Roken verbetert de werking van de hersenen. Ja? Nee?
Het komt vaker voor dat de wetenschap zich tegenspreekt, maar meestal gebeurt dat niet binnen één week.
Maar deze week was het raak. Twee verschillende onderzoeken beweren min of meer het tegengestelde over de effecten van nicotine op de prestaties op latere leeftijd.
Het is al langer, onder andere uit tweelingonderzoek, bekend dat nicotine en roken goed is tegen zowel Alzheimer als Parkinson. Uit een onderzoek uitgevoerd aan de Duke University blijkt dat nicotine het geheugen op latere leeftijd kan verbeteren. Nee, stelt een ander onderzoek, nicotine en roken vermindert je IQ op latere leeftijd met 3%….
“Any letter except the letter x.” 65-year-old James Faulcon knew he was becoming forgetful when he tried to take the same memory tests his elderly mom took to monitor her dementia. “I couldn’t pass some of the tests that the doctor was giving her.” So, he enrolled in a Duke study investigating whether nicotine patches can relieve symptoms of mild memory loss. It was a small study, but it found nicotine does appear to improve attentiveness. Faulcon says with the patch, he performed much better on computerized thinking skills. “I could tell that I was doing better at times… I thought it was a tremendous amount of change.” Experts say many seniors suffer memory loss that can disrupt daily tasks, and using a drug like nicotine may not only make them more attentive, it may also improve their quality of life. “You’re more alert, you’re able to comprehend a situation that may be new to you. So I think this may have beneficial effects through a lot of aspects of daily living.” SMOKERS risk damaging their intelligence, suffering memory loss, slower reflexes and impaired problem solving. Scientists have, for the first time, linked smoking with impaired mental agility in a study which shows that the habit can reduce a person’s IQ by up to 3%. They claim this dip is enough to affect smokers’ quality of life, making them less efficient at performing everyday tasks such as counting change or doing crossword puzzles. The study also appears to contradict an earlier report which suggested that smoking might help protect people from dementia. While smoking cigarettes is known to cause cancer, heart disease, birth defects and impotence, its impact on intelligence has been less clear. Scientists at Aberdeen and Edinburgh universities contacted 413 people who had taken part in the Scottish national IQ survey in 1947, when they were aged 11. The subjects were tested again in 2000-02, when they were aged 64. The two sets of results, across a range of standard IQ measurements, including memory, learning and reasoning, were then compared. Factors that might have skewed the results, such as alcohol consumption, occupational status, level of education, heart disease and hypertension, were screened out of the results. Het tyische aan deze berichten is dat, als het om negatieve effecten van nicotine gaat, er gesproken wordt over roken en bij positieve effecten over de nicotineproducten van de farmaceutische industrie… Rara.
