Washington, March 18 (TNS): Researchers said that smoking at least 10 cigarettes daily my increase a person’s risk of psychosis.
Research has found links between psychosis and both tobacco and marijuana smoking particularly in regard to schizophrenia-related psychosis. However, the precise reasons why people who experience psychosis are more likely to smoke are not clear. Some scientists think that smoking might act as a kind of “self-medication” that is, people with psychosis might find that smoking relieves their symptoms, perhaps due to some unidentified neurological mechanism. Or, smoking might help to make people who have psychosis less bored or stressed, which could also alleviate symptoms. Recently, studies have started to investigate whether smoking itself might increase a person’s risk of psychosis. Although much research has looked at whether smoking marijuana might contribute to an increased risk of psychosis, comparatively few papers have applied the same investigative approach to tobacco. A 2015 systematic review and meta-analysis that was published in The Lancet examined this issue. Its authors reported that smoking tobacco every single day was linked with both increased risk of psychosis and earlier age of onset of the psychotic disorder.
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In this latest systematic review, people having the first episode of psychosis were three times more likely to be smokers than nonsmokers.
Based on their findings, the authors questioned the “self-medication” theory and proposed instead that nicotine may be having an effect that creates the conditions for psychosis, possibly on the dopamine system. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that helps to control the brain’s “pleasure and reward centres.” Scientists now know that smoking feels pleasurable because nicotine causes dopamine to be released into the brain.
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Part of the reason why the authors of The Lancet study believe that the dopamine system may play a role in driving the link between daily smoking and psychosis is that studies have shown that smokers are less likely to get Parkinson’s disease.
