> Promoting smoking cessation may be a good way to preserve cognitive health at the population level, irrespective of diabetes and hypertension status, the researchers concluded.
Seams like that is a statement that can not be made solely based on the stated connection. To me the initial thought that occurred when reading was something like:
"yeah well smoking is dangerous. People with more cognitive power are presumably better at reasoning themselves out of smoking; Given the fact that smoking is known to increase the risk of getting cancer."
If that description describes something that is a big factor in determining a persons smoking habit, smoking would not necessarily cause a cognitive decline as implied in the recommendation.
Cognitive reasoning has nothing to do with addiction. Addicts invent the most convoluted complex reasoning to not quit that are also contrary to facts they are keenly aware of. Mental gymnastics.
Can confirm anecdotally on this one. I had accepted the logical reasons to quit a good year or so before I actually got rid of them.
When I did manage to kick them it was after I read the Easy way to quit smoking by Allen Carr which helped with the mindset then admittedly I ruined the data by moving house and starting a work from home job, therefore got rid of all of my cigarette initiating habits in one go.
It does yeah, I think that was what made my mind open up to the book early on. An intriguing enough nonfiction twist, I had to see where it was going with this.
I was expecting a mix of "here's why it's bad" and "here's the good stuff, and at which milestone dates you'll notice them" maybe.
The stuff I already knew and believed in really strongly.. for 20 minutes until the third 'last' cigarette of the month.
If anyone else is stuck in a holding pattern of quitting it's worth giving it a shot. Promise no affiliation haha, go see if your local bookshop or charity shop has a used copy for 20p (the pages will be a deep yellow, of course)
I read a different Easy Way book of Carr’s (I understand they are all similar) but felt like by the end I’d been scammed or something - he repeatedly tells you the Way works, and trust the process, and then the book … finishes?
Is it really just that the Easy Way is a self-referential thing and the Way is itself to think about the Way a lot and in doing so convince yourself or your subconscious that you’ve reached some sort of solution despite having not? Or was there some set of concrete messages I might just have missed?
It's not like inventing most convoluted, complex reasoning to delude yourself on a simple matter is a sign of high cognitive capabilities. Quite the contrary.
An intelligent addict will say: I realize it's terrible but I am losing the battle against the urges every day. Anything more than that smells like low cognitive ability to me.
More likely, people who smoke do function better cognitively with a cigarette in their hand. They are nervous and irritable without it. Their brains probably produce insufficient dopamine when they aren't smoking.
Nicotine has a positive effect on memory. But lower blood oxygen levels and 300+ intentionally added carcinogens to make smoking more addictive probably has considerable adverse effect. People that hate smokers refuse to accept that there is a massive difference between tobacco and what is in cigarettes.
I quit smoking about 5 years before I was diagnosed with primarily-inattentive ADHD. Diagnosed with insufficient dopamine (uptake?), haha
There was a lot of burnout between the two, incidentally. At one point I'd decided to cut down on the caffeine too, it's almost like I was trying to burn out in hindsight :)
People do not have some hidden addict/not-addict bit.
Smart people become addicted to things at a lower rate than not-smart people, and smart people become un-addicted to things at a higher rate than not-smart people.
Rare is the person who doesn't engage in mental gymnastics, like post-hoc rationalization of sub-perceptual heuristic predictions of what is true, sometimes accompanied by proactive debunking of alternative perspectives.
Indeed. This is a matter of virtue. Being more "adept" can lead to more elaborate rationalizations and evasions of the truth to justify substance abuse or even deny that any abuse is happening.
Socioeconomic factors and other random circumstances are going to impact exposure & normalization of the behavior.
Thought experiment: Take 1000 13 year olds of equal cognitive capacity and place half in peer groups where some smoke half in peer groups where none smoke. I’m guessing there would end up being more of the first 500 that decide to take up the habit.
There is also a difference between cognitive function and reasoning capacity, the later also strongly influenced by socioeconomic factors.
No, there's no citation needed because there are plenty of genius addicts and this study alone proves nothing. At the absolute bare minimum this would have to replicate.
How many is plenty? And how does that compare to the general population? The claim isn’t that addiction and intelligence are mutually exclusive. Rather, the claim is that intelligence makes addiction less likely.
Almost all that I care about mid-last century anyway. I mean give me a break, Einstein smoked. If you seriously think addiction has anything to do with intelligence then you've never been addicted and know nothing about it.
According to the study, alcoholics had a lower baseline IQ before becoming addicted to alcohol. So that does seem to support that lower cognitive function is somehow linked to becoming an addict.
A genius addict disproves the broader claim no more than does "it was cold today, therefore global warming is a hoax". The rule can be true yet still have notable exceptions throughout history.
There are "plenty" of cold days as well. Does that disprove global warming?
Not only is "plenty" not an objective quantity, but even an objectively large quantity is irrelevant if it's not a large percentage of the whole. 100k geniuses with addiction problems wouldn't disprove the rule if there are 1b people with addiction problems who are of below average intelligence.
I get what you're saying but best not to say "prove it didn't.."
Better to note that since the study isn't claiming every person who smokes suffer cognitive decline showing a person who is a genius and smokes isn't a counter
Man, you clearly have no clue about addictions. Addictions work with your emotions 100x stronger than you can muster your reasoning against it. I'd say willpower is the only defense.
You are basically saying - if I am smart enough, I will reach this tantric nirvana in lotus position and wave away these pesky addictions forever (joking a bit but not that much). Not based in reality, which is more like permanent weakness or crack forms in your persona that you can never mend back to original state, just with tons of continuous effort keep working around it, till your last day. It gets a bit better over time, but it takes literally decades and not that much.
Very smart people struggled with addictions, and failed for their whole lives, even if they knew perfectly well how deep in shit they were. Cigarettes are much worse due to smart marketing of tobacco this lethal addiction was completely normalized by society, and in many places still is, so its extremely easy to access them in one's close circles. That's why roughly 95% of the tobacco addicts never succeeded with stopping.
> Promoting smoking cessation may be a good way to preserve cognitive health at the population level, irrespective of diabetes and hypertension status, the researchers concluded.
Emphasis mine. They don't appear to claim anything definitive. But given this new study, and others that claim causal links with smoking leading to atherosclerosis, etc., it's quite plausible. Yet they don't go too far, and still do the right thing and say may.
> "yeah well smoking is dangerous. People with more cognitive power are presumably better at reasoning themselves out of smoking; Given the fact that smoking is known to increase the risk of getting cancer."
Ignoring how absolutely mindboggingly stupid that statement is and how you expose yourself as a massive, clueless asshole ... the one thing your post achieves otherwise is exposing a lot of other people who are also completely disconnected from themselves and the people around them.
You're just some random, weak wannabe on the internet, sitting on a high horse. I don't feel bad. That's just your fake superiority and disconnection from reality making you believe so.
When you inevitably fall from that undeserved high horse, you will cry like the bitch you are! :D
You are sad according to my definition of sad (witch in a unified person should lead to one "feeling bad")... A definition with a criteria that is something like this:
"A person who is not sad, is not unjustifiably rude to people."
As you are quick to point out, you might not feel the subjective felling. You telling me that could in a sense be seen as a confirmation that you have big blindspots and that you are therefore not unified.
The question is: are people stupid because they are smoking or are they smoking because they are stupid.
From the press release, it does not seem that they took any measures to establish causation (like comparing IQ tests from the time before people started smoking). I would wager that people with higher cognitive abilities might be more amenable to the advice of their doctors.
> The question is: are people stupid because they are smoking or are they smoking because they are stupid.
I would argue that culture is a better root cause causal explanation, with stupidity and smoking both being consequences of that (though each with their own causal influence to some degree).
My mother has COPD from being a life long smoker. Because her lungs aren't working 100% her blood oxygen is often lower than optimal, I'm starting to be able to notice when her blood oxygen is low because her sleep pattern gets weird and she starts making silly mistakes in the tasks she's doing.
So that's one way smoking can be a cause of lower cognitive function.
Nicotine could help you think sharper in the short term while smoking still does long-term damage to the brain. This study was about smoking specifically, not nicotine consumption in general.
Luckily we have some good research on both. It turns out smoking, of /any/ substance, is a net negative for a person's health. It is unsurprising that there is long-term damage to the brain, because in the short term when you smoke you are causing a reduction in oxygenation, which no doubt has long-term effects when done repetitively, nicotine aside.
Definitely. Lower class status is associated with smoking. It is certainly the inhaled particulate matter that is causing cognitive issues — similar associations to cognitive decline can be found with high PM2.5 exposure, irrespective of the source (industry, traffic, cooking, woodsmoke, etc).
Smoking is more prevalent on the lower end of the household income scale, so any other lifestyle factors that correlate with income (too many to list here) will contribute to poorer health outcomes for the demographic in general.
Nicotine apparently results in higher cotinine levels (which is the marker with which they found a link with lower cognition in this study).
I wonder if there's something about the effects on the brain over time that makes cognitive function worse over time, even if it's helpful in the short-term.
It's also possible people are self-medicating.
If you tested cognitive function on people who have been prescribed to adderall their entire lives vs. people who had not, you might find lower cognitive function in the group with ADD.. but that could also be due to the tests favouring neurotypical people.
Depends how you consume it. I assume cardio vascular health will have long term consequences on cognitive function so a lifetime of smoking might have a negative effect in thinking.
Here's a tip: you can buy concentrated nicotine shots from vape stores, mix 10ml with 5ml ethanol and 5ml water, add a drop of menthol, and you got dirt cheap nicotine mouth spray (Nicorette sells the same thing for an arm and a leg).
Purest, "healthiest" method of consumption I found. Not sure if I'd call it a great thing though. It's still addictive, and no matter what anyone says, I'm pretty sure nicotine is a mild poison. Would advise anyone to stay clear of the substance, unless you're already an addict and currently smoking/vaping/snusing, then it's a great alternative.
There is no evidence that I am aware of that supports it otherwise improving cognition, but for many people anxiolytics will behave like nootropics (and indeed are sometimes listed as one!)
Even moderate alcohol consumption is also associated with cognitive decline. It reduces your white matter (connections between neurons.) My brain is my biggest asset, I would not do anything to compromise it. I don’t touch marijuana or street drugs primarily for that reason. Yet I drink.
So I’m changing that. I’m doing a complete sober month, after which I may go back to drinking occasionally, but only in social activities (once a week or less) and a limit of 3 drinks. So far I’m on track and I don’t miss it anymore (the first week I did.) It’s not worth the downside to me.
I haven't eaten McD's in 20+ years, just seems disgusting to me personally on so many levels. There is always a different choice than that sort of fast food.
Smoking is probably associated with any number of other poor health choices. Seems like the constellation of them as a whole may be a reasonable cause, less so than any one of them.
That's literally the purpose of this study: to control for two other major health problems and see if the (already recognized) correlation still holds.
And I’m saying there are many more, dozens of small choices and more, that make up a bigger picture. I’m talking about choices, not other medical conditions. Choices can influence hypertension and diabetes but choices alone are not always enough. Smoking is always a choice.
> “You still think I’ve gone cracked in the head,” Ben said, amused. “Listen, if tomorrow we pulled into Biren and someone told you there were shamble-men in the woods, would you believe them?”
> My father shook his head.
> “What if two people told you?”
> Another shake.
> Ben leaned forward on his stump. “What if a dozen people told you, with perfect earnestness, that shamble-men were out in the fields, eating—”
> “Of course I wouldn’t believe them,” my father said, irritated. “It’s ridiculous.”
> “Of course it is,” Ben agreed, raising a finger. “But the real question is this: Would you go into the woods?”
Here is some constructive criticism for the authors:
- Do not put your article behind a paywall. If you want the best scientists to look at your work they don't have much time to waste fiddling with logins and paywalls and so your work won't get analyzed by the people who could provide the most help. If you want to "win" in science in the long run, put it in the public domain. Or, to put it bluntly: #LicensesAreForLosers.
- You need to include a scatterplot up top. The importance thing when you talk about "cognitive function" is the distribution, not the average. If it lowers average cognitive function, but also increases odds of a higher outlier or two, then perhaps the tradeoff is worth it.
>you want the best scientists to look at your work they don't have much time to waste fiddling with logins and paywalls and so your work won't get analyzed by the people who could provide the most help.
Won't they mostly be using some university IP with subscriptions to basically every journal and not see the paywalls in the first place? At least that was my experience of university.
Inhaling smoke of any kind is inherently bad for you, it releases all sorts of carcinogens and other crap. Vaping is orders of magnitude safer, and for weed edibles are of course your best option.
> Inhaling smoke of any kind is inherently bad for you
I think a solid argument could be made that lack of usage of drugs (even just plain old marijuana at a minimum) causes more harm than smoking, my thinking being roughly: drugs can (at least temporarily) break through the mental state established by cultural ~programming, cultural programming is the underlying cause of many evils in the world, and many such evils can increase dependence on addictive substances as a coping mechanism.
I’m not anti drugs at all, I wish using didn’t put people in jails, and that everyone would be able to buy high quality, tested products from the government. That said, drugs can trigger quite a few episodes in people with other mental conditions (diagnosed or not), so while they’re fun for most people they’re not without some risk either.
Disagree. The net end result, which is unknown, is required to know the optimal approach.
> That said, drugs can trigger quite a few episodes in people with other mental conditions (diagnosed or not), so while they’re fun for most people they’re not without some risk either.
Unknown is the risks of running society according to the (unavoidably) delusional beliefs of influential people, under a highly illusory political system (that seems to be much more easily realized via drug usage).
My mother was a cardiovascular pharmacologist and worked with many people who knew at the time that smoking was bad for your health (70s, 80s, 90s). She smoked for decades, but she observed that the doctors and phds she worked with that specialized in the heart and lungs were more likely to be smokers.
She quit many years ago and is still around, thankfully.
but it was still inhaling smoke which we are clearly not meant to do. That was OP's point. It wasn't that we shouldn't smoke because of the things we've learned since.
People are very rarely only or all one thing. People who smoke make an idiotic decision about on specific behavior. How many of your decisions have to be idiotic to make you an idiot? Before you answer, how many of your actions have to be good to make you a good person?
What if I told you that cigarette smoke imparts a flavor and relaxing cognitive effect that some people enjoy in moderation while being aware of the health effect?
I'm not sure how culturally-specific this is, but as a foreigner living in France, I notice the majority of smokers I meet are those who smoke exclusively while drinking. So to that extent, they appear to have sufficient will-power to resist most of the time, but the lowered inhibitions and the mental association between alcohol and smoke I guess are overwhelming.
I wonder what the tangible negative effects are of smoking 4-5 cigarettes a week like this compared to 4-5 a day? I also wonder to what extent this is a French phenomenon.
My family has a bi-weekly game night. Once every couple months someone will bring cigars and almost everyone partakes. Most don't smoke regularly. Seems like cigar smoking actually is enjoyed in moderation more so than cigarettes.
You left out a significant group: addicted, unhappy about it, but unable to kick the habit.
Which is most smokers I know who have smoked for more than a few years, including myself.
Smoking actually does have a lot of mental effects, either directly or indirectly. For one it has a marked effect on oxygen saturation which definitely can have cognitive effects.
Nicotine itself is very short-lived, and can temporarily improve some cogntitive functions. But since the possibility of smoking is highly variable throughout a typical active day, this effectively leads to a sort of oscillation between short windows of increased cognitive function and decreased function due to beginning withdrawal.
> you have to be a bit dim to be smoking in your 60s
I just love people that have never been addicted in their life to preach inane bollocks like this.
Surely, if people are addicted, they should just stop being addicted. What's the problem?
Tell me, how do you categorize people that are not afraid to voice their opinion about something they have absolutely no clue about? Please educate yourself. Addiction is neither a weakness nor a choice.
Seams like that is a statement that can not be made solely based on the stated connection. To me the initial thought that occurred when reading was something like:
"yeah well smoking is dangerous. People with more cognitive power are presumably better at reasoning themselves out of smoking; Given the fact that smoking is known to increase the risk of getting cancer."
If that description describes something that is a big factor in determining a persons smoking habit, smoking would not necessarily cause a cognitive decline as implied in the recommendation.