A New View of Drug Addiction

This web page contains the following seven sections:

•  A Way of Coping
•  Something You Learned
•  Just a Part of You
•  Your Own Special Struggle
•  A Body that Craves
•  A Brain that Craves
•  Becoming Whole Again

From the book 

How to Quit Drugs for Good

(for more about the book, click here)

A New View of Drug Addiction

“A moment’s insight is sometimes
worth a life’s experience.”
     -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“Knowledge is power.”
     -Francis Bacon

The more you know about a problem, the better equipped you are to solve it. By reading this page, you’ll learn more about drug addiction—why you crave a particular drug and what it gives you in return.

      Drug addiction changes everything about you. It becomes a way of life, a deeply ingrained pattern with physical, emotional, and even spiritual edges. There are many parts to it. With the new perspective on drug addiction presented on this page, you’ll take a look at addiction from the user’s point of view. This will help you get acquainted with the user—and the nonuser—inside of you. Then, when you’re ready to quit, you can become the nonuser without any fear of drugs.

      This seven-part perspective shows how drugs affect the whole person. As you read it, you’ll gain a complete understanding of addiction. You’ll not only look at the benefits that you gain from a particular drug but you’ll also examine the problems it causes.

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A Way of Coping

Drugs help us cope. Our drug use makes us feel better or helps us avoid some problem. Basically, we use drugs to gain some desired effect. In fact, there are hundreds of ways drugs seem to help, and each person has his or her own unique set of reasons for using them. Here are a few specific ways that drugs help. They can help you:

•  Take risks

•  Calm yourself down

•  Energize yourself

•  Overcome shyness

•  Avoid feelings of loneliness

•  Forget some sadness

•  Feel bolder

•  Get into a partying mood

•  Celebrate happy occasions

•  Fit into social situations

•  Feel sexy

•  Stimulate your desire for sex

•  Overcome depression

•  Solve problems

•  Forget about problems

•  Stop worrying

•  Get to sleep

•  Wake up from sleep

•  Suppress your anger

•  Get your anger out

•  Cope with stress

•  Reduce feelings of guilt or shame

•  Ease tensions

•  Get rid of aches and pains

      The ways are countless—for each of us. So much so that often it seems that drugs can cure all our ills and help us overcome whatever bothers us. If that’s all there were to it, we might consider each drug to be some kind of “wonder drug.” So what’s the drawback?

      With so many good effects from using drugs, why would anyone want to quit? There are two main reasons: First, if you use excessively, drugs soon stop helping you and actually begin to hurt you. They begin to cause more problems for you than they help you solve. Second, most of us, sooner or later, realize that we would rather do something on our own instead of depending on a drug to help us do it.

      Early in our drug-using careers, we’re amazed at how easily we can fit drugs into our lives. But it gets harder and harder. Instead of using a drug to help us now and then, we begin depending on it to help us constantly. We feel we can’t get along without it. We stop wanting the drug and start needing it.

      This is a crucial change. It indicates addiction.

      Here’s another way to see this change. We start using the drugs to cope with problems that only the drugs are causing. We need a drug to calm us from the effects of getting high the day before, to stop the jitters, or to cut the pain of withdrawal. Sometimes we use one drug to reverse the problems caused by another drug.

      Even at this stage, we still have reasons for using. But now the problems from yesterday’s drug use become today’s reasons for using. That’s how powerful a drug of abuse can be. It medicates us from so many problems—even from the problems that it itself causes. No wonder we feel we need it!

      It’s true that drugs help us cope in many ways. Later in this book, you’ll list specific ways that drugs help you. But more importantly, you’ll also discover many different ways of coping—ways that, in the long run, will work better for you than drugs ever did.

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Something You Learned

We don’t inherently know how to use drugs. It’s something we have to learn. In fact, each drug has its own separate learning curve. The more we use a drug and the more drugs we use, the more there is to learn.

      Some of this learning can be fun. When we first start using, we learn the many ways that drugs can help us. We think it’s great. Then we begin the long process of learning how to gain the most benefits every time we use. However, that means that we also spend a lot of time learning to minimize the many problems that drugs can cause.

      For example, Jeanette learned early on that downers helped her overcome shyness. It helped so much that she quickly began to use them in all social situations. She practiced taking just enough to get the right “buzz” for every occasion. She worked on it long and hard. She had to learn how to take the right amount so she wouldn’t get too downed out. She had already learned that whenever she got too downed out, she became completely uncool.

      If you use a drug excessively, you have a few main goals. One is learning to create “just the right effect.” You have to learn not to overdo it. You attempt to get the perfect buzz. Every time.

      But this is difficult. You have to learn your limits. If you take in too much drug at too quick a rate, you might become sick or cause an embarrassing scene. You might get in a bad mood or just get downright sloppy. You might get in trouble with the law, or you might get violent and hurt someone you really care about. Of course, with some drugs, if you do too much too fast, you run the risk of overdose. This can lead to permanent physical or mental damage, coma, or death.

      How can you control your drug use all the time? It’s hard. In fact, it’s damned near impossible. There are just too many variables. For example, each time you get high, that high is different from any other you’ve ever experienced. Each high varies depending on the following:

•  What your mood was before you started using

•  What drug you’re using (including what it was cut with)

•  What other drugs you’re using at the same time

•  How long since your previous high on this drug

•  How long since your previous high on some other drug

•  How much you’ve eaten, what you’ve eaten, and when

•  How many other toxins your liver is struggling with (e.g., food preservatives and chemical additives, environmental toxins from the air or water, other drugs you’ve taken, and how much alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, or sugar you’ve consumed)

•  How you’re consuming your drug (swallowing, snorting, sniffing, smoking, or shooting), how fast you’re consuming it, and what strength it is

•  Other variables, such as time of month (for women especially, but men also have monthly biological cycles), outside stress factors in your life, or whether your body is fighting a sickness, even if it’s something as simple as a sore throat

      That’s a lot to learn. But as dedicated users, we attempt to learn it all. Our purpose? To gain control—so we can get as high as we want, whenever we want, without overdoing it. Some of us become so adept that we can control these variables most of the time.

      However, when you get this good, surprisingly there’s not much excitement anymore. You normally follow the same routine every day. You maintain a steady habit, and after a while it gets very boring. Most users lose control of their drug intake—not all the time, but often. In some ways it’s more exciting to lose control once in a while, but it’s also dangerous. When we get too high, accidents can happen—serious accidents. So we try to control the uncontrollable. We try to minimize the danger of hurting ourselves and others. Each time we use, we think, “I can control it if I try.” And we keep trying. And trying.

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Just a Part of You 

Frank stayed high on marijuana 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He would tell his friends, “I know I’m an addict. There’s no two ways about it.” Then he would casually fire up another jay.

      Actually, there are two ways about it. A part of you can be addicted while another part of you can’t. In fact, a part of you remains non-addicted no matter how much you use.

      This is very important. Why? Because most people label themselves one thing or another, as addicted or not addicted, but not something in-between. Then they act as if they’re stuck in their description and have no choice.

      Even if you’re a heavy user, even if you stay high constantly, only a part of you can be considered “an addict.” Even though all your cells contain traces of your drug, and even though each cell craves that drug as soon as the drug level goes down, each cell still retains some integrity. This integrity is provided by the alternatives to your drug: the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe. To be sure, a definite part of you doesn’t depend on that drug. In fact, this part dislikes the drug intensely and fights against it. This part works to preserve your body’s natural health.

      Rhonda’s friends and family members could easily see both sides of her. They would say, “She’s okay...especially when she’s not using the tranquilizers,” or, “I know deep down in her heart she’s a good person...if only she wouldn’t take so many pills.”

      Look inside yourself. Look closely, and you’ll see two opposing forces. One of them is an addict. The other is not.

      The part of you that’s not an addict lies just below the surface, close at hand. But, as you might expect, the higher you are on drugs, the harder it is to get in touch with this part. Still, it’s there, and it’s very strong. This non-addicted part of you has a lot of character. It’s an interesting side of yourself that you probably don’t know too well. The drugs keep it hidden.

      Yet it’s this non-addicted part of you that thinks you might be “addicted.” It’s there the morning after, shuddering and shaking at what you’ve done to yourself the night before. The non-addicted part of you knows that you have a problem.

      It’s the addicted part of you that thinks you’re fine. This part keeps excusing the way you act when you’re high and keeps hiding your problems from you. This part will do virtually anything to keep you using.

      It’s the non-addicted part that sees the problems that drugs are causing you. This part wants to quit using. This is the part of you that has decided to read this book. It is this part you need to get to know.

      Why? Because the non-addicted part of you will win your battle against drugs. This whole side of you begins to grow as soon as you quit using. Best of all, this side will help you live a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life than you can ever experience by living through your addicted side.

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Your Own Special Struggle 

 “Some of us might find happiness if we
would quit struggling so desperately
for it.”
     -William Feather 

Drug use involves you in a struggle—one part of you going one way, one part of you going another. You fight with yourself. And you fight with the drugs to get what you want. The reason? Drugs help you, but they hurt you, too. Your thrills tonight become high blood pressure, headaches, nausea, and regrets tomorrow.

      But using is a challenge. And challenges are fun, right? Drugs challenge you to get the benefits they bring while finding ways to avoid the problems. Hey, it’s not easy! You try not to get too wiped out here, not to make a fool of yourself there. It’s a full-time job. You work hard at it. You juggle your schedule to fit as much of your favorite drug into your life as possible. You find novel ways to handle withdrawals. With some drugs, this becomes a monumental struggle as withdrawals get worse and worse. If you’re responsible for making money, you make an extra effort to get to work on time. You try not to get high on the job, or else not to get too high. Sometimes you feel completely helpless. Often you endure a lot of pain.

      You would think that, if drugs cause such a struggle, it would be easier to quit. And indeed it would be but for the fact that most of us get completely involved with the struggle itself, so much so that it becomes our own personal life struggle, the inner story of our lives. And of course we grow to like it. Here are some reasons we get attached to the struggle of addiction:

•  It’s a challenge.

•  It gives us a sense of involvement.

•  It’s like a game—we play hard and try to win.

•  Like the concept of “no pain, no gain,” sometimes we need to feel as if we’re suffering before we can have a good time.

•  It gives us something to complain about.

•  It requires strength to keep it up—so it shows how tough we are.

•  It’s like an adventure—every time we use, we don’t know where it will lead.

      You might like the addictive struggle for any, or for all, of these reasons. Most of us get involved in our struggles for many different reasons, and we might even have different reasons on different days.

      “You gotta be tough,” Lenny used to say as he passed his favorite mirror containing deftly divided lines of coke. Then he would insist, “Here, blow one of these. It builds character.”

      He was serious, in a joking sort of way, but it’s true. Doing drugs does build character. The “drug-addicted character” deals with a deeper life struggle than most people can handle. It’s an intense struggle, requiring a great deal of energy.

      You feel this struggle every day. You live hard. You go for all the thrills you can get. And even though you look beat most of the time, and even though you feel exhausted, you continue.

      But slowly, over time, you begin to lose it no matter how tough you are. Granted, you might continue fighting on the surface, but the drugs keep hurting you inside. Sometimes it feels as if you’re fighting for your very life. And, deep down, this is actually what’s happening.

      The drugs begin destroying your organs faster than your body can repair them. Your drug use starts a disease process in your body and so you begin to have more and more serious illnesses. In a way, it’s as if you’re deliberately reminding yourself of death so that the life you feel is a true exhilaration.

      This requires strength to keep it up. But ultimately you must surrender. You must surrender by giving your life to drugs, or you must surrender by quitting the drugs.

      If you choose to quit, you’ll find something else to challenge you, something else to give you a sense of involvement—something to work on or spend your time on or something more interesting to struggle with. This book will help you. Here, you’ll discover dozens of exciting, workable alternatives—alternatives that will be more thrilling, bring more rewards, and allow you to be a greater success in your life.

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A Body that Craves 

Psychoactive substances might be a free ticket through life if it weren’t for the physical addiction. The physical addiction drags you down. You begin using more but enjoying it less.

      What happens? You go from wanting to use to a feeling that you need to use. Deep down, your drug of choice becomes your medicine. It seems to cure everything. The problem is that you begin feeling healthy only when you’re using, and you feel sick whenever you stop.

      For Joan, quitting pot wasn’t easy. Every time she stayed off of it for more than a day, she grew nervous and upset and began getting angry at everyone around her. Like clockwork, every time, by the end of the day, she would say, “I can’t stand it anymore! I gotta get high.” Her use of marijuana no longer seemed a choice.

      Joan could go without pot for about a day. Others can go for three or four days or even a week, before they can’t stand it anymore and have to toke up. Some users cannot stay straight for more than a few hours without getting symptoms.

      Although this description of physical addiction involves marijuana, the same dynamic holds true for other drugs. However, each class of drugs has its own specific abstinence syndrome. In his book Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Dr. Milhorn rated the severity of abstinence syndrome for the various classes of drugs. These ratings, which varied on a scale from 0 to 4, with 4 being the most severe, were as follows:

•  Depressants: 4

•  Heroin, opiates, and the analgesics: 3

•  Cocaine, amphetamines, & other stimulants: 2

•  Marijuana: 2

•  Phencyclidines: 2

•  Inhalants: 1

•  Hallucinogens: 0

      The severity of the abstinence syndrome relates directly to the severity of the physical addiction. Thus, these ratings give us an idea about how severe the physical addiction is for each class of drugs.

      How long can you stay off your drug of choice before you begin to feel uncomfortable? Or, more significantly, how long can you stay completely straight—not using any drugs—before you begin to feel uncomfortable? This period of time, between stopping your use and feeling that you need to use again, tells you something about the severity of your addiction: The shorter the period, the more severe the addiction.

Two Signs

There are two signs to the physical addiction. First, you begin needing more and more drug to get the same effects. This is called increasing tolerance. Second, you begin to feel as if you can’t get along without the drug. You feel more and more pain whenever you try to quit. This sign of addiction is called withdrawal, also known as the abstinence syndrome.

      “Tolerance” describes how much of a drug your body can handle. As your body adjusts to the drug, your tolerance increases. What two bags of heroin did in the beginning might take five, 10, 20, or even more as tolerance increases. Your body finds its limit.

      The second sign of physical addiction, the "withdrawal syndrome," appears only when you take the drug away. Your body complains out loud, and your nervous system flashes urgent signals to the mind: “Give me another dose to calm me down” or “Give me another dose to pick me up.”

      As a rule of thumb, the longer and heavier your drug use, the more problems you’ll experience during withdrawal. But also, as we just noted, the abstinence syndrome varies according to the type of substance (or substances) you’ve been using.

Two Causes

Medical research shows two major causes of physical addiction. First, your cells adapt to the drug and, second, your metabolism becomes more efficient.

      Adaptation in the cells. To your cells, the drugs you’re using become a way of life. Every time you use a drug, your blood carries it to every cell in your body. Your cells adjust. They grow to expect these doses on schedule.

      Your cells learn to cope with various drugs by defending themselves against the drugs’ toxic effects. Cell walls harden to retain stability and reduce toxic damage. But as your cells get tough against drugs, gradually more and more can be consumed. Your tolerance increases.

      In the long run, however, cell walls break down. At this point, your cells not only lose their ability to keep toxins out but also become unable to retain essential nutrients. Many of them stop functioning altogether or start functioning abnormally. That’s when your organs (heart, brain, liver, or lungs), which are nothing more than whole systems of cells, begin to fail.

      The problem with metabolism. Metabolism is intimately connected to diet. Your body metabolizes food (breaks it down into its constituent parts) to get vital nutrients to all the cells. To serve this purpose, your body can metabolize many different foods and can learn how to gain nutrients from almost any kind of food you give it.

      Metabolism also helps to rid the body of unwanted toxins. The liver is the key organ in this process. The liver “sees” drugs as unwanted toxins and begins producing enzymes that will help eliminate them from the body. It produces a different combination of enzymes for each drug. Moreover, the liver becomes extremely efficient at producing these enzymes. The more it “sees” a particular drug, the more efficiently it produces the enzymes that inactivate that drug.

      Thus, a drug that you use often will get eliminated from the body with greater and greater efficiency. It’s as if the liver begins to “expect” that drug and has enzymes ready and waiting. This is a key reason that tolerance increases, that is, why it takes greater and greater doses of a drug to get the same original effects.

      Yet your personal metabolism works differently from anyone else’s. Studies show that each individual has a unique biochemical makeup and that individuals differ greatly from one another in the way they metabolize different foods, drugs, or toxins. To give you an idea how much possible variation there is, researchers have presently identified over 3,000 metabolic substances (called “metabolites”) and over 1,100 enzymes. Each individual has different proportions of all 4,100 of these biochemicals. Of the enzymes, only about 30 are responsible for metabolizing all drugs.

      Also, the mixture of biochemicals varies for each kind of food you ingest. For example, your body uses different biochemicals to metabolize the different classes of foods: meats, grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, and nuts. As you might have guessed, you need a whole different biochemical preparedness to handle drugs, alcohol, sugars, chemical additives, and toxins.

      However, your body adjusts to whatever diet you give it, and the most frequent foods in your diet come to be expected. Biochemical pathways become established the more they are used. Thus, if your body doesn’t get an expected food, you actually begin to crave it.

      In fact, your body becomes addicted to the foods you give it the most. Your metabolism so completely adjusts to your regular diet that any change from this diet becomes increasingly difficult. Ask anyone who has attempted a major shift in diet.

      For example, if you eat meat regularly, your metabolism will take a long time to adjust to a vegetarian diet. Although the same nutrients are available, your body doesn’t have the biochemical preparedness. The ability is there. Your body can metabolize vegetarian meals. No problem. But to gain the same efficiency with a new diet can take from one to seven years.

      The important thing to remember is this: Metabolism depends on diet. For our purposes, “diet” includes not only the nutritious foods but also the non-nutritious foods, such as sugar and alcohol, as well as other substances, such as chemical additives in foods, environmental toxins, and drugs. You can change your metabolism if you change your diet. Although it will take a long time to change your metabolism significantly, you’ll feel incredible improvements after just a few months. You’ll discover the kinds of changes you need to make in a later chapter.

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A Brain that Craves 

All drugs of abuse have one thing in common: They’re fat soluble enough to get into the brain and, once there, to alter its neurochemistry. Most drugs of abuse affect the neurochemicals that activate the brain’s pleasure circuits. These drugs reward us with feelings of pleasure.

      Only a minority of us become addicted to drugs, but for those who do, it’s the feelings of pleasure that become so completely compelling. The brain loves the pleasurable sensations. The brain loves this so much that it gets addicted. That’s why the brain begins to crave the pleasure-producing drugs every time we stop using them. This mental attachment to drugs, this craving, has become known as the “psychological addiction.”

      Some drugs have little effect on the brain’s pleasure circuits. For example, the hallucinogens stimulate serotonin, a neurochemical found mainly in the cortex of the brain. This is the site in the brain where abstract thinking occurs. Perhaps because of this, the hallucinogens are less psychologically addicting than drugs such as cocaine or heroin, which stimulate the pleasure center directly.

      Also, drugs that stimulate the pleasure center during the “high” cause the reverse effect during withdrawal. During withdrawal nothing seems pleasurable. Life itself becomes raw and painful. Depression sets in. The deeper we get into our addiction, the more extreme each withdrawal becomes and thus the stronger our psychological craving for the drug.

      In his booklet Drugs of Abuse, Dr. Samuel Irwin rated the psychological addiction potential for various drugs. The ratings, based on a scale from 0 to 5, with 5 being the highest, are as follows:

•  Heroin: 5

•  Stimulants (cocaine and amphetamines): 5

•  Sedatives: 4

•  Marijuana: 3

•  Inhalants: 3

•  PCP: 3

•  LSD: 2

Avoiding Misery

We become addicted to drugs partly as a way to avoid life’s misery. In our minds at least, we become unwilling to suffer.

      Real life is loaded with suffering. We not only experience myriad physical pains but also must cope with psychological pain. Many events make us ache inside. Things happen that cause us to feel sad, miserable, angry, nervous, tense, disgusted, confused, weakened, tortured, cheated, abused, frightened, or upset.

      But we can avoid these feelings—at least for the moment—-by using drugs. We can do drugs and almost instantly feel “high.” We can forget about life for a while. We can experience pleasure, excitement, power, courage, thrills, joy, enchantment, and a sense of connection with other people and the world around us.

      Of course, in the long run drugs become less and less effective at bringing these benefits. Over time, the drugs themselves start causing suffering. Soon, we find we’re using drugs to relieve the misery that drugs themselves have caused. This is known as the “vicious cycle of addiction.”

      It goes something like this: Life doesn’t feel too good. Bang! Try this drug or that drug, and things feel better. Come down off the drug, and things feel worse, just a little worse than they did before you took the drug in the first place. No matter. Bang! Use the drug and feel good again. Gradually, your biochemistry changes. Your brain learns that it doesn’t have to keep producing the chemicals that make you feel good. These chemicals keep appearing without the brain having to do any work. That’s why each time you try to get off the drugs, you feel a little worse than the time before. It becomes harder and harder for you to get off the drugs because you feel so bad whenever you try to stop.

      And it all started with suffering, with your inability to accept suffering as an intimate part of life. You can break a drug habit anywhere along the way, or never start with drugs at all, simply by accepting life’s suffering and facing the suffering head-on.

      This doesn’t mean that you will live a sad, miserable, and tormented life. There are plenty of ways you can face your suffering and then cope with it. In fact, once you learn these ways and begin using some of them, you’ll feel as if your spirit has been renewed.

      Of course, it’s your choice.

      If you choose drugs to cope with life’s suffering, you choose a buy-now-pay-later method. It works in the moment, but it just postpones the suffering. And by postponing it, it builds up, so that when you finally do face it, the suffering is immense. The detoxification from drugs might take a week or two, but the long-term withdrawal, the period of time when your biochemistry (and thus your physical and mental health) returns to normal, can take years. Luckily, during this time, you gradually feel a little bit better, day by day.

      This book gives you another choice. In it, you’ll find more than 100 techniques to help you quit using drugs. There are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual techniques. Each one of these offers you another way to cope with some aspect of life’s suffering. Each one offers you another way to feel good.

Disease, Health, and Addiction

Is drug addiction a disease? There’s much confusion.

      Sit for a while in a crack house with any crack star and ask if she has a disease. She’ll tell you no, even though she might be quick to admit that she’s addicted to crack. But ask any recovering cocaine addict in Narcotics Anonymous (NA). She’ll tell you that she has a disease and that she has this disease whether or not she’s using.

      Each of them is partly right. Drug addiction starts a disease process. This process progresses when you’re using. It stops when you stop using. And when you stop using, you can heal much of the damage from the disease if you change your diet and lifestyle.

      Drug addiction fits the definition of disease. Like other diseases, drug addiction impairs your health by damaging your cells. Like other diseases, it interrupts your body’s vital functions, causing specific symptoms. And like other diseases such as cancer, if it’s allowed to continue long enough, it can kill you.

      But as a disease, it has an ironic twist. The agent causing the disease acts like a medicine that cures the symptoms. Drug-addicted users actually feel healthier when they’re using. Pain and sickness seem to disappear. Unfortunately, the sense of health is artificial. When using, you relieve yourself of the symptoms only. Meanwhile, inside your body, the disease process continues.

      Drug use wears out your body and actually speeds up the aging process. Your cells live their lives in the fast lane of chemical stimulation and toxic invaders, grabbing a few thrills but choking on the poisons. You begin to feel worn out. You get physically sick more often, or you feel some slight sickness that lingers and is hard to pinpoint.

      When cells don’t get sufficient nutrients, or if the cells are harmed too often by toxins in the blood, they stop performing important functions. After a while, whole groups of cells begin giving out, and organs begin to fail. Especially susceptible are the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, kidneys, and stomach.

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Becoming Whole Again

Yes, there is a cure for drug addiction.

      Your basic goal: to change your metabolism and your brain chemistry for greater health. This means that you need to eliminate drugs, toxins, and some addictive foods from your diet and change some other parts of your diet as well. It also means that you need to find ways to reduce stress, to accept life's routine suffering, and to begin enjoying yourself without using drugs.

      Then wait.

      Why wait? Because once the healing process begins, it takes time to recover. Your body needs time to repair the damage. Your nervous system needs time to repair the damage. It will take a while for your mind to settle. But the best news is that you begin healing right away. In fact, the healthier your new lifestyle, the faster you’ll heal. You can heal most of your cells that have been damaged, at least to some degree. But the biggest thing you have going for you is your body’s replacement policy.

      Your body creates new cells every day—about 300 to 400 million per day! These new cells replace old and dying cells. When you stop using drugs, the new cells your body creates will not be “drug-addicted” cells. They’ll never have experienced drugs. These new cells will be healthy, especially if you continue to follow a healthy diet and lifestyle.

      Scientists say that every seven years the body replaces every cell (except nerve cells) at least once. That means that the body renews itself and becomes a new conglomeration of cells—a new you—every seven years!

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