e-cigarettes and managing memory loss

Marewa Glover share her opinion with Liam Butler on the evidence surrounding e-cigarettes and consumers trying to quit who manage memory loss?

Is there any evidence either way surrounding e-cigarettes and consumers trying to quit who manage memory loss?

Marewa Glover: If a person smokes, then switching to vaping nicotine is estimated to be at least 95% safer (Public Health England report). It's a very useful question to ask about the potential benefits of vaping nicotine for people managing memory loss. Nicotine has been shown to have some beneficial preventative, and I think current, effects on Alzheimers, Parkinson's and some dementia-type disabilities. Some people, for example, with a family history of these, use nicotine gum as a preventative.

It is reasonable to think that some people who are still smoking are doing so because they intuitively feel they are benefiting and this could act as a deterrent to their quitting smoking. So, if they could be encouraged to switch to vaping sufficient nicotine to maintain the effect, they would at least experience other improvements in their health (potentially on BP, lung function, respiratory) that also could deliver benefits for reducing morbidity and progression of disease.

It would be good, if encouraging people to switch to vaping, to monitor effects as above.

Marewa Glover is Co-Director of Tobacco Control Research Tūranga, Associate Professor Marewa Glover (Ngā Puhi) is a long-standing member of the tobacco control sector, with past experience at a policy level, in health promotion and cessation programme design. Since her award winning doctoral research on Māori smoking cessation in 2000, Marewa has led and supported many tobacco control focused and kaupapa Māori health research projects including: studying smoking in pregnancy among Māori women; what motivates Māori and Pacific Island people to stop smoking and what they want from cessation services; the health, social and economic consequences of smoking for Māori; and many more. Associate Professor Glover was a founding member of the University of Auckland's Centre for Tobacco Control Research which ran for 9 years. She is now with Massey University's Research Centre for Māori Health & Development within the College of Health.

Liam Butler is a Social Worker who also contributes to insitemagazine.co.nz by asking leaders in the health and disability sector their opinion on issues affecting New Zealand’s aged care and retirement sector.

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