Smoking is an important lifestyle factor associated with cognitive decline in older adults

Smoking could be one of the key lifestyle factors affecting how quickly our cognitive skills decline as we age, a new study led by UCL researchers suggests.

The study, published in Nature communicationanalyzed data from 32,000 adults aged 50 or older from 14 European countries who responded to surveys over ten years.

The researchers examined how the rate of cognitive decline might differ among cognitively healthy older adults with different combinations of health-related behaviors, including smoking, physical activity, alcohol use and social contact.

Cognitive function was assessed based on participants’ performance in memory and verbal fluency tests. Participants were classified into lifestyles based on whether they smoked or not, whether they did both moderate and vigorous physical activity at least once a week, whether they saw friends and family at least weekly, and whether they did more or the same/less than two drunk. alcoholic drinks per day (men) or one drink per day (women).

They found that cognitive decline was faster for lifestyles that included smoking, while cognitive decline was generally similar for all non-smoking lifestyles. The cognitive scores of the smoking lifestyles dropped to 85% more than the non-smoking lifestyle over ten years.

The exception were smokers who had a healthy lifestyle in all other areas, that is, they exercised regularly, drank alcohol in moderation and had regular social contacts. This group showed a rate of cognitive decline comparable to that of non-smokers.

Lead author Dr. Mikaela Bloomberg (UCL Behavioral Science & Health) said: “Our study is observational so cannot definitively establish cause and effect, but it suggests that smoking could be a particularly important factor influencing the rate of cognitive aging.

“Previous evidence suggests that individuals who engage in healthier behaviors have slower cognitive decline; however, it was unclear whether all behaviors contributed equally to cognitive decline, or whether there were specific behaviors that caused these results.

“Our findings suggest that of the healthy behaviors we examined, not smoking may be one of the most important in terms of preserving cognitive function.

“For people who cannot quit smoking, our results suggest that engaging in other healthy behaviors, such as regular exercise, moderate alcohol consumption and being socially active, may help offset the adverse cognitive effects associated with smoking.”

The researchers took into account a range of factors that may have influenced the findings, including age, gender, country, education, wealth and chronic conditions.

The team used data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA) and the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).