Job Discussion Forums

[ghost]

A new study shows that smoking damages your intelligence, and extrapolation of the issue may explain some of the declining performances in Turkish classrooms during recent times.

Here are some exerpts from the article:

Doctors at the universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen aren't sure why smoking affects the brain, but they say the study provides a smoking gun - the loss of intelligence showed up in tests that measure mental ability in five different ways.

The current smokers and those who smoked for a long time showed a sharper drop in mental ability than the non- smokers, according to Psychiatrist - Lawrence Whalley.

"The overall effect is to have a brain that's functioning less well than one would expect, based on their childhood intelligence."

"It doesn't sound much," he added, but these people "are looking at significantly reduced life expectancies and productivity."

Developing dementia a lot earlier is also part of the picture. Whalley comments - "They're hitting the greasy slope down into dementia that little bit earlier."

The tests covered five areas: memory, mental speed, spatial ability, nonverbal reasoning ability and "executive function" or decision making.

Smokers are also more likely than other people to indulge in other unhealthy habits. They exercise less than nonsmokers, eat more fatty foods, and drink more heavily. The team adjusted for these other sources of possible brain damage and still found some mental decline that only smoking could account for.

Whalley isn't sure what causes the loss of brain power, but he has a lot to choose from.

Smokers' lungs are damaged and are less able to pump oxygen into the blood, and oxygen is vital to brain cells, he notes. Smoke also has carbon monoxide, which displaces oxygen from red blood cells.

As well, chemicals in smoke damage the linings of arteries, which in turn stifles the flow of blood to the brain:

Finally, the chemicals are oxidants, which react harshly with brain cells and damage them.Source: Journal Addictive Behaviours.

Native language teachers in Turkey should campaign more for "smoke free zones" in schools and other places where teachers congregate. This is a basic human right, but all teachers in Turkey have to suffer the consequences of second hand smoke, and people like Yaramaz, DMB, and F.G.T., might pay a heavy price for living in that kind of environment some years down the road. It is time to act now.

[dmb]

[Faustino]

I read an interesting article once that suggested drinking beer heightened your intelligence. Beer, as they would have us believe, kills brain cells aplenty. However, surely it is only the weakest, most vulnerable cells that actually get picked off. As cells are replaced, the brain has been culled of the worst cells and must therefore be the better for it. Ergo, have another beer, can you afford not to? This theory is perfectly true of hunted animals in the wild, and therefore must be correct. Either that, or I've had one too many and have lost the mental capacity to... er, what was I talking about?

[almuze]

ghost, think happy thoughts! I know that happy posts, and stories about happy people, generally have no plot and are boring to read, but you could really use some happy times.
as a smoker who was an ex-smoker until we moved back here, I can only say, most days I look forward to "hitting the greasy slope down into dementia" most days I think I might already be there....

[ghost]

[Faustino]

If you smoke 40 a day, what else do you actually do with your life? If you spend, say, five minutes smoking a cigarette, you use up almost three and a half hours a day devoted to this one activity. That, quite frankly, sucks.

[dmb]

Ghost, you sound like my mother.
Faustıno, I'm usually doing another activity at the same time as smoking, so the time isn't totally devoted to smoking.

[Faustino]

Yeah, right. And I'm totally grading student papers while writing this message. But hey, it's your life, and I'm sure you're fully aware of the risks involved. Just try to eat some fruit as well, give your body a chance.

[Otterman Ollie]

Well thanks Ghost,not often I say that ,screw those happy thoughts there is nothing more that makes my blood boil, the bile rise, the key in my back goes around another turn , than the sight of some inconsiderate ,mindless, healthless , sad excuse of a human being lighting up yet another nicotine delivery system.
Who cares if it kills their brains or makes them even more stupid and ages them prematurely to boot ,they certainly don't .
Let them all die slow and painful deaths ,but not in twenty five years time ,NOW would be nice ,then at least I might get some fresh air in my lungs .
If people really cared about this issue than we could go to bars and restaurants without ever having to inhale second hand smoke ,is there such a place in Izmir ? I doubt if such a place exists in the whole country .

[Faustino]

Whoa, somebody really doesn't like smoking.

I think there should be plenty of smoking-only establishments for those poor souls addicted to the things. That way we could hoard them all together and allow them the benefits of inhaling each other's second hand smoke, as well as their own cigs.

In a former teaching job, my office was in a room assigned as both the non-smoking office and the smoker's lounge. This would have been fine, but no-one told the smoke itself that it wasn't supposed to drift from one side of the room to the other.

I think intelligent smoke is the answer - that way it could root out those who benefit from it most and leave the rest of us alone. surely they could invent some smoke attracting material, from which all smokers' clothes would be made?!?!

[Baba Alex]

[ghost]

[Faustino]

After all, the only thing you gain from not smoking is a few years of extra life, and those are the crap years at the end when you're really old and no one wants to know you anyway.

Besides, after having watched 'Supersize me', I'm more concerned about the effects of fast food.

Let the cancer loving nicotine addicts look after their own problems.

[Baba Alex]

[almuze]

once upon a time I was watching the discovery channel in english, and there was a programme about discovering the world of human genes, and how it turns out that we have a gene for almost everything, and viola! there is also a cancer gene, which, apperntly, some people have in great abundunce, thus non smokers who breath nothing but heathy air and still die of lung cancer, and then some people have hardly any cancer genes at all, so that how you get those people who chain smoke until they are 100 and still heathly.

now, before everyone gets upset, I'm not saying smoking is healthy, or that we shoudl all start or anything like that, I'm only mentioning a tv show I once saw. In the meantime, a few non smoking restraunts would be nice.