Opposing Digits

Smoking appears to interfere with the brain's ability to recover from the effects of chronic alcohol abuse, according to a study conducted by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

After one month of sobriety, recovering alcoholics who smoked showed significantly less improvement than those who did not smoke in both brain function and neurochemical markers of brain cell health.

"This study suggests that for better brain recovery, it may be beneficial for alcoholics in early abstinence to stop smoking as well," concludes Dieter Meyerhoff, Dr.rer.nat., a radiology researcher at SFVAMC and the senior author of the study. Meyerhoff is also a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

# posted by madthumbs @ 7:52 AM