Scientists discover horrifying effect smoking has on your brain
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Scientists have made a horrifying discovery after learning the effect smoking has on your brain.
Listen, we all know smoking tobacco is not exactly a wise move and certainly detrimental to your health in so many ways.
And there's been countless studies on the long-term effects of smoking, with such research now taking place on what consuming vapes can do to someone's health in the long-term.
A particular study involving smoking looked into how it affects the brain, as scientists from Missouri and North Carolina carried out research by reviewing data from 32,094 Europeans in a dataset known as the UK Biobank.
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The team of experts had hoped to uncover more information about the known links between smoking and decreased brain volume, pointing out in the study that it is already known 'that there are associations between smoking behavior, lower total brain volume and gray and white matter volumes'.
"However, a significant question remains about whether these associations represent predisposing features for the risk of developing cigarette smoking or are consequences of cigarette smoking," they continued in the study, which has been published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
Using the data provided, the group of scientists looked at health behaviors, brain scans, and genetic risk factors before performing statistical analysis to try and determine whether smoking every day led to a decreased brain volume over time.
Senior author Laura J. Bierut, MD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Psychiatry, explained: "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.
"But as we’ve started looking at the brain more closely, it’s become apparent that smoking is also really bad for your brain.”
The researchers came to the belief that smoking daily can result in a decrease in brain volume based on their findings.
As you'd probably expect, experts discovered that heavy smoking can have a greater impact on an individual's health.
Such smoking can result in the loss of even more brain mass, and the more years a person spends smoking, the more brain volume is lost forever.
As well as shrinking the brain, smoking can cause it to age prematurely, according to the study.
In fact, the researchers estimate that '14 per cent of global Alzheimer’s disease cases could be attributable to cigarette smoking'.
Bierut added: "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."
Yoonhoo Chang, the study's first author and Washington University School of Medicine graduate student, commented: "You can’t undo the damage that has already been done, but you can avoid causing further damage.
"Smoking is a modifiable risk factor. There’s one thing you can change to stop aging your brain and putting yourself at increased risk of dementia, and that’s to quit smoking."