Smokers and ex-smokers know this, when you smoke a cigarette, you feel sharper mentally. However, despite what the majority of smokers will tell you, smoking does the opposite. In fact, smoking has a detrimental effect on short-term memory as well as play a key role in the development of cognitive disorders like dementia. Makes you think twice about smoking again huh?
Kings College London conducted a study in 2012 on factors that help predict cognitive decline. Dr. Alex Dregan a public health sciences researcher from the College, who led the study, and its authors said, ‘Smoking emerged as the most consistent predictor of cognitive decline.”
(http://www.cbsnews.com/news/smoking-tied-to-declines-in-memory-cognitive-abilities/)
This led Jessica Smith, a communications officer at the UK’s Alzheimer’s Society to declare, “This research adds to the huge amount of evidence that also suggests they can be bad for our head too.”
Another study, conducted in 2003, also showed a link between smoking and cognitive decline, although the study focused on the decline in midlife. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447882/) In the same year, a different study showed that smokers had a more difficult time in doing advanced cognitive tasks. Other studies also suggest that non-smokers do better in matching names to faces than smokers. Since smoking limits the amount of oxygen that reaches one’s brain, this also leads to issues with short-term memory.
So, how does vaping make you smarter? Well, it doesn’t make you smarter than how you already are, however, if you are a smoker or ex-smoker, it allows your brain to perform better as opposed to when you were/are smoking. Ejuices used in vaping have varying nicotine strengths, and one can adjust to taste. And since one only gets the nicotine, without the other harmful toxins and compounds found in cigarettes, the effect is similar to caffeine, acting as a stimulant.
You see, nicotine has never been the reason why cigarettes are bad for your health. Nicotine, like caffeine, is a vasoconstrictor and stimulant. If you take nicotine on its own (in safe doses of course), it is just as harmful as caffeine.
As soon as you quit smoking, the cognitive impairment that one might have experienced while smoking will soon dissipate, with you getting back to normal. However, how fully the damage can be repaired depends on how long you’ve smoked, your age when you started smoking, and how old you are when you quit. This means, the sooner you quit, the better your chances to recover from the cognitive damage completely. When it comes to short-term memory loss, this will improve almost right away once you quit since more oxygen gets to your brain.
If you think your cognitive abilities are being hampered by smoking, or are afraid it might cause irreparable damage, maybe it’s time to switch to vaping? Especially if quitting cold turkey is difficult for you, maybe vaping is the way to your cognitive salvation.
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