Smoking Effects Mood and Anxiety Disorders

October 31st, 2008 by admin

Recent studies have linked smoking to anxiety disorders, suggesting the correlation (and possibly mechanism) may be related to the broad class of anxiety disorders, and not limited to just depression. Current ongoing research are attempting to explore the addiction-anxiety relationship.

Data from multiple studies suggest that anxiety disorders such as depression play a role in cigarette smoking. A history of regular smoking was observed more frequently among individuals who had experienced a major depressive disorder at some time in their lives than among individuals who had never experienced major depression or among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis.

People with major depression are also much less likely to quit due to the increased risk of experiencing mild to severe states of depression, including a major depressive episode. Depressed smokers appear to experience more withdrawal symptoms on quitting, are less likely to be successful at quitting, and are more likely to relapse.

Addiction Awarness About Health Benefits of Smoking

Studies suggest that smoking decreases appetite, but did not conclude that overweight people should smoke or that their health would improve by smoking.

Several types of “Smoker’s Paradoxes”, (cases where smoking appears to have specific beneficial effects), have been observed; often the actual mechanism remains undetermined. Risk of ulcerative colitis has been frequently shown to be reduced by smokers on a dose-dependent basis; the effect is eliminated if the individual stops smoking.

Smoking appears to interfere with development of Kaposi’s sarcoma, breast cancer among women carrying the very high risk BRCA gene, preeclampsia, and atopic disorders such as allergic asthma. A plausible mechanism of action in these cases may be the nicotine in tobacco smoke acting as an anti-inflammatory agent and interfering with the disease process.

Evidence suggests that non-smokers are up to twice as likely as smokers to develop Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. A plausible explanation for these cases may be the effect of nicotine, a cholinergic stimulant, decreasing the levels of acetylcholine in the smoker’s brain; Parkinson’s disease occurs when the effect of dopamine is less than that of acetylcholine.

In addition, nicotine stimulates the mesolimbic dopamine pathway (as do other drugs of abuse), causing an effective increase in dopamine levels. Opponents counter by noting that consumption of pure nicotine may be as beneficial as smoking without the risks associated with smoking.

It has been hypothesized that schizophrenics smoke for self-medication. Considering the high rates of physical sickness and deaths among persons suffering from schizophrenia, one of smoking’s short term benefits is its temporary effect to improve alertness and cognitive functioning in that disease.

It has been postulated that the mechanism of this effect is that schizophrenics have a disturbance of nicotinic receptor functioning. Rates of smoking have been found to be much higher in schizophrenics.