In a new study researcher has warned that middle aged people who smoke about forty cigarettes a day, double their odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The study also revealed that people who smoke heavily also augmented the rates of another form of dementia.
Vascular dementia is the most widespread form of the disease after Alzheimer’s and is associated with poor blood supply to the brain. In long term study survey researchers followed the progress of more than twenty-one thousand middle aged males and females aged around twenty-five.
It was found that those smoked more than two packet contacting twenty cigarettes a day had more than one hundred and fifty percent higher chances of experiencing Alzheimer’s in comparison to non-smokers. Moreover they also had one hundred and seventy- five percent raised risk of vascular dementia over the follow up period.
Vascular dementia is the most common type of the disease after Alzheimer’s and is associated with the poor supply of blood to the brain. Heavy smoking in middle age is linked to greater risk of dementia in general plus higher odds of developing each of sub types. People who smoked less than half packet did not seem to face augmented risk.
Smoking is recognized as contributor to inflammation and oxidative stress, both of which are supposed to be significant in the growth of Alzheimer’s disease. Its effect on blood vessels may answer for the augmented risk of vascular dementia, reported the study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
The study reveals that the brain is not immune to long term effects of heavy smoking. They know that smoking compromised the vascular system by affecting blood pressure and raised blood clotting factors. They know that vascular health play a vital role in jeopardy of Alzheimer’s disease, explained lead researcher Dr Rachel Whitmer from the Kaiser Permanente research institution in California.