The never-too-late nutrition plan: you can rebuild yourself—no matter how badly you've trashed your body

Men's Fitness, Jan, 2002 by Myatt Murphy

THE POTHEAD

The Bad News

* Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, say that smoking pot can cause precancerous changes in lung tissue, as marijuana contains up to 50 percent more carcinogens than tobacco. "However, most pot smokers don't smoke 20 joints a day like a cigarette smoker would, so the total amount of smoke inhaled is usually much less," says Wilson. (Marijuana smokers do tend to hold the smoke within their lungs longer than cigarette smokers do. This may increase the lungs' exposure to the chemical by-products of smoking but research has yet to reach a conclusion.)

The fewer daily hits that pot smokers take may lower their risk of lung cancer, but it doesn't put them in the clear. They still confront the same lung-restricting effects faced by cigarette smokers. Researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health found a greater incidence of cancer within the heads and necks of pot smokers.

* "THC [tetrahydrocannabinol], the active ingredient in pot smoke, also binds to the hippocampus in the brain, creating short-term-memory loss in most smokers," says Wilson. Because the chemical can stay in the brain for up to eight days after the smoking of just a single joint, chronic users may suffer from constant memory lapses, never giving their bodies a chance to completely purge excess THC. The effects, however, are usually reversible.

How to fix yourself

* Follow the same prescription recommended for cigarette smokers--and stop returning David Lee Roth's phone calls. He's a bad influence.

THE SUN WORSHIPPER

The Bad News

* If you're fair-skinned and have suffered at least one bad burn in your lifetime, you're already at risk for developing skin cancer. If you're red-haired or blond and are from the southern regions of the U.S., where sun exposure is nearly year-round, your skin is even more vulnerable.

* Besides resulting in chronic dehydration, baking yourself to a golden brown breaks down stores of collagen and elastin in your tissues (the proteins that give your skin its firmness and elasticity). Over time, when collagen is depleted, the elasticity in your skin decreases, which is why your skin tends to wrinkle and weather over time. But excessive sun exposure can speed up that process, causing your skin to lose collagen faster so it ages prematurely. Exposure to all those UV rays can also damage your DNA, affect your immune system, and cause an increase in free-radical production within your body, producing long-term damage to skin cells and an increased risk of cancer. "Getting rid of these free radicals is a battle your body will be fighting long after you stop tanning," says Kleiner.

How to fix yourself

* Once you've received a full screening by a dermatologist and stocked up on SPF 45, it's time to start fortifying yourself. "Although your body has a natural defense mechanism to eliminate most of the free radicals left in your system, excessive sun exposure can sometimes leave your body too overwhelmed to do its job properly," says Kleiner. "Supplementing your diet with foods high in key antioxidants, including beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, copper, zinc and manganese, can help." Here's how to add one serving of each to your daily diet.