Wednesday, February 21, 2024, 02:23
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Young people have a bad habit that leads to cancer PHOTO / capture Health
A group of researchers from Canada and Denmark conducted an important health study that was published in the medical journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. Scientists have found that people who smoke, an increasingly common habit especially among young people, have a 250% increased risk of being affected by cancer or mental illness compared to others.
Even though cigarette packages display warnings with shocking images of diseased lungs and rotten teeth, people are unaware of the danger. And we often hear in the media about how smoking can cause several types of cancer. But most of us probably don’t know that smoking actually increases the risk of mental illness as well, according to News Medical.
In recent years, more and more research has indicated a strong correlation between smoking and mental illness. However, researchers have not been able to agree whether smoking causes depression or other mental disorders, or whether we smoke because we need to lessen the symptoms of an underlying mental disorder.
Now, new studies by Lyoyd Balbunea and Evyn Peters of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and Doug Speed of Aarhus University in Denmark have shown that smoking can lead to depression and bipolar disorder, two mental illnesses.
“The numbers speak for themselves. Smoking causes mental illness. Although it is not the only cause, smoking increases the risk of being hospitalized with a mental illness by 250 percent,” Goug Speed said.
“Smoking usually precedes mental illness. In fact, long before. On average, the people analyzed started smoking at the age of 17, while they were usually not admitted to hospital with a mental disorder until after the age of 30.”
Based on health data from 350,000 people, before Doug Speed and his colleagues could answer whether smoking can cause mental disorders, they needed very large volumes of data. There can be many different reasons why we develop a mental disorder.
They turned to Biobank from UK, one of the world’s largest databases of human health information. The database contains genetic data on more than half a million people.
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“Previous research didn’t really consider that there might be a temporal dimension at play. People usually start smoking before the age of 20, but are not admitted to hospital with a mental disorder until they are on average between 30 and 60 years old.”
“Approximately 90% of the people in the data set who were still smokers or ex-smokers started before the age of 20. The likelihood of you starting to smoke later in life is therefore quite low. In fact, your genes help determine whether or not you’ll become a smoker,” explains Doug Speed.
“When we looked at many smokers in the database, we found a number of recurring genetic variants. Looking at twin studies, where the twins had the same genes but grew up in separate homes, we could see that their genes could explain 43% of the risk of becoming a smoker.”
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Another explanation could be that smoking causes inflammation in the brain, which in the long run can damage certain parts of the brain and lead to various mental disorders.
Statistically, smoking appears to cause mental disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. “We have yet to find the biological mechanism that makes smoking induce mental disorders. One theory is that nicotine inhibits the uptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and we know that people with depression don’t make enough serotonin,” said Doug Speed.
When you smoke a single cigarette, nicotine activates the production of serotonin in the brain. Among other things, this makes you feel relaxed after smoking. But if you continue to smoke, the nicotine will have the opposite effect. Instead, it will inhibit serotonin – which can make you anxious, angry and unstable.
2024-02-21 00:26:46
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