SAN FRANCISCO - Those who are trying to quit the bottle must not resort to puffing, a study published in the March 2006 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research has said. The study found that giving in to smoking while trying to sober up might actually retard the brain's ability to recover from the effects of alcoholism.
Researchers at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco found that people who were trying to give up alcoholism were more likely to succeed if they kept away from smoking. On the other hand those who turned to tobacco within a month of trying to stop drinking were more likely to fail in their attempts.
The study tracked the progress of 25 recovering alcoholics among whom 14 were smokers and the rest were non-smokers. "It is pretty well established that long-term chronic drinking of the amount that alcoholics do, leads to abnormalities of brain structure, chemistry, and blood flow as well as cognition," said Timothy Durazzo.
The researchers tracked the patients using spectroscopic imaging, which is a form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the levels of N-acetylaspartate, a chemical that is an indicator for the health of neurons and choline, which is a marker for a healthy cell membrane.
It was found that the levels of these chemical markers increased in non-smokers, while they decreased in smokers after 30 days of abstinence. The study said that for faster recovery from alcohol abuse patients should give up smoking, "This may be a lot to ask from an alcoholic individual going through drastic brain chemical imbalances in early recovery," Dr. Durazzo admitted.
He added that more often than not cigarettes and alcohol went hand in hand, "One may elicit cravings for the other. So if you are able to give up both at the same time, it may increase your chances of staying sober, because you don't have one substance serving as a trigger for use of the other," he stressed.
However, researchers cautioned that the results of the study are strictly preliminary and larger studies are needed to assess the impact of smoking on alcoholism.
