Smokers found more prone to dementia

Comments about a NYT Article: Smokers found more prone to dementia

With this image I ilustrate the quote I put last week: “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”.
A new study reveals that middle-aged smokers and heavy smokers are at more than double the risk to develop dementia later in life.

It is incredible all the bad things we listen everyday about the dangers of smoking like lung cancer, passive smoker diseases, addiction to nicotine, poor athletic performance, troubles in familiar finances and so many other things that makes us think smoking is the worst thing a smart person could do. Nevertheless a lot of young people start smoking every day, a lot of middle-aged people smoke one, two or more cigarette packs a day and a lot of old people are just trying to deal with all the diseases they carry because they were smoking on their youth.

The article I present here show us another reason for stop smoking. Obviously none of us want to be a lunatic so I hope this little homework could help somebody with his smoking problem before it is too late.

The research analyzed twenty-three thousand people and twenty-three years later the results tells us that a quarter of the group had dementia, including here the ones who have Alzheimer’s disease and the ones with vascular dementia.

It gets clear from the article that the more a person smoke the more damaged he can be. And it is well known that the people that surround a smoker get very damaged too with the same problems that affect a smokers.

Article:
Risks: Smokers Found More Prone to Dementia
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: October 29, 2010
Middle-aged smokers are far more likely than nonsmokers to
develop dementia later in life, and heavy smokers — those who go
through more than two packs a day — are at more than double the
risk, a new study reports.
Researchers analyzed the data of
23,123 health plan members who
participated in a voluntary exam and
health behavior survey from 1978 to
1985, when they were 50 to 60 years old.
Twenty-three years later, about one-quarter of the group, or 5,367, had dementia,
including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia.
After adjusting for other factors, the researchers concluded that pack-a-day smokers
were 37 percent more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia, and the risks went
up sharply with increased smoking; 44 percent for one to two packs a day; and twice the
risk for more than two packs.
Former smokers and those who smoked less than half a pack a day were no more likely
to develop dementia than nonsmokers. The study was published online on Monday in
Archives of Internal Medicine.
To its lead author, Dr. Rachel A. Whitmer, an epidemiologist with the Kaiser
Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., the study offered a silver lining:
unlike age and family history, she said, “this is one risk factor for dementia that can be
changed.”