Heavy Drinking And Smoking Will Make You Age Faster
13 years ago

Drinking is one of my favorite pastimes. It’s great. You know what makes drinking even better? Smoking. You can’t deny it. When you’ve got a buzz going, nothing beats a drag from a cigarette. Admittedly, I’m one of the many people who claims, “Yeah, I only smoke when I drink.” I’m not going to bum smokes all night, though. I’m not an asshole. I buy my own pack.

There are many of you who either smoke cigarettes regularly, or who, like me, smoke when you drink. Sadly, some assholes who think they know better than everyone else have somehow found out that “smoking and heavy drinking in combination” is much worse for you than thought before. By assholes, I mean doctors and researchers. For the sake of time, they will henceforth be referred to collectively as “science.”

“When we looked at people who were heavy-drinking smokers, we found that for every 10 years that they aged, their brains aged the equivalent of 12 years,” Hagger-Johnson said. “From a public health perspective, the increasing burden associated with cognitive [mental] aging could be reduced if lifestyle factors can be modified, and we believe that people should not drink alcohol more heavily in the belief that alcohol is a protective factor against cognitive decline.”

In this study, mental decline was shown to increase with heavy drinking and smoking. In fact, the study showed that those who smoke and drink heavily will experience mental decline 36% faster than others in the test group. The study also found that for every ten years heavy combination smokers and drinkers aged, their brains actually aged 12 years.

How are people responding to these findings? Well, some of the folks down at TFM Headquarters aren’t too pleased.

Roger Dorn: Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

W.R. Bolen: Fuck that study.

Fortunately, there is some good news. The results of this study don’t demonstrate full causation.

The study failed to prove a causal relationship beyond an association between smoking and heavy drinking with accelerated mental aging.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, science.

[via Medical Daily]

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