Posted on 08/07/2022 9:45:24 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
A clinical trial to test whether three proven smoking cessation treatments could also reduce alcohol intake found no differences between the medications, but the rates of behavior change for alcohol consumption and smoking were high in all treatment groups. Results suggest these medications could play an important role to reduce alcohol use and smoking at the same time. Unexpectedly, nicotine replacement therapy performed as well as the prescription drugs varenicline and cytisine.
The study showed that after three months, alcohol consumption decreased regardless of whether participants were given nicotine replacement therapy, varenicline or cytisine. The main outcome was number of heavy drinking days in the past month at three months, and secondary outcomes included abstinence from alcohol at three months, and abstinence from smoking at six months.
"A single medication to treat both risky drinking and smoking could improve health efficiently and significantly. Risky drinking and smoking frequently co-occur, and they both threaten health by increasing risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and other important health outcomes," said Hilary Tindle, MD, MPH. "
Freiberg noted that when investigators had designed the study, they envisioned the nicotine replacement as the "control" arm for alcohol consumption. Nicotine replacement therapy has been available in the United States to treat tobacco addiction since the early 1980s and is not used for reduction of alcohol consumption.
Researchers worked with Jeffrey Samet, MD, MA, MPH.
"Another important observation in our post-hoc analysis was that rates of alcohol consumption were lower, and rates of alcohol abstinence were higher, among the people who quit smoking as compared to those who continued to smoke. These results need further study to understand if findings were due to the medications directly, quitting smoking or both," said Samet.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
Intuitively, smoking dries out your throat, so you drink something. Since alcohol has tended to be that something, when you quit smoking, you’d think alcohol intake would follow suit.
Replace one drug with another. Only difference is who gets the commission.
But better watch out for that “off label” use. We can’t have that.
“Unexpectedly, nicotine replacement therapy performed as well as the prescription drugs varenicline and cytisine.”
~~~~~~~
Once again, the cheap, well understood, in this case natural substance (Nicotine) works as well as the new, less studied expensive prescription drugs.
I’m reminded of early HCQ and Ivermectin, versus MRNA Gene therapies and Remdesiver. (Except that those two therapies have turned out pretty bad.)
~Easy
“Unexpectedly, nicotine replacement therapy performed as well as the prescription drugs varenicline and cytisine.”
Reminds me of a couple of decades-proven and very safe drugs used during COVID that were off-label and repurposed to fight COVID.
It’s amazing that researchers can investigate existing drugs for new, unexpected uses today, but couldn’t just two years ago.
It shows how thoroughly crooked the medical establishment and government are.
Get Biden out of office, that will reduce my alcohol intake immediately.
Not that I have any experience...
Tobacco use might offset alcohol consumption
Alcohol consumption might increase tobacco use
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