Scientists found smokers who quit in middle age and older may have a lower risk for dementia than those who continue to smoke.
Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images
A new study suggests that quitting smoking – even in middle age or beyond – can slow cognitive decline.
While cognitive decline naturally occurs with aging, research suggests that smoking exacerbates it and may increase the risk of dementia.
Previous research found that quitting smoking early in life may reduce these effects. Mikaela Bloomberg, an epidemiologist at the University College London and the lead author on the paper published this week, says those who break the habit early showed cognitive scores comparable to those of people who never smoked.
She wanted to find out whether quitting later in life would have a similar impact.
To find out, the team of researchers looked at survey data from more than 9,000 participants 40 years or older across 12 countries. They matched people who had quit smoking with continuing smokers according to their starting cognitive scores and other characteristics, including sex, age, education level and birth country.
Their results showed that for those who had quit smoking, verbal fluency declined at a rate roughly half that of their smoking counterparts. For memory, the decline was reduced by 20%.
“A lot of older people might think that there’s no point in quitting after decades of smoking, but our study suggests that quitting even later in life is linked with slower cognitive decline,” says Bloomberg.
Dr. Neal Benowitz, a cardiovascular physician and clinical pharmacologist who has studied the health effects of tobacco, says it’s a significant study, especially for older smokers.
“One of the important problems in tobacco control is that older smokers are not quitting at very high rates like younger smokers are,” he says.
Benowitz adds that citing the study in campaigns encouraging older smokers to quit or switch to a non-combusted form of nicotine, such as e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches, could be a good next step.
Smokers have an increased risk of dementia, a leading cause of death worldwide. Cigarette smoke exposes the body to high levels of oxidative stress, explains Benowitz. This process damages cells and tissues, including small blood vessels that supply oxygen to the brain, which can result in inflammation.
It affects cardiovascular health and “can cause things like stroke,” Bloomberg says, “and all of those things can impact cognitive function because they’re damaging the brain structures that give rise to cognitive function.” She notes there’s some evidence that it could contribute to dementia risk as well.
Bloomberg agrees the study could motivate stopping smoking later in life.
“You’d think you might need to quit during early to midlife, and then you sort of have missed this kind of critical period for when you can quit. But that just doesn’t seem to be the case here,” she says.
She adds: “It’s never too late to quit.”
Interested in knowing more about science behind the headlines? Email us your question at [email protected].
Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
This podcast episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Berly McCoy. The episode audio was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata. Carmel Wroth edited the digital story. Tyler Jones is our fact-checker. The audio engineer was Simon-Laslo Janssen.
First Appeared on
Source link
