40 cigarettes a day more than doubles Alzheimer’s risk
A recent study conducted by US researchers at the research institution in Oakland California has found that heavy smoking in mid-life doubles the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and greatly increases the risk of another form of vascular dementia.
The study involved tracking the progress of over 21,000 middle-aged men and women for an average of 23 years to see how smoking affected their health.
The researchers found that the participants who smoked more than two packets of 20 cigarettes a day stood a staggering 157 per cent higher chance of developing Alzheimer’s than non-smokers and they also stood a 172 per cent increased risk of vascular dementia during the follow up period.
The participants were asked to take a dementia survey between 1978 and 1985 when they were aged between 50 and 60 and a total of 1,136 were eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and 416 with vascular dementia.
As it stands around 75,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia with this number expected to rise to around 940,000 by 2021.
The reason smoking is thought to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s is due to it causing inflammation and oxidative stress, both of which contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. If you are a heavy smoker and are concerned about the risks to your health then there are many avenues of help available to help you on your quest to quit, one of which is hypnotherapy.
If you would like to find out about how hypnotherapy could help you to give up smoking then please visit our fact sheet here. Additionally if you would like to contact a hypnotherapist in your local area, please use the search tool located on our homepage.