Study: Smoking A Lot Could Damage Your Vision | Life

NEW YORK, Feb. 18 – A new study has shown that smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day can damage your vision and your perception of color.

Conducted by behavioral health researchers from Rutgers University (US) and the Perception, Neuroscience and Behavior Lab in Brazil, this new small-scale study involved 71 participants who smoked less than 15 cigarettes during of their lives and 63 smokers more than 20 cigarettes a day.

Participants were between 25 and 45 years old and were all clbadified as being in good health with normal or corrected vision.

However, they were diagnosed with tobacco addiction and indicated that they had made no attempt to quit smoking.

During the study, participants were asked to sit 1.5 meters away from a 48 cm CRT monitor displaying stimuli.

Researchers simultaneously monitored the eyes of both participants to badess how well they distinguished contrast levels – subtle shading differences – and colors while observing stimuli.

The results, published in the newspaper Psychiatry Research, showed that the group of heavy smokers, those who smoked more than 20 per day, had a reduced ability to differentiate between contrasts and colors compared to non-smokers.

Researchers also found significant changes in smokers' red-green and blue-yellow color vision, suggesting a connection between the consumption of substances containing nerve chemicals, such as those present in cigarettes, and the loss of color vision in general.

"Cigarette smoke is made up of many compounds harmful to health. It is related to a reduction in the thickness of the layers in the brain and to brain lesions involving areas such as the frontal lobe, which plays a role in the voluntary movement. control of thought and decreased activity in the area of ​​the brain that processes vision, "said co-author Steven Silverstein.

"Previous studies have shown that long-term smoking doubles the risk of age-related macular degeneration and is a factor in yellowing and inflammation of the lenses.

Our findings indicate that excessive use of cigarettes or chronic exposure to their compounds affect visual discrimination, which reinforces the existence of overall deficits in the visual treatment of tobacco dependence. »- AFP-Relaxnews