There’s yet one more important reason to give up smoking: a father’s nicotine use can cause cognitive problems in children and grandchildren.
The dangerous effects of smoking have been well documented over the past decades and any man or woman who is looking to start a family are strongly urged to give up the harmful habit.
Exposure of mothers to nicotine and other components of cigarette smoke have shown to have a significant increased risk of cognitive disorders in their future children for generations. Nicotine and cigarette smoke contain over 1,000 chemicals, many of which can produce changes in DNA methylation and can cause severe epigenetic changes which passes on detrimental effects through the sperm.
Another study recently published in October this year has supported this research. Scientists from the Centre for Brain repair at Florida State University revealed that when mice were exposed to nicotine for a 12 week period, offspring showed a dramatic increase in spontaneous locomotor activity and critical deficits in reversal learning.
