[PowderMonkey]

Very interesting. I smoked a pack a day for 35 years until my heart attack last July. I quit immediately, cold turkey with no withdrawal symptoms, “nic fits”, cravings, nothing. Quiting was easy. Haven't had a smoke since. Weight gain, however, was “impressive.” And,I've now got the attention span of a gerbil. A chimp has more focus to tasks. As for short-term memory...fuggetaboudit. The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

[aruanan]

And,I've now got the attention span of a gerbil. A chimp has more focus to tasks. As for short-term memory...fuggetaboudit. The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

Well, you went from supplements of a neurotransmitter to cessation. Have you tried therapeutic doses of nicotine from nicotine gum to see what difference that makes?

[neverdem]

The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

Exercise on the Brain

You Name It, and Exercise Helps It

I'm sorry to read about your MI.

[nightlight7]

Very interesting. I smoked a pack a day for 35 years until my heart attack last July. I quit immediately, ...

Mistake. Smoking doesn't cause heart attacks. In randmized intervention trials, where researchers pick a random subset of smokers and convince them to quit, then follow them for years or decades, comparing them to control group (smokers left alone), the quit group gets more heart attacks and more lung cancers. That's why only a handful such trials were done (in early years of antismoking swindle) and you don't hear much about them. Similarly, in animal experiments, the smoking animals live longer and have better health. The antismoking racket has stopped doing the real science on smoking since the results too often come out the "wrong way" showing that the correlations between smoking and disease are of the same kind as those between taking aspirin and headaches.

In short, smoking is good for you.