Scientists Confirm: Smoking Shrinks Your Brain

Researchers have discovered a shocking side effect of smoking after studying brain scans.

Heavier smoking results in the loss of even more brain mass, and the more years a person spends smoking, the more brain volume is lost.

Scientists from Missouri and North Carolina carried out their research by reviewing data from 32,094 Europeans in a dataset known as the UK Biobank, Emily Brown reported for the science outlet Unilad.

They said in the study that it is already known that there are associations between smoking behavior and lower total brain volume and gray and white matter volumes.

"However, a significant question remains about whether these associations represent predisposing features for the risk of developing cigarette smoking or are consequences of cigarette smoking," they said in the study, which has been published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.

The team looked at health behaviors, brain scans, and genetic risk factors before performing statistical analysis to try and determine whether smoking every day led to a decreased brain volume.

“Scientists have overlooked the effects of smoking on the brain because we were focused on all the terrible effects of smoking on the lungs and the heart,” said Dr. Laura J. Bierut, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Psychiatry.

“But as we’ve started looking at the brain more closely, it’s become apparent that smoking is also really bad for your brain.”

Heavier smoking results in the loss of even more brain mass, and the more years a person spends smoking, the more brain volume is lost. Smoking can cause the brain to age prematurely.

They said 14% of global Alzheimer’s disease cases could be attributable to cigarette smoking.

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