The long and the short about this is that there is definitely an association between smoking and depression. How did you deal with depression when you quit. ?? As most of the things in my past life I had a limited pallet. Reach for a cigarette when I was stressed, when in fact the stress was caused because my blood nicotine level went below what my addict thought desireable, so my addict created stress. i think when we are smoking we are totally under the control of the addict and the addict tells you that you are stressed and that nicotine would help and you say, 'sounds good to me'. When nicotine is in fact the cause of the stress. We live in a constant state of denial when smoking. It is a mental illness in my books, or at least evidence of mental ill ness. Here's to breathing the healing air.
Abstract
Several studies have documented a strong association between smoking and depression. Because cigarette smoke has been reported to inhibit monoamine oxidase (MAO) A in vitro and in animals and because MAO A inhibitors are effective antidepressants, we tested the hypothesis that MAO A would be reduced in the brain of cigarette smokers. We compared brain MAO A in 15 nonsmokers and 16 current smokers with [11C]clorgyline and positron emission tomography (PET). Four of the nonsmokers were also treated with the antidepressant MAO inhibitor drug, tranylcypromine (10 mg/day for 3 days) after the baseline PET scan and then rescanned to assess the sensitivity of [11C]clorgyline binding to MAO inhibition. MAO A levels were quantified by using the model term λk3which is a function of brain MAO A concentration. Smokers had significantly lower brain MAO A than nonsmokers in all brain regions examined (average reduction, 28%). The mean λk3 values for the whole brain were 0.18 ± 0.04 and 0.13 ± 0.03 ccbrain (mlplasma)−1 min−1 for nonsmokers and smokers, respectively; P < 0.0003). Tranylcypromine treatment reduced λk3 by an average of 58% for the different brain regions. Our results show that tobacco smoke exposure is associated with a marked reduction in brain MAO A, and this reduction is about half of that produced by a brief treatment with tranylcypromine. This suggests that MAO A inhibition needs to be considered as a potential contributing variable in the high rate of smoking in depression and in the development of more effective strategies for smoking cessation.
(PDF) Brain Monoamine Oxidase A Inhibition in Cigarette Smokers. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24450526_Brain_Monoamine_Oxidase_A_Inhibition_in_Cigarette_... [accessed Sep 05 2018].
