Drinking and Smoking a Dangerous Duo - Forbes.com:
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment for alcoholism could change radically as researchers learn more about the interplay between smoking and drinking, and how the two addictions feed each other to devastating effect on the brain.
New evidence suggests that alcohol and nicotine work on the same inhibitory amino acids in the brain, which makes the inclination to do both doubly strong. However, experts think that could mean both addictions could be battled simultaneously, and not separately, in the future.
'While among non-drinkers smoking rates are 20 to 30 percent in the Western world, rates are up to 80 or 90 percent among alcoholic patients,' noted Dieter J. Meyerhoff, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and an organizer of a recent symposium on the phenomenon.
'There is research that suggests this is not by chance,' he said. "
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment for alcoholism could change radically as researchers learn more about the interplay between smoking and drinking, and how the two addictions feed each other to devastating effect on the brain.
New evidence suggests that alcohol and nicotine work on the same inhibitory amino acids in the brain, which makes the inclination to do both doubly strong. However, experts think that could mean both addictions could be battled simultaneously, and not separately, in the future.
'While among non-drinkers smoking rates are 20 to 30 percent in the Western world, rates are up to 80 or 90 percent among alcoholic patients,' noted Dieter J. Meyerhoff, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and an organizer of a recent symposium on the phenomenon.
'There is research that suggests this is not by chance,' he said. "
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