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Nicotine Is the New Wonder Drug
Fantastic Lad sends us to Wired for a story on the upside of nicotine. Researchers are developing drugs based on nicotine that may prove beneficial for brains, bowels, blood vessels and immune systems. "Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety." A separate story talks about nicotine warding off Parkinson's disease.
I think they are planning on modified nicotine. Anyway, considering all the stuff in cigarettes, I don't think nicotine is the worst part - it's just the part that makes it hard for you to quit.
Well, in the quantities present, it's not the worst part, but put a drop of that stuff on your tongue, and it's all over.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that while the nicotine makes quitting smoking hard to do, its health effect is not as great as that of the other substances in smoke such as tar. That's what gives you lung cancer, not the nicotine itself.
Nicotine is a toxin. Heck it's more toxic that arsenic and roughly the same toxicity of cyanide (roughly 50mg). Something as dangerous as that shouldn't be prescribed for non-life threatening situations (smoking can be considered life threatening).
Actually, according to TFA (you did RTFA, right? Nevermind, "I must be new here"
Still, why poo poo the research just because its linked to RJR? It's not like they're trying to use it to sell cigarettes here
*shrugs*
Now excuse my while I go outside to light another Marlboro.
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They're planning on using Nicotine as a basis for new drugs by using similar structures to target receptors in the brain and slow, pause or reverse diseases like parkinsons.
Alternatively they're looking at cremes which can be used to promote blood flow to parts of the body (begin Viagra jokes now please). Mostly as a way to prevent Diabetic amputations which means its better for the health care system since they wont have to chop off as many legs which means less people in wheelchairs and such.
It's not endorsing that people go light up. Just that they can probably make these things new drugs and get them in 'patch form' in the future (because lets face it lighting up a cigarette is not the best method of administering such a drug)
Maybe they'll start working with Marijuana again.
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+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Wait a sec, you tell him there's alternatives to absorbing nicotine, and then proceed to give him a DIFFERENT way put carcinogens into his body.
Am I the only person that's noticed that nicotine comes in patch now?
The separate story referred to on the lead article is not about nicotine, it's about smoking. My dissertation was based on showing that at least one substance that prevented Parkinson's was active in the brains of smokers despite 8+ hours of abstinence (reduction of plasma nicotine levels to less than 1% of usual). I tested smokers abstaining and after smoking either a normal cigarette or one made from denicotinized tobacco and found no difference between conditions or groups. Nicotine or lack thereof had nothing to do with the EEG signature of chronic increased dopamine levels compared to non-smokers (which was the study I did prior to my diss). This work, and that of the folks in the chemistry department that isolated and synthesized the hypothesized active component, was what was referred to in "Thank You For Smoking". And to preempt any conclusion jumping, this doesn't mean you should smoke. Knowing what the substance is (trimethyl naphthoquinone) and how it works (dopamine releaser and reuptake blocker as well as MAO inhibitor) means it or something that does the same thing can be developed and used without needing tobacco in the process.
The carbon monoxide effect has some merit too. CO in the blood scavenges excess hyperoxides, a source of oxidative stress which is a known cause of Parkinson's and other apparent autoimmune problems. As above, you don't need to smoke to get the effect and can obviously find other things to do the same job. They're called anti-oxidants.
Nicotine may well also have some other protective effect, but it doesn't prevent mitochondrial MPTP from turning into MPP+, a very potent neurotoxin that causes Parkinsonian apoptosis. To read up on the mechanism, look up the "frozen addicts". As an interesting aside, at least one of them was all but completely cured in weeks using injected stem cells before the fundies got ahold of the concept and strangled it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Wow. You knew you had a problem to the extent that you actually went to the trouble of seeing a psychiatrist (not a quick or cheap thing to do in our society, sadly, both in terms of financial and social costs), who recommended drug therapy. I'm assuming s/he also suggested psychotherapy, which any psychiatrist worth beans will recommend way before they get to the point of doling out medication.
They gave me three options. One one for the three drug cocktail that they wanted. The other was for effexor I think. The final option he gave me was for norpremin, which I remembered helping me in the past. Psychotherapy wasn't on the list; I couldn't afford it anyway.
I've seen various counselors, social workers, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists since I was in the third grade. I was hospitalized for depression when I was 12. I was one of the first kids prescribed prozac in the early nineties, when I was about 13. I think I'm pretty savvy when it comes to figuring out who's a good shrink and who's not.
I talked to the guy for 40 minutes and he wants me on a combo of three mind-altering drugs, none of which I can even afford individually? That's a lousy doctor.
But you opted for neither of these. Instead, you started self-medicating with St. John's Wort and smoking. Do you think maybe you went wrong somewhere along the line?
Not at all. If a guy talks to you for 40 minutes and wants you on a three-drug cocktail of mind-altering, that guy is a bad doctor. As I said above, I've been in and out of mental health services since I was 8. I've been working constantly since I was 15, except when I've traveled to various countries for extended periods. I graduated Magna cum laude with a double-degree from Ohio State. I'm not a basket case; I had an episode and needed a little help.
A lot of people self-medicate depression and anxiety with cigarettes and alcohol. It's part of the reason why these two vices are so popular. Unfortunately they're not as well-designed as drugs like fluoxetine and bupropion, and they have massive side effects that double-blind studies have proven the risk of (you know, the same scientifically rigorous protocols that show the minimal adverse effects of prescription antidepressants).
Um, we don't have *any* data on the long term studies of the new anti-depressants on the body or mind. I don't drink but maybe twice a month, and I don't smoke. Alcohol and cigarettes are relatively safe -- you see smokers and drinkers who are in their 80s. I predict we will see *massive* side effects from decades of wellbutin abuse, just like the wonder drugs we were giving housewives in the 60s.
It's also helpful to have a trained doctor following the course of your therapy and making adjustments/changes as needed. Of course, if you're one of those wingnuts who thinks that doctors are only after your wallet (a view not even Michael Moore takes), it probably makes more sense for you to booze and smoke your way through your problems yourself. After all, what could possibly go wrong? It's not as though nicotine and alcohol are addictive or anything...
Who said anything about me drinking? I think you're getting mixed up here.
Alcohol is not physically addictive. A person who depends on drinking is different than someone addicted to heroin or nicotine. Nicotine is addictive, but it's harmless. It's the tobacco smoke that causes problems. A person who depends on drinking has a psychological addiction to alcohol, not a physical one. So if you're worried about alcohol addiction, which is a psychological addiction, you should be worried about me taking anti-depressants, because you could become psychologically addicted to any of them -- not to mention physically addicted to some of them.
We know pretty well what the long term effects of smoking and drinking are. They're not terrible, like, say, ritalin abuse -- which is the latest incarnation of amphetamines, the wonder drug of the 60
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You should really know more about a subject before you go on spouting things like "You can be sure the tobacco industry is funding this research." A large portion of this funding is coming from the NIH and one of the main areas of study is smoking cessation. That most certainly does not benefit the tobacco companies. In addition, none of these studies would suggest a cigarette, dip or chew as the route of administration so once again no benefit. If anything, the pharm companies stand to gain while the tobacco companies stand to lose because the drugs in question are all synthetic nicotine like substances that are patented and solely under big pharma control.
The tobacco companies don't own the farms.
If the farmers start growing something other than tobacco then they will start selling to someone other than Phillip Morris.
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But the real problem is in how nicotine works together with carbon monoxide to destroy your heart. When your body takes in carbon monoxide, oxygen distribution becomes less efficient. The heart muscle specifically requires a continuous supply of oxygen to sustain itself. When you smoke a cigarette, at the same time you're taking in carbon monoxide, the nicotine is also constricting your arteries and reducing blood flow. This is the same mechanism that causes incremental micro-damage to the heart of crack cocaine smokers. Fortunately for smokers, the constricting effect of nicotine is much less pronounced than that of crack cocaine, but it takes its toll over time -- the most common time for smokers to drop dead of a heart attack seems to be right after a cigarette.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
By scientific literature, LSD is one of the SAFEST drugs known to man and completely non-addictive. Seriously (it stunned me too, I've been trying to find any valid finding of dangers for a while.) Flashbacks appear to be a psychological effect and rare, more like Viet Nam vet's flashbacks.
Here's some perspective in people averaging over 3 drinks of alcohol per day, PERMANENT deficiencies in problem solving, concentration and memory begin to appear. (This is a statistic, so it is probably people who binge drink on weekends that have the damage, not those who have a few every day. I'm sure you remember mornings when you had brain damage.)
The relapse rates for quitting smokers are on par with heroin addicts.
Nonsense. The primary asset of tobacco companies is their brands. They don't own tobacco farms.
What are you talking about?
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2. Additives. --In looking at the toxicity issue with regard to tobacco, I have noted that it is incredibly common for people to ignore the fact that cigarette companies use an assortment of 500 additives into their products, many of which are known carcinogens. When studies are done on the toxicity of tobacco smoke, this detail is often left unmentioned. Are they testing tobacco per se, or are they testing corporate tobacco?
3. Radioactive tobacco leaves. --Your basic cigarette probably came from a farm which used phosphate fertilizer, known to contain radioactive metals. After years of use, these radioactive metals build up in the soil to high concentrations. Many foods are similarly affected, but you don't smoke most foods. This element of tobacco is considered by those who have studied the issue to be one of the leading reasons smoking can cause cancer.
You can buy organic tobacco, and you can smoke it in a pipe. No filter, no deliberately added poisons and no radioactive particles. I wonder if they've ever done health tests on this kind of tobacco smoke.
Probably not.
Here are some more points. .
1. Pavlovian Responses to stress indicate that when you raise the anxiety level in a subject to the breaking point, you can then easily insert a new set of behaviors which become locked into place. .
2. Tobacco smoke quickly lowers stress and anxiety and feelings of anger. It is one of the only two commonly used drugs on the market which while increasing clarity of thinking does not affect judgment. (Caffeine is the other). Old native bands meeting to discuss problems would all first smoke before opening their meeting, (hence, the "peace pipe"). Tobacco lent itself well to averting unnecessary anger and anxiety. In a world like ours today when fear is regularly promoted in such a way which guides the decisions and acceptance of the public with regard to international policy, knowledge
Sorry to pick a nit, but I had to throw in here...
from wiki:
Not only is alcohol physically addictive, it's even worse than heroin and nicotine.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Also,
To say, "nicotine is good for you" isn't quite true either. It's simply being found to be a useful tool to manipulate the body. Healthy bodies get along just fine without drugs. When something goes wrong, and they go to a doctor, the doctor tries to counter-act what is going wrong, selecting from a set of tools that he has available to him. Nicotine is, apparently, a good candidate for this collection of tools.
That is all.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
That said, there are plenty of people who like to do things that are supposedly good for them. The Grandparent's example of drinking wine is a great one--I know of a few people who have started having a glass or two of wine in the evenings because it's supposed to be good for them.
So a smokeless cigarette that delivers nicotine without all the tar and other chemicals in a regular cigarette may be the new "healthy" thing to do, like drinking wine.
You not wanting to stop, you know what that is? Addiction. Your brain has a dependency on smoking, it makes you feel good and so you don't want to stop. You've got to realize that in order to fight an addiction, you have to do something you don't want to do. You are not choosing to smoke, any more than you are choosing to breathe. This delicious addiction you love so much, it *will* kill you or make your old age absolutely miserable. For anyone that has opinions on smoking that borders on the hysterical, I'd suggest they lighten up. Or better still, light up once in a while. There are many things in life that are good for you in small amounts, but dangerous or poisonous at higher levels. Put another way, you'd be better served by not moralising your (and everyone else's) choices and instead, pick your favourite poison and enjoy it responsibly. Besides, what else are you going to do after sex? Peel an orange? You will of course, brush off everything I've said under the false pretense that my opinion borders on hysterical, that I'm trying to thrust my own code of morality and ethics on you. No, I'm not hysterical, and I'm not pushing a moral code. I'm warning you that in twenty or thirty years, you'll look back on your life of smoking, and you'll wonder why you did it, especially if you started during your youth. All those things youth take for granted; being able to run, exercise, sports, just being plain healthy... You won't have that when you're old, and with smoking, you won't have that when you're young, either.
Whatsamatter? Your denial not quite up to the reality of your addiction?
I have a disease called Colitis Ulcerosa which went unnoticed for 25 years because of smoking (If you smoke and have the symptoms I have they will not think of Colitis Ulcerosa first because smoking cigarettes stops it).
...
And then I quit and started bleeding internally.
What I have come to understand though is that smoking cigarettes has a better effect as smoking cigars or pipe or even using skin patches with nicotine or nicotine chewing gum. My doctor said it probably is not the nicotine but one of the other things that are in there. He mentioned there have been clinical tests with skin patches and that did never work as good as cigarettes do.
So there I am: at what point will my disease become so bad that I start smoking again (I smoke cigarillos and did smoke pipe but as I said, that does not have the same effect as cigarettes, alas). And yes you can take cortisone and even heavier hormones (Immuran) - but the side effects are to heavy for my taste: a different mood every 30 minutes or needing to have your blood checked every week