Bad news for middle-aged smokers: not only are they affected by the usual problems that smoking brings, but they are also prone to memory loss, a new French study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reports.

Researchers in France and England also found that smokers drank more alcohol, ate less fruit and vegetables and had higher cholesterol levels than non-smokers. Smokers who quit the habit said they noticed they had started to adopt healthier behaviors, such as drinking less alcohol or being more physically active.

The 17-year study involved more than 5,300 people and also found that there might be a link between smoking and dementia.

“Dementia is rare among middle-aged people, but cognitive function at this age in closely related to dementia,” said lead researcher Severine Sabia, of the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale in Villejuif, France, as quoted by US News and World Report. “Our results show that smoking is associated with poorer cognition and decline over five years.”

"Another interesting finding," Sabia added, "was that ex-smokers improved their other health behaviors, and among them there was little residual adverse effect of smoking on cognition."

The people involved in the study were aged between 35 and 55 when the research began, and, after certain intervals of time, they were asked about their smoking habits and were requested to complete tests of memory, reasoning and verbal fluency. The results revealed that the ex-smokers had a 30 percent lower risk than smokers of poor vocabulary and low verbal fluency.

The authors concluded that smoking in middle age is linked to memory loss and reasoning activities, that “long-term ex-smokers are less likely to have cognitive deficits in memory, vocabulary and verbal fluency,” that quitting smoking means improving other health behaviors, and that smoking is also associated with cognition.