Tobacco as a self-medication and ‘wellness'

American Thinker ^ | May 10, 2008 | Thomas Lifson

[muggs]

In June it will be 3 years since I smoked a cigarette. I miss them every damn day and really believe they did make my mind sharper. Some days are more of a struggle than others.

[The Ghost of Rudy McRomney]

Good One. I like it (lights cigar). ;^) Waiting for the ‘convenient conservative’ contingent of rabid smoker-haters to arrive.....6...5...4...3...(raycpa,moonman,Ditter,the usual suspects)

[PowderMonkey]

Very interesting. I smoked a pack a day for 35 years until my heart attack last July. I quit immediately, cold turkey with no withdrawal symptoms, “nic fits”, cravings, nothing. Quiting was easy. Haven't had a smoke since. Weight gain, however, was “impressive.” And,I've now got the attention span of a gerbil. A chimp has more focus to tasks. As for short-term memory...fuggetaboudit. The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

[nightlight7]

Nicotine is just one medicinal component of tobacco smoke. For example, there are unknown components in the tobacco smoke which inhibit MAO B enzyme, the enzyme which breaks down dopamine and which normally increases as we age. As result of this effect of tobacco smoke (which is not due to nicotine) smokers in their fifties have MAO B levels of non-smokers in their twenties (see this thread which also debunks often parroted myths of antismoking pseudo-science). There are numerous other little publicized but scientifically well established beneficial effects of tobacco smoking.

[aruanan]

And,I've now got the attention span of a gerbil. A chimp has more focus to tasks. As for short-term memory...fuggetaboudit. The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

Well, you went from supplements of a neurotransmitter to cessation. Have you tried therapeutic doses of nicotine from nicotine gum to see what difference that makes?

[neverdem]

The change was so stark that my wife complained to my Doctor: “He's turned into a head of lettuce! He's just not ‘there’ anymore!”

Exercise on the Brain

You Name It, and Exercise Helps It

I'm sorry to read about your MI.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the links.

[nightlight7]

Very interesting. I smoked a pack a day for 35 years until my heart attack last July. I quit immediately, ...

Mistake. Smoking doesn't cause heart attacks. In randmized intervention trials, where researchers pick a random subset of smokers and convince them to quit, then follow them for years or decades, comparing them to control group (smokers left alone), the quit group gets more heart attacks and more lung cancers. That's why only a handful such trials were done (in early years of antismoking swindle) and you don't hear much about them. Similarly, in animal experiments, the smoking animals live longer and have better health. The antismoking racket has stopped doing the real science on smoking since the results too often come out the "wrong way" showing that the correlations between smoking and disease are of the same kind as those between taking aspirin and headaches.

In short, smoking is good for you.

[RandallFlagg]

ping

[Paul Heinzman]

Congratulations on your upcoming milestone. I wish I had your determination.

[muggs]

you can do it, I can’t tell you it will be easy but it is worth it. I was smoking 3 packs a day.

[aruanan]

For example, there are unknown components in the tobacco smoke which inhibit MAO B enzyme, the enzyme which breaks down dopamine

There are compounds in broccoli that appear to do the same thing. On another note, I just attended a post-doc's presentation about certain mutations that can lead to the failure to break down dopamine, leading to endogenous dopamine toxicity, so it looks as though you can get screwed either way.

[LifeOrGoods?]

1 major problem here, Capitan. You have no right to think for yourself or make any decisions on your own in our current PC, feminized, sodomized society. That truth doubles for a Christian White Male(CWM). More taxes for you slave!!

[LifeOrGoods?]

Coffee and Cigs anyone?::lights one up as he pours a cup of Sumantra blend...

[LifeOrGoods?]

endogenous dopamine toxicity

What the hell is that and why does it sound so damn scary?

[nightlight7]

...certain mutations that can lead to the failure to break down dopamine, leading to endogenous dopamine toxicity...

There is also "water toxicity" i.e. you can die if you drink too much of it. In the case of MAO B inhibition and other dopaminergic effects of tobacco smoke, the ancient 'gift of gods' seems to have been well tuned over the millenia of cultivation and life-long use by billions of test subjects, to maintain the optimum youthful levels of MAO B and dopamine (also of acetylcholine, glutathione, catalase, SOD, pregnenolone, DHEA, testosterone,... see the links given earlier). Tobacco smoke is the closest thing to youth elixir humans have ever known.

[aruanan]

What the hell is that and why does it sound so damn scary?

Well, like most things in life, too much or too little of something often carries bad consequences. Apparently there are proteins that are responsible for dopamine degradation after dopamine uptake. If you have a mutation that either prevents the formation of this protein (more likely than not this would be embryonically lethal) or that impairs the protein's function, then there will be an abnormally high level of dopamine. It's bad to have too little or too much of a neurotransmitter around.

Another example of something like this is cholinesterase. After the nerve impulse is transmitted, you want the acetylcholine broken down. If it's not broken down, then the nerve impulse continues to be triggered which could lead to unresolved trembling and twitching. In C. elegans, there are mutations in a subunit of the acetycholine receptor so that the receptors get continuously triggered leading to degeneration and the necrotic death of the neuron. In a genetic screen of these mutants it was noticed that there were some that appeared to be resistant. A further screen discovered that these mutants also had a mutation in another protein. Further investigation revealed that this protein was required for the maturation and expression of the acetylcholine receptor. If its role was inhibited by the mutation, then the defective subunit of the acetycholine receptor would never make it to the neuron cell surface. Apparently there is enough redundancy between acetylcholine receptors and other neurotransmitter-triggered receptors that the lack of the ACh receptor isn't lethal. My lab was working on finding out just what that protein (RIC-3, for Resistance to Inhibitors of Cholinesterase) did to get the acetylcholine receptor subunits from the endoplasmic reticulum, through assembly and transport, to cell-surface expression.

[PowderMonkey]

Smoking doesn't cause heart attacks? It sure as Hell doesn't help. Tell you what, the first time you feel the searing pain of a coronary artery in full lock-down light one up, take a full drag, and see what happens.

“The results of all were uniform, forthright and unequivocal: giving up smoking, even when fortified by improved diet and exercise, produced no increase in life expectancy. Nor was there any change in the death rate for heart disease or for cancer.”

Increased life expectancy is not my goal. Improved quality of life is. I don't want to live to be 100. I just want to live my final years without spewing tar with every cough. I want to be able to run up a flight of stairs, or “dance” for more than 10 minutes, and not be short-winded. I want to leave the house and not worry about remembering to bring smokes and matches. I want to taste a Big Mac and fries, the way they tasted when I was a kid. That's just a few of the good things that happen when you quit smoking.

[FreeManWhoCan]

What a very intersting post and articles. Thanks. Who smokes what here? I like Lucky Strike.