Another reason to stop smoking: it increases dementia risk from brain shrinkage – but quitting, at any age, helps
- Ahead of World No Tobacco Day, we look at studies that show how smoking causes the brain to shrink, a phenomenon which is linked to memory loss
- The good news, a researcher says, is that ‘even stopping smoking after 60 years old has been shown to substantially reduce the risk for dementia’
If you’ve ever smoked – or lived with a smoker – you may be familiar with the breathlessness and early morning cough that come with the habit.
The impact on the lungs is obvious – a smoker directly inhales a poison, after all. But smoking’s damaging effect on the brain may be less apparent.
A recent study throws this into the spotlight: habitual smoking causes the brain to shrink, it suggests.
Dr Laura Bierut, a psychiatry professor at Washington University School of Medicine in the US state of Missouri, led the study, published a few months before World No Tobacco Day on May 31.
She admits scientists once paid less attention to 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”.
