The horror! Cigarettes lower IQ

But it turns out that the list of possible consequences of the addiction to cigarettes is not limited to, small writes. As shown, the most recent studies, smoking also affects the brain and reduces the intellectual abilities. Examine the effect of smoking on Intelligence at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) instead. To find out if they are related, the researchers studied 465 subjects aged 64 years, of which about 50% were smokers. Each of them has a number of psychological tests to assess intellectual ability and memory. The researchers then participants with similar results in the archives of the tests in 1947, when he was only 11 years old, performed compared. The comparison showed that smokers are "lagging" on their smoking peers on all types of tests offered to them. For several decades, since the first survey, they are much stronger, and decreased ability to think logically and the ability to store and reproduce information. And interestingly, when researchers, the effect of various "third" factors (social status, level of education, type of work, alcohol, etc.) are excluded, the difference is still significant, albeit reduced by a multiple. Scientists can not yet say why smoking interferes with the brain. After the most plausible of the hypotheses put forward by them, under the influence of nicotine and cigarette tar nerve cells are more sensitive to the effects of free radicals - toxic compounds formed in the cells during the oxidation-reduction processes. In addition, cigarette tar increase the amount of free radicals in the body that. The risk of damage to brain cells