Smoking, Drinking Affect
Mental Speed in Middle Age
Excerpt By Amy Norton , Reuter's Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Middle-aged adults who enjoy a drink or two a day may be somewhat quicker mentally than their non-drinking peers, new study findings suggest.

Smoking, on the other hand, may put the brakes on mental speed, researchers report in the November 15th issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

They found that both smokers and non-drinkers in their study scored lower on tests of mental speed and flexibility--an effect comparable to that of being about 4 years older.

"The results certainly give an additional motivation to stop smoking," the study's lead author, Dr. Sandra Kalmijn of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, told Reuters Health.

The study of nearly 2,000 mostly middle-aged adults in the Netherlands showed that those who reported moderate drinking 5 years earlier logged better scores on timed mental tasks, with the association being particularly strong among women.

As for smoking, participants who 5 years earlier had said they currently smoked performed more poorly on these same measures, compared with their non-smoking peers. Self-described former smokers appeared to fall somewhere in between, Kalmijn and her colleagues note.

Past research, mostly in older adults, has suggested that both moderate drinking and refraining from smoking may protect against age-related mental decline. Investigators suspect that effects on the body's blood vessels may help explain both relationships.

For example, smoking can lead to hardening and narrowing of the blood vessels supplying the brain, and the habit is an established risk factor for stroke and vascular dementia--a form of dementia caused by an inadequate blood supply to the brain. Light-to-moderate drinking, on the other hand, is thought to benefit the cardiovascular system, possibly by improving cholesterol levels or by reducing blood clotting.

However, Kalmijn and her colleagues point out, chronic, heavy drinking can also be toxic to brain cells.

Whereas it is clear smokers should be encouraged to quit, Kalmijn said, "the drinking issue is more complicated. I don't propose to encourage alcohol drinking."

Instead, she added, it's more appropriate to conclude that people who are "very moderate" drinkers can probably keep up the habit.

The researchers also note that the mental effects their study tied to smoking and drinking in middle age were "small, and for most people, probably not even noticeable."

"But," Kalmijn said, "I do expect that these differences will become more pronounced when people become older, and eventually, it will be noticeable."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology 2002;156:936-944.

Reference Source 89

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