HEY! This is a WARNING page! It's our version of a "Scared Straight" page. We're warning you now that some of what follows is very graphic! There are gross and disgusting pictures of what may be going on inside your body this very minute if you've been sitting on your butt and eating potato chips for the last twenty years. So if you don't want to see it, go away now. There are plenty of other good pages here for you to read. Don't call or email later and complain. This stuff is here because sometimes it works. We've seen this type of content really wake some people up and help them change their habits.

Last Chance to Leave.....

OK. You stayed. What follows is what could be happening to your heart if you are eating bacon and twinkies every day, what could be happening to your liver if you drink too much, what could be happening to your lungs if you smoke (tobacco or other stuff!), and what your bones might look like if you haven't been eating and exercising properly.

Keep Going....

Your Heart

Ok, most of you have heard this before. Here's the Clint's notes about heart disease: If you eat too much saturated and hydrogenated fat, if you never exercise, and if you don't get the proper antioxidants, your arteries get clogged up, you have a heart attack and die.

When that artery gets filled up with plaque, It's lights out and nobody's home. If you catch it early enough, you can try heart bypass surgery, like this:

Is this what you want? Think about this the next time you reach for a jelly donut.

Another strategy is to have an angioplasty. That's no fun either. And lots of times after they open the artery up, it soon begins to close again, like this:

See? The doctors fixed the problem and opened this artery with a balloon=like device. They even put a stent in it so it would stay open. But the guy probably started eating Ritz crackers & cheese whiz again, and the inside of the stent was soon clogged up just like the artery was.

*** What would you bet that the above photo came from an autopsy?
I guarantee you, with arteries like this, the guy is a goner.***

This all looks very bad, but there is hope. All of these problems are preventable. Ask one of our Personal Trainers to explain how you can live a healthy life and never experience any of these fates.

Your Lungs!

We're all adults here. in 2004, no one can say "Hey, I didn't know smoking was going to kill me." You know. So what are you going to do about it?

Here is a Healthy Lung. When you were born, your lungs looked like this:

If you've been smoking, chances are your lungs don't look like that anymore. See, when your lungs were clean, you could wake up and not start coughing, and not have to reach for a cigarette. If feeling bad isn't enough to make you want to stop, ask yourself a question: Would you even touch the lung below?

Imagine that lung sitting on a table in front of you. Can you image what it smells like? If it wasn't just a picture, if it was a real lung in front of you, could you look at it without getting sick? That lung may be inside you right now.

So what happens when you get lung cancer? It's no quick easy death. No, you'll probably have to get a big chunk of your lung cut out, undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment that will weaken you, make your hair fall out, and generally make you feel like you are already dead. The pain will be unbearable. You will be sick to your stomach all the time. You will begin to waste away. If you are lucky, you may beat the cancer. If so, you will always be missing part of your lungs, so you'll never have your normal capacity for breathing. You'll get out of breath real easy, and even exercise can only bring back so much at that point. How can you condition a lung that isn't there?

This woman lost one of her lungs at the age of 44. She was lucky. She lived. But she will never be the same, and she will always be worried that the cancer may return. Because it may.

Your Liver!

It's OK (and even healthy) to drink alcohol in small amounts. For most people, that means no more than one or two drinks a day. And you can't save them up either (you can't say "I haven't had a drink for the last two weeks, so tonight I can have a whole case of beer).

Above is a healthy liver

And below is what your liver looks like when you're about to die from cirrhosis

Which liver would you rather have? Which one would keep you alive longer?

Your Bones!

Osteoporosis is partly hereditary. So this may not be completely your fault. The point here isn't assigning blame - it's helping you live a long and healthy life. The people who are walking around all stooped over at 60 years old are the people who did nothing to hold off osteoporosis when they were in their 30's, 40's, & 50's. Even if you are already 70 and hunched over, the right diet and exercise program can help you preserve what bone density you have, so your condition won't continue to deteriorate.

Which one of these people do you want to be? Your fate is in your hands. There are 70 yr old women who have a family history of osteoporosis who still look like the picture on the left. That's because they took charge and instituted an aggressive exercise and nutrition program to prevent the disease from progressing.

Here is some healthy bone:

And here is some osteoporotic bone:

When your bones start to look like this, something as small as a wet spot on the floor can be the beginning of the end. Falling is often an injury that old people never recover from.