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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.
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.
Most things are toxic at some level, be it 50mg or 500mg. If you take too much tylenol it can kill you. That doesn't mean that at low doses its not useful.
And also, they are not saying smoking is healthy, they are investigating the properties of nicotine and how it affects the brain. Smoking is not the only method of getting nicotine into the body. If they can isolate helpful effects of the drug, maybe it can do some good.
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.
My blog
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
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
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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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.
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.
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