Smokers have lower IQs

I had a paper to this effect published years ago but this is an unusually high-quality study. Eysenck saw personality as a mediating factor -- with extroverts more likely to smoke and more likely to engage in risky behaviour. The association betweeen smoking and sexual promiscuity among women was quite strong. So smoking is most likely to be a symptom of a low IQ rather than its cause

That Sartre and his fellow French intellectuals smoked suprises me not at all. They were much more purveyors of attitudes than improvers of knowledge

A cigarette dangling lazily from the mouth was once the telltale sign of an intellectual, but new evidence suggests it may have signalled quite the opposite.

Smokers have lower IQs than those who abstain, with intelligence decreasing the more one smokes, researchers have found. A study of 18 to 21-year-old men revealed that the IQs of smokers averaged 94 – seven points lower than non-smokers on 101.

IQ scores in a healthy population of young men fall between 84 and 116, but those who smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day averaged just 90 between them.

Researchers in Israel took data from more than 20,000 healthy men before, during and after they spent time in the Israeli military.

About 28 per cent of their sample smoked one or more cigarettes a day, three per cent considered themselves ex-smokers, and 68 per cent said they never smoked.

Professor Mark Weiser, of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry, said: "In the health profession, we've generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighbourhoods, or who've been given less education at good schools. "But because our study included subjects with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, we've been able to rule out socio-economics as a major factor."

The study also measured effects in twin brothers – and in the case where one twin smoked, the non-smoking twin registered a higher IQ on average.

Prof Weiser said: "People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health. "People with lower IQs are not only prone to addictions such as smoking. These same people are more likely to have obesity, nutrition and narcotics issues. "Our study may help parents and health professionals help at-risk young people make better choices."

The study was reported in a recent version of the journal Addiction.

SOURCE




Drinking too much cola could lower men's sperm count

Here we go again: The usual "correlation is causation" fallacy. It is probably working class people who drink most Coke and they are less healthy anyhow. At least the last sentence below is honest

Men who drink around a litre of cola every day could be harming their sperm, according to a new Danish study. On average, these men's sperm counts were almost 30 per cent lower than in men who didn't drink cola.

While most of the sperm counts would still be considered normal by the World Health Organization, men with fewer sperm generally have a higher risk of being infertile.

The link is unlikely to be due to caffeine, the researchers say, because coffee did not have the same effect, even though its caffeine content is higher. Instead, other ingredients in the beverage or an unhealthy lifestyle could be involved.

Kold Jensen, who led the new research, said only a few studies have looked at caffeine's impact on reproductive health in men. The participants have generally been a very select group, such as infertile men, and the results have been conflicting.

Because Danish youth has been upping their consumption of caffeine-containing soft drinks over the last decades, the researchers decided to study how this might affect their reproductive health.

More than 2,500 young men were included in their study. Those who didn't drink cola had better sperm quality - averaging 50 million sperm per millilitre semen - and tended to have a healthier lifestyle. In contrast, the 93 men who drank more than one litre a day had only 35 million sperm per millilitre. However, they also ate more fast foods, and less fruit and vegetables.

When looking at caffeine from other sources, such as coffee and tea, the decrease in sperm quality was much less pronounced. It is still not clear if the cola or the unhealthy lifestyle, or both, is to blame and the scientists said further research was needed.

Source