Cigarette Smoking & Parkinson's Disease

It's not every day you hear about the positive effects of smoking. In fact, most people have never heard of any positive aspects of smoking. From childhood, people have been taught that smoking causes lung cancer, mouth cancer, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and mouth infections--and that we should avoid taking that first puff as if it were the plague. Many will be shocked to learn that smoking may have at least one positive aspect, and that is protecting people against Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's Disease

• Parkinson's disease is a neurological disease named after London physician James Parkinson, who first described the illness in 1817. The illness is caused by cells being gradually lost in the substantia nigra, which is in the mid-brain. As the cells die, there is a loss of the brain chemical dopamine, resulting in symptoms of Parkinson's.

Symptoms

• Primary motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease include resting tremor. In other words, when a person is at rest, not moving around, he has a distinct tremor. This is known as bradykinesia. The patient may have slow movements, or rigidity, which is increased muscle tone, and there is stiffness and inflexibility of the muscles. Someone with Parkinson's also has impaired coordination and problems with balance. She may have poor posture with the tendency to lean forward. Such patients are fatigued and lose their automatic movements, which include blinking, smiling and swinging their arms when they walk. People with PD have speech impairments, which include, speaking softly, rapidly, in monotone, slurring their words, repeating words and hesitating before speaking. In the later stages of the disease, the patient begins to suffer from dementia.

Smoking and Parkinson's Disease

• While there is no evidence to show that smoking cigarettes cures or in any way improves Parkinson's disease, the findings of a scientific study published in the March 2010 online issue of the medical journal Neurology have shown that smoking can reduce a person's risk of developing the illness. The study involved 305,468 people between the ages of 50 and 71.

Specific Findings

• Long-term and current smokers have the lowest risk. There is, however, no indicated relationship between smoking and PD in people over 75 years of age. The protective effects of smoking are reduced once people quit smoking. The results were similar for both men and women. Former smokers with more years of smoking, fewer years since quitting, more cigarettes per day, and a higher lifetime amount of smoking were all associated with the risk of developing the disease.

How it Works

• Scientists aren't exactly sure what makes cigarette smoking a protective measure against Parkinson's disease. The researchers responsible for the same Neurology article mentioned earlier theorize that something in the cigarettes--most likely the tobacco itself--protects people. This theory is backed up by the fact that smokeless tobacco users also have a lower risk.