HealthDay (9/14, Dallas) reports that adolescents who are “new smokers suffer nearly all of the same negative psychological effects when they try to quit as people who’ve smoked for years,” according to an analysis published online Sept. 4 in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research. Scientists at Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies divided the study population, which ranged in “age from 13 to 19,” into three groups: “22 nonsmokers, 27 smokers who did not change their habit, and 47 smokers who avoided cigarettes for almost a full day.” They noted that the “teen smokers had about nine cigarettes each day for about two years”; and after quitting the habit, the researchers found that the teens “experienced the same withdrawal symptoms, smoking urges, negative mood swings and intense cravings as those recorded in adults.”
Study Links Secondhand Smoke To Memory Problems. HealthDay (9/14, Dallas) reported that secondhand smoke “has a negative effect on brain function,” according to a study published online “recently” in the journal Addiction. Over four and a half years, researchers at Northumbria University in the UK “compared a group of smokers” with one group of nonsmokers “exposed to secondhand smoke either at home or in a ‘smoking area’ for an average of 25 hours a week” and one group of nonsmokers not exposed to secondhand smoke. An “event-based memory test, which focuses on memory for future intentions” showed that nonsmokers in the secondhand smoke group “forgot almost 20 percent more” than did the other nonsmoking group; and smokers forgot “30 percent more than those who were not exposed to secondhand smoke.”
Related Links:
— “Quitting Smoking Just as Hard for Teens: Study, “Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay, September 14, 2012.