Smoking can be a prevention of Parkinson’s disease
We got used to hear that smoking causes various diseases, hits the blood, heart, lungs. Medical experts stream to prove all possible and impossible dangers of the tobacco consumption in order to convince users to quit.
Their arguments are undoubtedly reasonable, but there are different factors, which must not be underestimated as well.
Smoking affects body processes and can have both positive and negative impact on them.
The newest researches show that the tobacco consumption can relieve the state of people who suffer from certain diseases.
There is the fact that smokers are better protected against the Parkinson’s disease than non-smokers are.
The idea is not new. This conclusion was made in 1960s by epidemiologist Harold Kahn.
While analyzing the health records of approximately 300,000 former military people, Kahn could come to the conclusion that smokers who were US military people in the period from 1917 till 1940 did not suffer so much from Parkinson’s disease in comparison to non-smokers. The statistics of deaths caused by Parkinson’s disease was evidently higher while taking the numbers of smokers and non-smokers. Later researches confirmed that fact.
In order to comprehend this fact, let us remember the progress of Parkinson’s disease. While this disease is in progress, the dopamine-producing neurons in the midbrain degenerate and die.
Nicotine apparently protects those neurons, at least at rodent stages of Parkinson’s disease.
The finding is confirmed by multiple experiments although doctors do not risk advising patients to use nicotine as a remedy against the Parkinson’s disease. Of course, if their patients do not consume tobacco.
This is else one and a very significant proof that the nicotine is not always such a great threat as we usually think. Everything is complicated in our life.
Those who quit smoking are simultaneously exposed to a great number of external factors, which they were protected from before. They have to thoroughly consider what is better for them and estimate all possible risks they are exposed to after quitting.
By the way, nicotine can treat some different dementias as well. Even everyday inattention can be prevented with nicotine.
So, smokers should not neglect the facts that their tobacco can be very useful under certain circumstances. Of course, anyone dare quit if such a desire appears. But as we have got to know now, quitting persons can be exposed to the threats, about which they had no idea before as they were protected by their cigarettes.