Pornography and It's devastating effects on marriages

     Pornography, it's a subject often overlooked by Public officials, Parent's and Doctors alike due to it's "uncomfortable" nature, but is it time we stop avoiding the "p" word and shed some light on the issue. Some people might say it's silly to question something that seems so simple. But when that "so simple" thing is being utilized by something as comprehensive and complex as the human brain, it's no longer such a silly question. Pornography is easily one of the most searched and viewed subjects on the internet in the history of internet and probably always will exist on the internet. But knowing that porn has such a large audience isn't the answer to the question i asked earlier. Knowing porn has such a large audience is simply the beginning of shedding light to much bigger issues, issues that affect moral, respect, women's rights, psychology, human trafficking laws, addiction, marriage, and the lasting effect that pornography addiction will leave on the human race. Few have attempted to shed light on such a touchy subject and even fewer have succeeded to do so. Actress Rashida Jones produced a documentary that can be found on Netflix titled "Hot Girls Wanted". The documentary goes in depth on the porn industry, showing how models are found, how the models live, how they tell their families, how their families cope, and their overall reflection after a number of months in the industry. Almost every girl that entered the porn industry in the film ultimately regretted their decision of getting involved in the industry. Many Girls enter the porn industry infatuated with the idea of being "famous" and living glamorous lives focused on money and partying. Often, girls who do get involved in porn are already in vulnerable situations. Many of them are drug abusers, alcoholics, victims of abuse, and extremely desperate. They enter the porn industry looking for ways to feed their addictions or escape their realities, ergo making them extremely vulnerable to becoming victims of abuse. As put by former star Regan Starr "I got the &*%$ kicked out of me …. Most of the girls start crying because they’re hurting so bad …. I couldn’t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. [I asked them to turn the camera off] and they kept going." (FightTheNewDrug) This is a reality thousands of women deal with everyday all across the world, and the worst part is that close to no one is doing anything to stop it. But the abuse and mistreatment is only the beginning of this issue.


     One of the most undervalued issues that is provoked by the existence of pornography is the addiction. Many people don't realize that addiction to pornography is quite common, and that's probably because many porn addicts are hidden in plain sight. They are the teachers that grade our tests, the cops that protect our city from crime, the stars on the football teams, the pastors of churches, the cashier at the convenience store and etc. Many people are scared to come out in the open with their addiction in fear of judgement, shame, and embarrassment while other people don't even think about porn as addictive. Many use porn as an escape of daily life whether it be stress from work, school, home, or it lets them create a fantasy in their head that otherwise would not be possible. These fantasies or "escapes" allow the viewer to get the "feel good" sensation based off the fantasy they created in their head. However, research has proved that porn creates the complete opposite effect on the brain than what it perceives. Don't believe me? just read this excerpt from "Porn leads to violence"; a feature of the website FightTheNewDrug.com: "Our brains have what scientists call “mirror neurons”—brain cells that fire not only when we do things ourselves, but also when we watch other people do things. This is why movies can make us cry or get scared; or why some people can get so emotionally involved in watching a football game on TV. When a person is watching porn, their brain is busy wiring together whatever is happening on the screen to sexual arousal—in many ways just like if a person was actually doing what they are watching. So if they’re watching a woman get kicked around and called names while feeling aroused, they’re more likely to associate that kind of violence with being sexy.  Even when porn isn’t violent, viewers are learning to see other people as nothing more than objects made to be used for sexual pleasure." (FightTheNewDrug) This knowledge alone should be enough to bring the porn industry into question. I was unable to find accurate statistics of how many people view porn, however i can tell you that number is very high.

     Now if you are any sort of genius, you would have put together the title of this blog with the facts provided in the previous paragraph. If you haven't however done that already, i will put it simply for you. When married men watch porn, or worse, are addicted to porn, their marriage generally doesn't end well. Accounting for married men also doesn't account for the percentage of Men and Teens who watch porn alike that may be in a serious relationship. Since we know that consistently viewing porn can lead to violent behavior and extreme sexual addiction, we can assume the devastating effect porn can have on marriages. Almost all research regarding porns effect on marriages showed the same results. Marriages in which one partner is addicted to porn or sex were often plagued with secrecy, lack of trust, isolation, anxiety, and dysfunction in the relationship. Another ramification of porn addiction often leads to a weak sense of financial security, because often times an addict my end up losing their job because they were looking up porn on a company computer or the addict may end up spending loads of money on porn website memberships. Another way of seeing the issue with porn and marriages is that many women, regardless of what their religious beliefs are see looking at porn as a serious threat to being able to stay married at all. Why? For one thing, when a partner is using porn often, it takes away time they could otherwise be spending together. On top of that, many partners consider it cheating or close to cheating when their partner is using images of someone else’s body to get aroused. More studies have also shown that someone who uses porn frequently is more likely to have an affair during a marriage than someone who doesn't view porn. The reason being is because porn users are frequently seeing images of woman and sexual activity that is often far outside their boundaries or way they could treat their spouse. An example might be that a man see's violent pornography but knows that his wife would not be okay with it, therefore leading them to find a woman that they are lead to believe would enjoy that sort of violence during the act of sex such as a prostitute, which makes it easier for them to carry out these demented fantasies that porn brings to life.

     It is safe to say that pornography is not something healthy or beautiful for our generation to romanticize. With a growing trend in productions such as "Fifty shades of grey" where BDSM is very much romanticized about, It is time to truly analyze the effects of torture porn on the human brain and begin to reverse this growing trend before marriage is ruined all together. Pornography is easily accessible for minors and porn websites are easy to navigate. All a minor needs to do to access a porn website hosting tens of thousands of torture videos is simply press a button that confirms they are above age. If i was a parent, this knowledge of how easy it is to access porn would frighten me, simply because i would hope that my child would one day find a spouse and carry on the next generation of my family. But porn threatens marriage entirely. It threatens morals and demeans woman in the worst ways possible. One theory i have about porn is that if porn was to be banned all together and not exist, rape crimes would drop, divorce numbers would drop, as well as a number of mental health issues that may include depression, schizophrenia, addiction, and low self esteem. I also suspect that teen suicide rates would drop. The reason i was able to come to this conclusion is because i realized that many kids my age, more or less boys, have began to treat their female peers more as objects than human beings. They make derogatory remarks to these female peers as if they are laughing matters, when infact they are not. To a boy making a joke like that it may be funny, but to the person being laughed at, it may be provoking something far worse than what can be seen on the outside, and if you think that we don't have a serious problem here, i suggest you do some research. A problem a generation before us created is a problem that our generation must fix, and i hope that this short writing will help open some minds to a new realm of ideas and realization that will lead to a healthier society all together, and fix the rising number of divorces that seems to be growing ever so much.


For more information you may visit...


Fight The New Drug

Porn Neuroscience

   

American Obesity

      In America today over 35.7 percent of adults are obese, over 68.8 percent of adults are overweight, and over 75 percent of all Americans including children take some form of prescription drug to treat health. Many foreign country's like to poke fun at Americas obesity problem, Sadly it's no longer a joke. America is one of the only countries in the world that is as dedicated to eating fast food, processed food, and candy in extreme amounts as it could be and in fact many of us today are guilty of that quick lunchtime meal from Wendys, Mcdonalds, or even places that claim to be healthy such as Subway. But just because they say we can eat it, does it mean we should? Many studies today say no and those same studies are also showing that the American youth of today may pay the ultimate price if we do not put an end to our unhealthy eating habits. Today i am talking to you about obese America, and especially our teenage generation. Everything from processed meats, processed fruits, processed vegetables, carbonated beverages, saturated fats, trans fats, syrups, etc, can be found in almost any meal from any fast food restaurant menu or in some cases, upper scale restaurant menu's. Along with extremely unhealthy food items, many Americans eat portions far larger than but the human body can withstand. With such a high amount of diseases, cancers, and illnesses amongst Americans today perhaps its time we put down the food and began analyzing what our body are digesting.

     Did you know that meat is packaged with carbon monoxide? Did you know that the carbon monoxide gives meat the "healthy red color" that it needs to appeal to its consumer. Did you know that the same carbon monoxide has also been linked to major diseases? Well, that's just the least of it. With major food poisoning break outs such as e-coli, norovirus , and salmonella you would almost wonder how meat like this gets into fast food chains, grocery stores, and peoples stomachs when American food is supposed to meet all these "health standards" by the FDA. Well, let me tell you, money speaks louder than actions, and in a billion dollar industry, you can bet on money being the winner over safety every time. As written by ABC news, and many other well connected sources, many of the meats we eat today might not be as healthy as we think. In one ABC article, the author wrote "during the hearings some Congress members couldn't be swayed and grilled the companies about the practice. They called the practice unsafe and misleading, and to make their point, they displayed a 2-year-old package of meat that still looked pink and fresh, thanks to carbon monoxide injection." (ABC news) When you read that little bit of text from the ABC article, you begin to think back to all of the meat you have consumed in the last two years,  you wonder how old, safe, or even edible that meat was. Typically, you would judge a meat by its color. A fresh meat should display a nice pinkish red color, while an old meat should portray something that you flush down the toilet. Now, not only can red meat be tainted without a single visible sign, but red meat is an unhealthy option all together. It is now known that red meat can also lead to cancers, most commonly bowel cancer. In red meat, the problems seem to start when a chemical called haem – part of the red pigment in the blood, haemoglobin, is broken down in our gut to form a family of chemicals called N-nitroso compounds. These have been found to damage the cells that line the bowel, so other cells in the bowel lining have to replicate more in order to heal. And it’s this ‘extra’ replication that can increase the chance of errors developing in the cells’ DNA, Ultimately leading to cancer. So now we know that red meat is A) probably tainted B) Cancerous. But what about C)? Well, C) is the obesity problem.  As best said by a Harvard research team "a number of studies have found no relationship. (40,48,53,54) Fast-food restaurants are more likely to locate near schools, however, and close proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools has been linked to increased risk of obesity in schoolchildren." (HARVARD, school of public health, obesity prevention / toxic food environment)

So, now that we know that red meat is unhealthy and fast food can be linked to obesity, lets tie this into culture. In America today, 34.3 percent of American teens eat fast food everyday, 70 percent of Americans eat processed food everyday, and about 68.8 percent of adults are overweight (not including other serious health problems). Now i know i only gave you one example of food processing (which was meat), but seeing how unhealthy meat processing is, you can only imagine how unhealthy processed foods with sugar, fat, carbs, and other artificial ingredients are. Now think about how unhealthy fast food is. Every meat, bun, pickle, tomato, potato, etc on a Mcdonalds burger is processed, and quite literally artificial food. Seeing as 70 percent of Americans eat processed foods daily, it's not hard to understand why america has such a bad obesity problem. The reason why these artificial foods are so dangerous is because inside of our stomachs, we have little sensors that can detect when a stomach is full. When we eat healthy whole foods, our stomachs fill up completely and the sensors detect that and we finish our meal, However, with artificial foods, our senors in our stomach are thrown off and we don't feel full when we are finished eating, quite literally because our brain doesn't recognize that we are full. so we keep on eating, and eating, and eating stretching our stomachs out while also loading our bodies with artificial ingredients that our body cannot digest. Fake sugars and other fake ingredients often lead to blockage in coronary arteries in the heart, which can lead to heart disease,  and heart attacks. Other health issues include Diabetes, Liver Cancer, gallbladder problems, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and many other major health problems. 9.3 percent of Americans under twenty have diabetes, 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, 48 percent of women and 46 percent of men have heart disease, and these numbers are only a small portion of how bad american health truly is.  This affects our teenage generation and our adult generation aggressively. You make think it won't affect you, but i promise you that it will. So with this all being said, as a respectable human being, i urge you to stop eating processed foods, and switch to organic whole foods because one day, it might save your life. If you do not know where to start, here are some links to help you make the switch to a healthier life style.

Obesity Prevention

Whole foods diet

Heart.org

Pollution affects poor coastal regions

     Have you ever woke up one day and decided that you wanted to go for a walk? Have you ever went on that walk at a local park and noticed small pieces of trash floating around the ground, being pushed by soft breezes of summer air? Here's a better question: does it bother you? In today's society, it is far too common for people to overlook the issue of pollution. Most people consider pollution to be some sort of myth conducted by aliens from NASA who want to rule the world, and not the McDonald's bag full of trash they threw out of their car window while driving back to school after lunch. Most people think: "eh its just one wrapper how bad could it be?". Well... that's exactly the type of thinking that has created the situation that earth is in. What those people polluting don't realize is that the human race itself is a species on the brink of mass extinction. Those people don't realize that their little polluting acts are just one little piece of a much larger modern day culture that i refer to as "pollution culture" and if you think that a solution to this "tiny" issue can be fixed by throwing trash into a trash bag as opposed to the ground, you're still dead wrong. Allow me to tell you why. The pollution culture stretches far beyond the realm of littering. The pollution culture includes every act of pollution committed by society day by day, more specifically, the American society. This includes: agriculture, raising livestock, driving cars, making products, littering, eating, shopping, wearing, walking, talking, lighting, living. Every little action done by the classless modern day human ties to pollution in one way or another. lets take ground beef for example. Billions of humans eat ground beef everyday. Ground beef comes from cow, ergo, billions of cows are raised every year dedicated to human use.  These issues not only affect humans everywhere, but especially affect people in poor coastal regions.
  
      One issue that affects poor coastal regions Cows take up: 1,110 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sq ft. of forested land, and 20lbs of carbon emissions. So when you take into consideration that not only is the human race is limited on fresh water supply (we only have access to 1% of fresh water resources) and we are using over 1,100 gallons of water per cow, and that these cows also emit ten times more methane than a human being, you can assume that the results will be quite disastrous. Raising these animals is also severely bad for carbon emissions. Many live stock farms emit more carbon than factories, cars, and humans combined. We can clearly see the effects of extremely high carbon emissions  (the earth is obviously much warmer considering as a species, our activities emit 40 billion tons of carbon every year). With Carbon emissions like this, the ice caps have began an extreme melting phase, where they are declining at a rapid rate. This is an extreme problem for people in coastal regions. When the sea level rises, it can flood these coastal regions leading to high death numbers. This is also a problem because with a warmer climate comes more extreme drought. For these countries already in drought, that can be devastating.  Many People in poor countries like Haiti resort to going hungry, and satisfy their imperative hunger by eating cookies of dirt, Since they often lack the water and food they need. Many of the people in poor coastal regions also rely on fish as a source of food. The fish that swim in these oceans often nibble on bits of plastic that float around freely in the ocean. The islanders then capture those fish and use them to feed their people, and as we in educated countries are aware, eating plastic is in no way safe. So now you realize that A) these people don't have any water, and B) we are dumping our trash into the ocean that they rely on for food and their food is now contaminated with trash from developed countries.


     Another major issues that directly affects the inhabitants of poor countries is electronic waste. After a computer has reached the end of its life ( or any electronic device such as a television) they are often shipped off to poor countries and dumped in landfills where villagers then scavenge for parts from these electronics and sell them in their country to make a living. Doesn't seem so bad right? One mans trash is another mans treasure. Well, the problem isn't actually that its trash, the problem is that the screens of these electronics often contain high amounts of lead, mercury, etc. (things you do not want to step barefoot in or inhale).  In one Nat Geo article, the author even said "E-waste has many types of poisons built into it. Some of these toxic substances are what make the devices safe when they operate" (E - Waste) Electronics are not the only thing we ship off to these countries either, often we will send even our typical trash to landfills across the world, where the same exact situation I described only a few sentences ago occurs. Many times these landfills and extremely polluted areas lead to high amounts of disease, birth defects, and ultimately death.


      We has humans, or more specifically American's have failed to realize the very dangers of our careless, reckless, non nonchalant, polluting behaviors as if the earth could simply process all of our pollution in such a way that it would keep the resources we need (air, water, food) for us to thrive indefinitely as a species. The failure to recognize the issue has in it's own unforgiving way become apart of modern day culture. As of now, we are facing extreme droughts, heat waves, natural disasters, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, change in global climate, change in ocean currents, change in wind currents, and we have left our own permanent scar on the earth from the trash we have dumped in our oceans. All of this has promoted a new study of science called  anthropogenic studies (the studies of pollution). The fact that we have, as a species, as a whole, done this to the earth is completely catastrophic and embarrassing. If we as a species are not wiped out as a whole by our own mistakes, then we shall pay a devastating price for our actions. It has become a cultural norm to overlook the effects of pollution. People have become so obsessed with social media, television, movies, sports and every other little thing they could choose over our environment. Culture has been destroyed almost entirely by things like selfies, parties, and substance abuse. Especially in places like America, where every day millions of Americans indulge in fast food, use plastic bags to shop for food, and drive their cars to work. The worst thing of all of this is that even if some people do care, the majority does not. The majority of American's do not care that the last working anti-biotic failed, the last black rhino died, or that the fish we consume from the ocean eat the plastic we throw in there. If we fail as a country to come together and stop our own ignorance of the true issues we as a species face, then we will perish, and that is something i am not willing to give up. If you wish to look into the facts for yourself, you can check out these links, and read for yourself.

Cowspiracy

Climate change

marine pollution
E waste