The combination of these bad habits accelerates brain aging

Octo­ber 15, 2017, 14:25

A group of sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia led by Tim­o­thy Duraz­zo in the course of a study revealed that the brains of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from both alco­hol and nico­tine addic­tions age faster: their mem­o­ry dete­ri­o­rates, their speed of think­ing decreas­es.

The study involved vol­un­teers aged 26 to 71 years. 119 peo­ple with alco­hol depen­dence, but who abstained from alco­hol for at least a month, were divid­ed into 3 groups: those who smoke (68 peo­ple), those who quit smok­ing (21 peo­ple) and those who nev­er smoked (30 peo­ple). There was also a con­trol group of 39 healthy peo­ple who nev­er smoked or smoked only occa­sion­al­ly and very rarely.

Sci­en­tists were inter­est­ed in: visu­ospa­tial func­tions of the brain, infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing speed, gen­er­al intel­li­gence, fine motor skills, learn­ing effi­cien­cy and mem­o­ry. They assessed the con­di­tion of all groups using a ques­tion­naire.

pho­to­lia

It turned out that the pres­ence of prob­lems with drink­ing in com­bi­na­tion with smok­ing leads to notice­able aging of the brain, espe­cial­ly when com­pared with peo­ple who do not have addic­tions.

The results of the study are of par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance to alco­hol treat­ment pro­grams, as most of these pro­grams do not take smok­ing into account. If the find­ings are con­firmed by more glob­al exper­i­ments, this will allow the devel­op­ment of new rec­om­men­da­tions for cen­ters in which patients are helped to deal with alco­holism.

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