, or Vice Versa?” National Institute on Drug Abuse. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/addiction-health>.

“Drugs, Brains, and Behaviour: The Science of Addiction.” National Institute on Drug Abuse. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/addiction-health>.

“The Effects of Smoking on the Body.” Health Line. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <http://www.healthline.com/health/smoking/effects-on-body>.

“How Can Addiction Harm Other People.” National Institute on Drug. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/addiction-health>.

“Impaired Driving: Get the Facts.” CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC 24/7: Saving Lives. Protecting People. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html>

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Kite, Naomi. “Grade 5 Exhibition.” Grade 5 Exhibition. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

“1 out of 3 U.S. Citizens A.I.D.S. Death Are Related to Drug Abuse.” National Institute on Drug Abuse. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016. <https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/addiction-health>.