According to new research, cooking with polluting fuel such as firewood, cow dung cake and kerosene has shown the brain to harm the brain quietly, especially among women in rural India.

Brain Research-Rinivaspura aging, Neuro Sensens, and ConsanScog were organized under the center and published in LANCET for the project for the CBR-Sanscog project, it suggests that domestic air pollution from cooking is a major but unseen risk factor for cognitive decline.

While earlier studies added smoke from kitchen to lungs and heart disease, it is one of the first people to use brain imaging to show its possible impact on memory and thinking abilities in India’s rural population.

Researchers examined 4,145 adults from a rural community in Karnataka 45 years and above.

Participants were grouped depending on the type of cooking fuel – only clean (eg LPG or electricity), a mixture of clean and pollution, or only pollution fuel. Their memory, meditation, executive work and visuospatial capacity were tested using a culturally customized computer-based tools.

In addition, 994 participants scan the brain MRI to study brain volume and change in white matter.

The conclusions are striking. Those who rely on polluting cooking methods completely scored global cognition, executive functions and navigation, analysis, analysis, ideas and skills required for spatial relationships compared to those using clean fuels).

Even those who used fuel mixture performed worse in the overall feeling.

Women appeared particularly weak in the study. Women participants in contact with pollution fuel not only had low global cognition scores, but also featured low hippocampus volume on MRI scan – a part of the significant brain for memory.

Researchers believe that this may be because women in rural homes spend more time near the cooking area, with long exposure to harmful smoke.

Researchers wrote, “These results throw light on that the type of fuel used in the kitchen can lead to long -term results on brain health as basic.

The study also saw a link between fuel risk and white substance hypertensions (WMHS), which are brain changes that are often associated with aging, stroke and dementia.

This adds more weight to worries that can accelerate the aging of the brain and cognitive decline.

Conclusion is a wake-up call for policy makers. While India has progressed through schemes like Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which provides LPG connections to rural families, many families still rely on biomass due to issues of power and access.

Promoting clean cooking technologies is not only about reducing respiratory diseases. It can also help protect brain health and reduce the risk of dementia in rural population.

As the age of India’s population, such evidence highlights the need of cleaner kitchen – not only for the lungs, but also for the brain.