Smoking 'rots' brain, says King's College study

Smoking "rots" the brain by damaging memory, learning and reasoning, according to researchers at King's College London.

A study of 8,800 people over 50 showed high blood pressure and being overweight also seemed to affect the brain, but to a lesser extent.

Scientists involved said people needed to be aware that lifestyles could damage the mind as well as the body.

Their study was published in the journal Age and Ageing.

Researchers at King's were investigating links between the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke and the state of the brain.

Data about the health and lifestyle of a group of over-50s was collected and brain tests, such as making participants learn new words or name as many animals as they could in a minute, were also performed.

They were all tested again after four and then eight years.

Decline

The results showed that the overall risk of a heart attack or stroke was "significantly associated with cognitive decline" with those at the highest risk showing the greatest decline.

It also said there was a "consistent association" between smoking and lower scores in the tests.

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These results underline the importance of looking after your cardiovascular health from mid-life”

Dr Simon RidleyAlzheimer's Research UK

One of the researchers, Dr Alex Dregan, said: "Cognitive decline becomes more common with ageing and for an increasing number of people interferes with daily functioning and well-being.

"We have identified a number of risk factors which could be associated with accelerated cognitive decline, all of which, could be modifiable."

He added: "We need to make people aware of the need to do some lifestyle changes because of the risk of cognitive decline."

The researchers do not know how such a decline could affect people going about their daily life. They are also unsure whether the early drop in brain function could lead to conditions such as dementia.

Heart and brain

Dr Simon Ridley, from Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "Research has repeatedly linked smoking and high blood pressure to a greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia, and this study adds further weight to that evidence.

"Cognitive decline as we age can develop into dementia, and unravelling the factors that are linked to this decline could be crucial for finding ways to prevent the condition.

"These results underline the importance of looking after your cardiovascular health from mid-life."

The Alzheimer's Society said: "We all know smoking, a high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and a high BMI [Body Mass Index] is bad for our heart. This research adds to the huge amount of evidence that also suggests they can be bad for our head too.

"One in three people over 65 will develop dementia but there are things people can do to reduce their risk.

"Eating a balanced diet, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, getting your blood pressure and cholesterol checked and not smoking can all make a difference."

Source:BBC

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Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day

Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day almost triples the chances of suffering a potentially fatal brain haemorrhage, research has shown. Quitting reduces the danger but heavy smokers who give up tobacco are still twice as much at risk as people who have never smoked. 

Researchers in Korea investigated 426 cases of subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) between 2002 and 2004. Patients were compared with a group of 426 people matched for age and sex who had not experienced a brain bleed.

An SAH occurs when a bulge in a weakened artery, called an aneurysm, bursts in the brain. The chances of surviving are only about 50 per cent, and victims who live often face a lifetime of disability. Study participants who smoked were more likely to have suffered an SAH than non-smokers, scientists found. 

The more people smoked, the more at risk they were. After adjusting for other factors such as salt intake, weight and family history of diabetes, smokers were on average 2.84 times more likely to have a brain haemorrhage as non-smokers. 

 Giving up tobacco for at least five years dramatically reduced the overall risk to 59 per cent. But people with a history of heavy smoking - defined as smoking 20 or more cigarettes a day - were still 2.3 times more likely to have an SAH than those who had never smoked.

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Quitting Smoking Could Give Memory a Boost

In addition to the many known health benefits of quitting smoking, researchers have now discovered another good reason to kick the habit — it may help improve your everyday memory. The team at Northumbria University in Newcastle, the United Kingdom, gave memory tests to 27 smokers, 18 former-smokers and 24 never-smokers.

The test involved remembering to do assigned tasks at different locations on the university campus. Smokers remembered only 59 percent of the tasks, compared with 74 percent for former-smokers and 81 percent for never-smokers.

We already know that giving up smoking has huge health benefits for the body but this study also shows how stopping smoking can have . . . benefits for cognitive [brain] function, too,” researcher Tom Heffernan, of the Collaboration for Drug and Alcohol Research Group at Northumbria, said in a university news release. 

He said this is the first study to examine the effect that quitting smoking has on memory. “Given that there are up to 10 million smokers in the U.K. and as many as 45 million in the United States, it’s important to understand the effects smoking has on everyday cognitive function — of which prospective memory is an excellent example,” Heffernan said.

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Smoking carries a bigger risk of heart disease for women, study warns

SMOKING is 25 per cent more likely to give women heart disease than men.

Toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke may have a more potent effect on women due to biological differences, says the shock study.

US researchers analysed pooled data on around four million people from 86 studies.

After adjusting for other factors, they found the risk of heart disease linked to smoking was 25 per cent higher for women.

The longer a woman smoked, the greater her heart disease risk compared with that of a man.

A woman's extra risk increased by two per cent for every additional year she had been smoking.

The findings were in an online edition of The Lancet medical journal yesterday.

One of the authors, Dr Rachel Huxley, of the University of Minnesota, wrote: "Women might extract a greater quantity of carcinogens and other toxic agents from the same number of cigarettes than men.

"This could explain why women who smoke have double the risk of lung cancer compared to males."

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