• Question: does smoking effect your brain health?

    Asked by KIBBLEWIBBLE to Ria, Rachel, Joe, Adrian, Iroise on 14 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by mrswag.
    • Photo: Iroise Dumontheil

      Iroise Dumontheil answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      When people smoke, nicotine reaches their brain and affects their brain’s function, their mood, and leads to long term changes in the brain associated to addiction to nicotine.

      People often say they smoke to help against stress but it seems smoking actually increases anxiety and tension. Smoking is also linked to depression but it’s unclear which comes first or whether they feed off each other. Smoking is also linked to a greater risk of having a stroke, which can cause brain damage and death.

      You can read more about this here:
      https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/smoking-and-mental-health
      https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/why-quit/smoking-health-problems

    • Photo: Rachel Harris

      Rachel Harris answered on 15 Nov 2016:

      As Iroise said, smoking leads to addiction and damages blood vessels increasing the chance of heart attack and stroke. For this reason we know that smoking also increases the risk of getting dementia in later life.

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