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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.
This certainly sounds too good to be true. Makes me wonder who's funding the research.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.
Stop making me smoke you damned scientists!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
quit smoking after 15 years. What a bitch. And NOW they say that the nicotine is good?
... if you're undertaking clinical trials with these drugs in the UK - don't do it in public enclosed spaces.
Meta will eat itself
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.
I can kind of vouch for this. Usually when I have my first smoke of the day I have to use the can soon after. I always thought they just put laxatives in cigarettes..
Today's Tomorrow is Yesterday's Future! --- "Where Ever You Go, There You Are" -- Diablo 1
So fags are good for you now?
Just make sure that report wasn't signed by anybody named Benson or Hedges!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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).
Wait until you hear about the benefits of cocaine and opium!
Grumble...
Can't take a smoke break in peace anymore, with all these health nuts trying to get a free lungful of nicotine.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is hardly the first time toxic substances have proven (although it's not proven yet) to have health benefits. For example, smoking marijuana (or THC rather) has proven to be an effective pain medication and helpful to some very ill people.
Whether or not it is politically correct to tout this information.. well, that's a different story.
The idea is that nicotine releases happy chemicals in your brain. I think we've already known this for a while - it's why it's so hard to quit smoking. Now they are realizing that happy chemicals can treat some psychological disorders. Plausible. However, there is a problem with this theory that we've recognized for a long time. When we artifically create these chemicals in the brain via medications or other chemicals and drugs, we get used to having the feeling. Then, in ordinary situations where we are supposed to experience happiness (ex. a day off, a sunny day, a good dessert, a good song) we don't feel anything. This leads further into depression because people literally cannot find happiness in activities they once found enjoyable. Any of the "happy chemicals" that might go off naturaly are so negligible compared to the constant chemicals caused by the drugs that the good experiences may just as well have never happened. So, nicotine makes you happy? Probably. Can help with certain mental disorders? Again, probably. But should it be used / is it the best solution? That is what's debatable.
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
I had a bout of depression last year and I saw a psychiatrist. I went over my life history. At the end of the session, he recommended a cocktail of 3 different drugs! Apparently because I had had a manic episode once in my life when I was in high-school, I was a manic-depressive. I needed one drug for the depression, one for the mania, and some other one. Jesus Christ.
I stopped seeing him. I was looking into 'legal' highs for depression, such as St. John's Wort and
Since I also had problems concentrating, I tried smoking for the nicotine. I found that it really helped with my anxiety. I took a smoke after work, I relaxed, and then moved my bowels. I felt calm and focused rather than frenzied and harried. Things were right on course instead of all over the place. I've since given it up, however, since I started coughing.
I know smoking destroys your lungs gives you cancer after decades. My maternal grandparents died of cancers in their 60s, probably from smoking. All the people I try to turn on to smoking tell me that. But what are the long-term effects of taking anti-depression or anti-anxiety medication for decades.
It seems to me that cigarettes are a relatively cheap and simple anti-depressant. Although there are long term health consequences, we don't really know what the damage is from decades of wellbutrin. Of course, Big Pharma would rather have us rely on them for anti-depressants than use a simple plant that we could grow ourselves... Hey, that sounds familiar.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Buy it at a corner store and smoke it, it's teh evil!!!!one!!!
Extract the same stuff, put it in pills and tablets, and sell it for a bajillion more, it's medicine.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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 benefits of nicotine when it comes to ADD. I can actually concentrate now. The only downside is the yellowed teeth thing. I suppose yellow is the new white.
,,,but breathing in tar and particulate matter does not. And even if they find some beneficial uses for nicotene, its use must still be weighed against its effects as an addictive stimulant, including constricting the arteries and making people more susceptible to stroke and heart attacks.
No matter what uses they find for nicotene, you're not going to suddenly make smoking healthy, so it wouldn't matter even if the tobacco industry was funding this.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What they are doing is looking at drugs which are derivatives of nicotine. Thus they can patent them and charge you $5/pill.
He's really quick to realize that. Paracelsus said that some time in the 16th century
We're going to replace a $2.50 pack of cigarettes with a $400 bottle of pills, and declare victory! I would be more than willing to bet that even if you factor in the eventual risk cost of cancer and other smoking related diseases, it might still come in cheaper than the cost of exotic drugs based on nicotine. The moral of the story is, smoke up to avoid depression, and hope science comes up with a cheaper pill to cure cancer.
This is my sig.
Packaged in a 20 dose per container. New fashionable "inhaler" delivery system. Regular, 100 and 120 mg sizes. To take the new drugs you light the end of the inhaler tube and inhale the refreshing vapor. The dose burns with a pleasing aroma and relaxing patterns of vapor. 20 doses, take as needed 20 times per day or more. Packed in soft of hard pack box and cartons. Available at most gas stations. Menthol and other flavors available. NOW over the counter!
Welcome to a healthy new you.
Yes, I understand you, its like having finished recompiling Gentoo the day they have a new release.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I've been using Nicotine as a treatment for Tourettes syndrome for a few months now, and can quite honestly say It's saved my life. The only other treatments are incredibly severe drugs with worse side effects than the illness itself, and I was damn near suicidal for a while contemplating life with an untreatable movement disorder.
Then on some forum advice I tried a nicotine patch. Within an hour it had a noticeable affect, and within 3 hours there was an almost complete reduction in symptoms. I also found it had a similar affect with OCD and ADD (Although I'm not formally diagnosed with the latter, I found I could concentrate far better with a nicotine patch)
"All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy." Paracelsus (1493-1541)
You have some evidence, I assume, to back up your claim that nicotine gum makes people more susceptible to stroke and heart attacks? ...
Looks like some advice I got from my grandmother's doctor years ago was wrong. Even though chewing tobacco doubles the risk of heart disease, apparently nicotine patches and gum have not been shown to significantly raise the risk of heart disease. I always assumed that was the fault of stimulant abuse, but it seems that patch-delivered nicotine does not raise the risk in spite of causing blood vessel constriction.
Her doctor may have not been grossly misinformed -- studies in the early 90s pointed to a link, but follow-up studies has disproved it. However, all "direct from the tobacco" methods of delivery still do raise the risk, so my main point about the development of nicotine-derived drugs not making smoking safe still holds.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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
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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One of my neuroscience profs used to tell us before exams that if we smoke, we should smoke more. Apparently nicotine's cholinergic effects considerably boost memory, although for me the nausea and jitteriness probably undermine any positive effects (and then there's the cancer...)
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.
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Hi there. Your argument for the legalization of marijuana fails to even be coherent. Please put down the bong. You can't say "See?!?! Nicotine is used by the mentally ill, according to this doctor, so Marijuana is good!" There isn't any nicotine in marijuana. It's called THC, and other assorted cannibinols. Just how did the article demonstrate the idiocy of marijuana being on Schedule I?
I am a marijuana user, and am all for legalization, but it's people like you who spew any garbage rhetoric that you can, even when it makes you just look like a stupid teenager that make it harder.
I'm not sure why this is so hard for some people to swallow. Most drugs that have such an obvious and strong effect on people and have been tested on millions with few adverse effects (all the bad effects of smoking come mostly from the smoke + chronic use—the nicotine merely makes it addictive) usually yield other valuable research output.
I don't see any reason to let emotional value judgments get in the way of potentially valuable medical applications. Let's turn that frown upside down and make a negative into a positive!
Disclaimer: No I'm not a drug company representative nor a smoking advocate.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
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?
Advice: on VPS providers
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
From the article: ...and they're inspired by tobacco's deadly active ingredient: nicotine.
Nicotine is one of the least dangerous ingredients of tobacco smoke. People think nicotine is this horrible thing. Granted, it is somewhat addictive, but not terribly addictive. I say that as someone who's smoked for over 20 years and has tried to quit a number of times. I can easily break the "nicotine addiction" aspect of it. That only takes a couple days. It's the habit of smoking that's a bitch. I can go without nicotine for weeks or months (well beyond the time it takes to break the addiction), but it's the psychological habit I can't seem to kick.
Nicotine has a number of pharmacological properties that can be beneficial, however, so it's no surprise that nicotine derivatives might be found that can also have positive effects.
The primary asset of tobacco companies is millions of addicted customers.
Most people I think smoke because they enjoy it and it is fun. If they came out with a harmless cigarette....I'd start smoking again immediately.
Biochemical dependence has a remarkable effect on the brain's perception of pleasure. I wonder if you'd find it at all fun if they made a nicotine-free cigarette. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure most nonsmokers (who do not have a baseline level of nicotine in their blood) would suddenly find nicotine patches to be "fun" if they used them for a week straight.
My point is, I'm not sure "fun" is the best word for the experience you had.
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