Smokers More Likely to Get Dementia, Alzheimer's

Dorian Martin Caregiver Alzheimer's Caregiver Dorian Martin, who helped to care for an aging grandmother and was... Send Message Subscribe: Dorian Martin

Tuesday, September 04, 2007
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Mom took her first drag on a cigarette when she was 16. Her last inhale happened when she was 73. In between that time, Mom smoked like a chimney - my father estimates that she went through two packs of cigarettes a day during her smoking "prime." Mom finally stopped smoking when she was di...

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I call shenanigans
R. R.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 02:25 PM

My mother has Alzheimer's and never even took a puff off a cigarette.

re: I call shenanigans
Dorian Martin
Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 03:25 PM

I appreciate your feedback. However, I believe that the physical body is a system, and that some things that we do to that system can contribute to the quality of our health in the future.

Yes, my mother may have gotten Alzheimer's anyway (since dementia has been evident in several of her family members). However, I believe that the quality of her lung capacity (which has increasingly eroded since 1997 when she was first diagnosed with COPD) pushed that timetable up tremendously. I've noticed that there appears to be a relationship between the deterioration of her lungs over the past three years and the onset of Alzheimer's. As her lungs get weaker, her mental status also gets weaker.

Dorian

re: re: I call shenanigans
R. R.
Thursday, September 06, 2007 at 11:06 AM
I feel Alzheimer's is a ticking time bomb in our bodies that has been there since conception. My mother never drank or smoked. Her weight was always within the healthy range. She canned foods, worked in the garden, made all of her three daughter's clothes, refinished furniture with my father, etc. She is healthy now, except she has AD. She cannot communicate at all. Very sad.

comment on smokers more likely to get alzheimers
karen wing
Thursday, September 06, 2007 at 02:52 AM

I am no scientist, but my grandmother and all 7 of her siblings (all non-smokers), had alzheimers, it did`nt end there. From the 8 siblings their children are now being diagnosed with alzheimers - hereditory? one wonders. I however the only smoker at 49 do have C.O.P.D.
If any scientist out there has heard of alzheimers hitting a family with such voracity please get in touch i for one would love to know why this happens

karen wing

Junk Science RE: Smoking
chelsea
Friday, September 07, 2007 at 05:47 PM

It's hard to believe ANY study related to smoking/disease these days since so many have been proven to be based on junk science. According to these studies, we should all be dead now! My father never smoked in his life and got Alzheimer's in his 80's. As a matter of fact, of the 11 people I know who got Alzheimer's, only one was a smoker. It's easy to blame tobacco smoke for all of society's ills, but independent research will show that all the studies linking smoking to illness were conducted under less than favorable circumstances, funded by those with a financial/political agenda. I am a non-smoker.