How it really is never too late to stop: Snoop Dogg quitting smoking at 52 can expect a higher IQ and better memory

Rap megastar Snoop Dogg, a longtime marijuana devotee, surprised the public Thursday with the announcement that he would quit smoking.

Snoop, who was rumored to have a dedicated team member roll him between 75 and 150 joints a day, cited the need to put his health first in order to be a better grandfather.

His love of the drug has translated into a variety of business ventures, including a media company and a venture capital firm that funds cannabis startups.

Quitting smoking, especially after decades of continuous use as in Snoop’s case, has a number of promising health benefits, including increased energy and ability to concentrate, better memory, and healthier respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

It is not yet known whether Snoop also abandons marijuana consumed in other forms, such as edibles and vaporizers, but doing so will likely cause some withdrawal symptoms, such as anxiety, irritability, and restlessness.

‘The end of an era’: Fans quickly took to Twitter in shock at the news.

“I am quitting smoking,” the rapper, born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, said in a social media post, which included a fuller statement that read: “After much consideration with my family, I have decided to quit smoking.” .

The 52-year-old added before signing the message: “Please respect my privacy at this time.”

However, the public was skeptical and questioned whether he was serious and would follow through with the resolution or if he was serious to begin with.

He revealed in a 2013 Twitter Q&A that he smokes up to 81 joints per day, which is consistent with his personal joint smoking estimate.

Snoop has said in the past that marijuana increases his creativity and helps him produce award-winning music. But his level of constant use comes with some significant costs to his health.

Smoking involves breathing in a mixture of toxins and chemicals. It has even been shown that marijuana smoke contains some of the same toxinsirritants and carcinogens such as tobacco smoke.

Because marijuana smokers tend to inhale harder and hold the smoke longer, this leads to greater inhalation exposure to chemicals.

A 2013 report in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society Because smoke causes “visible and microscopic lesions” in the lungs, there is a consistently increased risk of developing chronic bronchitis.

Another study published in Respiratory Medicine Expert Review in 2011 reported that chronic marijuana use damages the cells that line the large airways, which researchers believe could explain why smoking can cause chronic cough, phlegm production, wheezing, and severe bronchitis.

And in 2015, researchers reported in the European respiratory journal The symptoms most strongly associated with cannabis were cough and phlegm buildup.

These two symptoms also showed the greatest decrease among people who quit smoking frequently.

Those who had stopped using cannabis frequently did not have a higher prevalence of cough or phlegm than non-users, while frequent cannabis use was associated with an increase in these symptoms.

Only one study has analyzed the impact of changing cannabis use and repairing the damage caused to the pulmonary system.

That study, conducted by researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported symptoms of bronchitis. got better after a person quit smoking.

Big business: The veteran rapper has an open appreciation for the drug, which has extended to numerous business projects, including groceries and a digital media business.

Speaking to DailyMail.com in March, Snoop said his personal use came under scrutiny after his eldest son, Cordé, became a father to his son Zion in 2015.

“Being a grandfather has changed me in multiple ways,” he said.

He added: “The main way is to worry about how I live, how I move, the type of people I’m associated with, because I want to see my grandchildren grow old.” The only way I can do that is by taking precautionary measures in terms of how I move, who I go out with, where I go out, my consumption, what am I consuming?

Smoking marijuana, especially daily, can also affect long-term cognitive function. People can develop brain fog, as well as learning and attention difficulties.

Marijuana has also been shown to “impair cognitive functions at multiple levels, from basic motor coordination to more complex executive function tasks, such as the ability to plan, organize, problem solve, make decisions, remember, and control emotions and memory.” behavior”. , according to a 2011 report in the Journal of Addiction Medicine.

Meanwhile, a recent study in American Journal of Psychiatry examined more than 1,000 New Zealanders born in the 1970s and followed until age 45 with their cannabis use assessed at ages 18, 21, 26, 32, 38 and 45 years.

The researchers also measured their IQ during childhood and again at age 45.

Long-term cannabis use was shown to cause a 5.5-point decrease in people’s IQ, as well as slower learning and processing speed, as well as memory problems.

It is still in doubt whether this lost cognitive capacity can be recovered.

An Australian researcher said in 1995 that the results of surgery in long-term cannabis users ‘suggested partial recovery of function, but past duration of cannabis use continued to have an adverse effect on the ability to effectively reject complex and irrelevant information.

“There was no indication of improvement with increasing duration of abstinence.”

At the same time, a study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital in 2018 was more firm in your conclusions.

Researchers enrolled 88 participants ages 16 to 25 from the Boston area, all of whom reported using cannabis at least once a week. The researchers compared weekly cognitive performance between a group of young users who agreed to stop using cannabis for 30 days and a group who continued using cannabis.

Cognitive testing found that memory, specifically the ability to learn and remember new information, improved in the participants. who stopped using cannabis, and this improvement largely occurred during the first week of abstinence.