Link Fu: dementia and smoking
May. 21st, 2018 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutWe know that smoking has all kinds of unpleasant health effects. Is there any kind of connection between smoking and dementia? Once upon a time, some commenters floated the idea that smokers would die of other things before developing dementia and thus be cheaper in terms of total health care — I somehow suspect that was never actually true.
Finland has a really high dementia rate.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28687259
But even with such a high background rate of dementia, heavy smoking in midlife makes it twice as likely.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101025161034.htm
Other studies concur, that smoking increases risk of dementia; a lot of those studies are optimistic about how much the risk drops if the smoker stops smoking:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4357455/
In China, women don’t typically smoke, but are typically exposed to heavy second hand smoke. And it increases their risk of dementia:
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2013/07000/Second_Hand_Smoke_and_Dementia.24.aspx
While an aging population is going to present us with a lot of challenges providing care for (and paying for care for) lots of people with lots of problems, hopefully, over time, our public health efforts to encourage people to stop smoking, and to reduce exposure to second hand smoke will result in a lower burden of dementia care (along with the other many benefits of reducing exposure to tobacco smoke).
Finland has a really high dementia rate.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28687259
But even with such a high background rate of dementia, heavy smoking in midlife makes it twice as likely.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101025161034.htm
Other studies concur, that smoking increases risk of dementia; a lot of those studies are optimistic about how much the risk drops if the smoker stops smoking:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4357455/
In China, women don’t typically smoke, but are typically exposed to heavy second hand smoke. And it increases their risk of dementia:
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2013/07000/Second_Hand_Smoke_and_Dementia.24.aspx
While an aging population is going to present us with a lot of challenges providing care for (and paying for care for) lots of people with lots of problems, hopefully, over time, our public health efforts to encourage people to stop smoking, and to reduce exposure to second hand smoke will result in a lower burden of dementia care (along with the other many benefits of reducing exposure to tobacco smoke).