I personally think taking up smoking in the hope of avoiding old age dementia is quite absured. To get that benefit "IF" it even exists, one would first have to live to old age. Just my opinion.

The neuroprotective benefits of tobacco smoke are not disputed, even by antismoking scientists (not for lack of trying). They have been known to science for four decades (and to users and Native American shamans for millenia) and replicated thousands of times. For general population, tobacco smoking reduces risk of developing Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia, which are precisely the three diseases sharing great deal of common symptoms with mercury neuro-toxicity, by a factor of two. For particularly vulnerable sub-populations, such as people with ApoE4 gene variant (bad mercury excretion), who tend to have a high risk for early onset Alzheimer's, tobacco smoking reduces risk tenfold[/b]. Further, for people who already have these diseases, smoking greatly alleviates the symptoms.

These significant factors of risk reduction are nothing to sneeze at since [b]no other medicine, traditional or pharmaceutical, comes even close in its neuroprotective power to the ancient medicinal plant, tobacco. Pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers have been trying for decades to replicate this magic of tobacco leaf by various tobacco leaf extracts and individual compounds, such as nicotine, MAO inhibitors, anti-inflammatory enzymes (such as CoQ10, which is made from tobacco leaf), immune stimulants & antioxidants (such as glutathione)... but while each piece did help a bit, each still fell well short of the protective benefit of the full combination found in the tobacco smoke, where the components seem to mutually reinforce each other in ways which are still largely a mystery.

For people with mercury neuro-toxicity, these are very important facts to know. Unfortunately, they are little publicized and are virtually unknown within our presently extreme antismoking zeitgeist (which is driven by the obscene amounts of money being "made" (read "extorted from smokers"), by those paying for the antismoking pseudo-science, smoking bans and media campaigns whipping up antismoking hysteria and tobacco-phobia).

The info and links I posted in this thread above and in the other thread (discussion with dawn & jinx1983) are meant to bring this to the attention of people who could benefit the most and to give them the rest of the story regarding the alleged harmfullness of tobacco smoke. The only real and proven harm to smokers is from the witch doctor effect[/b], the negative placebo, induced by those profiting from the tobacco-phobia they incited. The only real harm to non-smokers is from [b]being denied the health benefits of the ancient medicinal plant, such as the reductions in the diseases mentioned above (and numerous others, such as variety of autoimmune & allergic conditions). I should also note that I have absolutely no relation to tobacco industry or interests and do not make a penny from tobacco in any form or shape.