Contents:
- Medical Video: Effects of Smoking : How Does Smoking Affect the Brain?
- How can smoking affect someone's mentality?
- Dependence from smoking also triggers behavior change
- Is it true that smoking makes you calmer?
- Depressive symptoms in smokers
- 1. Mood swing
- 2. Changes in the hormone dopamine
- What can be done?
Medical Video: Effects of Smoking : How Does Smoking Affect the Brain?
Smoking has been known as a risk factor for various degenerative diseases because of its various harmful ingredients. But did you know that smoking behavior can also affect a person's psychological condition? The effect of smoking on a person's mentality can vary and not everyone experiences it. Some smokers may actually be aware of emotional changes as a result of smoking, but choose to let it.
How can smoking affect someone's mentality?
Nicotine affects brain performance and triggers dependence, which ultimately changes the way a person thinks and behaves. These effects can be permanent because nicotine is very easy to accumulate in the brain. Nicotine can be absorbed by the oral mucosa when smoking, and reaches the brain in just 10 seconds after being sucked. The more nicotine, the stronger the effect of dependence and psychological changes experienced by someone.
Dependence on smokers also involves other mechanisms that trigger imbalances in brain function. Nicotine makes a person dependent by triggering an increase in the hormone dopamine in the brain. Excessive dopamine increases in smokers are also accompanied by a decrease in the monoamineoxidase enzyme which plays a role in reducing dopamine levels. Without these enzymes, dopamine levels will be more difficult to control, causing dependence.
Dependence from smoking also triggers behavior change
Most smokers feel the effects of increased dopamine as a sense of calm, happiness, or pleasure when smoking. This causes a person to have difficulty calming his own mind if he doesn't smoke cigarettes. If that happens, smokers will search and use cigarettes without stopping.
Unwittingly, smokers also become more aggressive and irritable when they have to resist their desire to smoke. This of course will affect the social life of smokers who actually create stress, and trigger more severe behavioral changes.
Is it true that smoking makes you calmer?
"Smoking makes me more calm" is just the assumption that a smoker believes. The effects of dependence and increase in dopamine hormone may make a person more calm for a moment, but after smoking or quitting smoking within a few hours, this can trigger stress due to the desire to smoke. Basically, feeling stressed and anxious when wanting to smoke is not comparable to the feeling of 'calm' when smoking cigarettes.
Smoking itself also includes a bad stress reliever strategy because it does not encourage someone to face problems in their lives. Many smokers realize that they have financial problems, but still buy cigarettes just because they want to avoid the problems they face. In the end, smokers will only continue to experience stress by continuing to smoke. In contrast, a study showed that individuals who quit smoking after six consecutive weeks experienced an increase in quality of life and were more happy than individuals who continued to smoke.
Depressive symptoms in smokers
Depression is a mental illness that is strongly influenced by many factors such as genetics, social environment, and health. In people who already suffer from depression, smoking will only make someone experience more serious symptoms of depression.
Although it is not known which precedes depression and smoking behavior, individuals who smoke may experience depression. A study showed that about 30% of adult smokers were depressed, this proportion was much higher than in the general population, where only 20% of adults experienced depression. The incidence of depression is also more likely to be experienced by female smokers and in the younger age group. Most smokers who realize that they are depressed also just let the conditions they experience.
Smoking makes a person feel depressed through several ways, including:
1. Mood swing
Because of dependence and feeling more calm when smoking, someone's mood gets better but then changes drastically quickly after quitting smoking. This can make someone feel more depressed.
2. Changes in the hormone dopamine
Uncontrolled increase in dopamine hormone can also make the brain not respond to these hormones as well as they used to. As a result, a smoker tends not to feel happy, but will continue to smoke only because of the effects of dependence.
What can be done?
Avoid smoking and making efforts quit smoking as soon as possible is one way to avoid a more severe psychological impact. Reducing the number of cigarettes, diverting attention when feeling anxious, and seeking appropriate professional help if you are depressed, is one way to counteract the effects of dependence.
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