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Smoking cigarettes doubles the risk of developing depression, bipolar disorder
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zamalek 3y agoQuitting is the best decision I have ever made (the worst decision I have ever made is starting). I started off by vaping - although based on recent research I wonder if that was at all safer than smoking - and working my way down to 0% nicotine fluid over a few years. That wasn't too hard (probably 4-5 days of mild cravings at most once I switched to 0%), the oral fixation provided by vaping was seemingly enough to fool my brain. Things went really poorly when I tried to quit the 0% fluid, nicotine patches used per-instructions were the savior. I would have cravings for a few hours after each dosage decrease, but did have a test of willpower when after quitting the patches (possibly 2 weeks). I kept some patches around, just in case (you don't want to revert all the way to a cigarette if your cravings get the better of you), but never used them. After about 2 years I stopped getting cravings in all situations (social and drinking being the worst). The advertised benefits of quitting are quite real - once you start reaping the rewards the cravings are easy to deal with ("this goes away if I smoke"). I also quit drinking at the start of this year, on a whim. The effects aren't as pronounced as quitting smoking, but I have much deeper emotional reserves when things get difficult. I have also done more research, and it's scary what even a single drink a week (which counts as "chronic usage" if you are doing you own research) will do to your body.
- selimthegrim 3y agoCan you cite anything about a single drink a week?
- zamalek 3y agohttps://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-... Medical terminology gets confusing. "Chronic" to a layperson generally means "bad," but medically it merely means "ongoing." The idea that the protective effects of alcohol outweighing the risks are also under increased scrutiny and doubt: the risk of cancer is just too high. There are many ways to deal with a cardiovascular problem, but liver cancer? At the end of the day you're making desperate deals with yourself - because drinking is definitely enjoyable. Let's assume that the revised Canadian recommendation of 1-2 at most a week was made due to being in the ballpark of the risk of walking out of your front door. Because humans are bad at conceptualizing probabilities, we fail to/don't want to realize that we are now carrying both risks as independent probabilities: P(Living∪Drinking) Binge drinking (BAC > 0.08, 4-5 drinks) is playing Russian roulette each time. This is what I was doing: 1 6pack a month to get a nice mild buzz. Bad idea.
- stev-0 3y agoAlmost everyone I know binge drinks from time to time.. You are right that it’s better not to but calling it Russian roulette is a pretty big overstatement.
- zamalek 3y agoThe only thing that "everyone you know is doing X" indicates is that "everyone you know does X." It is in no way correlated to how bad of an idea it is.
- stev-0 3y agoI never said it was a great idea. I said that equating it with a one in six change of instant death is a bit dramatic.
- zamalek 3y agoIt's a literary device: a simile. I'm not dumb enough to suggest that it's actually like Russian roulette, I myself would have been long dead. The similarity is with playing games with your life, which is objectively true.
- belltaco 3y ago> Since this research shows that people hardly ever start smoking cigarettes after the age of 20, the team poses the idea that it could be beneficial to raise the age limit for buying them. Interesting, the recent tobacco age limit increase in the US from 18 to 21 should help.
- superkuh 3y agoI strongly disagree with this. If we're going to raise the age then it has to be across the board. 21 to be tried as an adult, 21 to be drafted, 21 to vote, etc. Disenfranchising legal adults because of possible 20 years* in the future crime (hospitalization for mental health around ~40yo) is very immoral. * See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13601 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acps.13601 fig 1.
- bigyikes 3y agoYeah. Imagine getting drafted and not being allowed to have a cigarette in the field. Outrageous. If I’m an adult at 18, let me make adult decisions.
- j-a-a-p 3y agoSmoking must be banned because it is an annoying habit. These people smoke where ever they want, on the street, on a terras while other people are eating, in busy shopping streets. It is hard to understand how screwed up some smokers are. In Belgium they had to make a law to ban smoking in cars if there is a child inside - imagine, what kind of person are you when you do that?! Not to mention pregnant women who smoke. If people fail to behave at such a basic level, then democracy should jump in and fix it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- almostnormal 3y ago> Interesting, the recent tobacco age limit increase in the US from 18 to 21 should help. New Zealand has recently banned smoking for anyone born before 2009.
- superkuh 3y agoI don't think this paper actually disentangles the causation direction. It's just another study showing that people with mental problems tend to like smoking. The 20 year gap between starting smoking and hospitalization they're talking about leaves a lot to be desired. The most surprising thing to me is that they managed to find an n=131,140 of people in the system with enough genetic testing coverage to calculate the polygenetic scores for the smoking models they used. That many people had detailed gene sequencing done and in accessible public databases?
- jjgreen 3y ago[flagged]
- gabereiser 3y agoCorrelation does not equal causation. Smokers aren’t all schizophrenics and not all schizophrenics are smokers.
- jjgreen 3y agoYou misstate your truism: "correlation does not imply causation". Which is true. But in either case, you then deny correlation, so not relevant. In my personal experience, most schizophrenics smoke like bastards.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoBy all accounts, smoking is (at least early on, before your lungs rot out of your chest) pleasant. I would think the mentally healthy would enjoy it too. What would account for the selection effect here? Is there some smoking initiation mechanism that could account for it?
- kochikame 3y agoSmoking cigarettes is first and foremost an anxiety suppression mechanism. It’s no surprise that those given to overly worrying and fretting would smoke. To use your words, the mentally healthy don’t need it
- shkkmo 3y agoThis study seems like it is just yet again confirming the correlation. Since they aren't performing any intervention, all they can do is statistical analysis to show the strength of that correlation. I am not convinced by the argument that people starting to smoke long before their first mental health hospitalization means anything since mental health problems tend to start long before hospitalization.
- itslennysfault 3y agoYeah, I find it much more believable that people suffering from mental health problems are more likely to smoke (or do drugs other risky behavior) than that smoking causes mental health problems.
- shkkmo 3y agoIt's probably (as with so many things) both. Smoking could easily both provide acute relief from mental health issues while chronically making those same issues worse.
- peterlk 3y agoSmoking increases risk of all cause mortality by 79% over non-smokers [0]. This means that your probability of dying by any cause in any time period is 79% higher if you smoke than of you didn’t smoke. If you’re not that worried about bpd or depression, perhaps you’ll consider all-cause-mortality. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9150905/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9150905/
- alienicecream 3y agoYou say that with a lot of confidence, what is the causal mechanism?
- throwanem 3y agoOne sentence in this article is of import: > Statistically, Speed and the team found a correlation here, but they couldn’t explain why they noticed what they did. Correlation between smoking and mental illness has long been recognized. Without meaningful insight into causation or lack thereof, it's not clear to what extent this work contributes, and the quotes in the article suggest a desire to handwave quickly past the question on the assertion that some causative effect is present and "only" needs identifying.
- zare_st 3y agoThe body is a huge system. Causation is easy in easy cases, if you eat heavy metals you will get cancer, because we know enough of the radiation effect on cells to encircle these cases with systematic knowledge. This happened years and years after corellation was anecdotally detected and then statistically proven. How many years we'll need to gather that knowledge for psychological diseases is beyond me. There are too many variables. The research's findings are rather useless for the real world application. If someone was informed at early age they're in risk group, either by having history of illness in family or an episode, they're going to be advised to live a healthy life 100%.
- codr7 3y agoOr is it the other way around?
- j-a-a-p 3y agoFeels like old news. And maybe it is my bubble, but isn't smoking a rapidly dying habit? Research on vaping would be a more valuable and urgent subject IMHO.
- iancmceachern 3y agoOr is it that depression and bipolar disorder tends you towards smoking?
- drewcoo 3y ago> “Smoking typically comes before the mental illness. In fact, a long time before. On average, people from the data set began smoking at the age of 17, while they were typically not admitted to hospital with a mental disorder until after the age of 30,” he adds. So smoking onset is measured by behavior initiation but mental illness onset is measured by first hospitalization? This is just one of the pieces of motivated reasoning evident here.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhen I was in California in the 90s, all the mental institutions allowed inmates to smoke. Basically whenever they wanted, they could go get a nicotine fix. Now, there was absolutely no caffeine allowed anywhere; all our drinks were decaf. So the only stimulant available was gross stinky tobacco smoke. I hated it. Inmates would come back inside with their clothes and bodies stinking, and we were in close quarters in an enclosed space. I never understand why they allowed everyone to smoke as much as possible. It seemed detrimental to the drug regimens they put people on, and counterproductive, considering nicotine's nature as a stimulant. I noticed that since I moved here in recent years, there has been no opportunity for inmates to smoke. I can't recall the caffeine policies, though.
- AngryData 3y agoSeems like putting the cart before the horse to me, coorellation does not equal causation. It is well known that bipolar individuals are FAR more likely to seek out and use drugs in general, which would include smoking.