Smoking Side Effects: Smoking shrinks the brain, and genetics may play a role as well—about half of a person’s risk of smoking comes from their genes. According to US researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, smoking essentially ages the brain earlier because ageing is typically associated with a natural decrease in brain volume.
Unveiling the Risks
According to the researchers, the results provide some explanation for why smokers have an increased risk of age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition that affects some people progressively as they age.
Lung-Centric Research
“Up until recently, scientists have overlooked the effects of smoking on the brain, in part because we were focused on all the terrible effects of smoking on the lungs and the heart,” said Laura J. Bierut, a professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study that was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
Bierut Stresses Smoking’s Detrimental Effects on the Brain
“But as we’ve started looking at the brain more closely, it’s become apparent that smoking is also really bad for your brain,” said Bierut. Although quitting smoking cannot shrink the brain back to its original size, the researchers did note that it can stop additional damage. It has been discovered in earlier research that smoking behaviour and brain size are inherited. The goal of this study was to learn more about the connection between smoking behaviour, genes, and brains.
Massive Data Dive
In total, the team examined information on smoking history, genetic smoking risk, and brain volume (ascertained by brain imaging) for 32,094 individuals from the UK Biobank. Information on the genetics, health, and behaviour of half a million people, primarily of European ancestry, is available in the public biomedical database.
Smoking’s Toll on the Brain
The smoking history and genetic smoking risk, the smoking history and brain volume, and the genetic smoking risk and brain volume were all found to be related by the researchers. They also discovered that a person’s brain volume decreased with the number of packs they smoked each day. “It sounds bad, and it is bad. A reduction in brain volume is consistent with increased aging. This is important as our population gets older, because aging and smoking are both risk factors for dementia,” said Bierut.
Past Smoking Perils
Through data analysis of individuals who had given up smoking years earlier, the researchers also discovered that the shrinkage effects were irreversible. It was discovered that the brains of those who had never smoked remained smaller for all time.
Keep watching our YouTube Channel ‘DNP INDIA’. Also, please subscribe and follow us on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, and TWITTER.
