Will Wheaton!!!!! You will pay for this!!!!!!
Posted on 06/12/2011 12:02:11 AM PDT by neverdem
Craving an afternoon snack? Take a drag on a cigarette, and your hunger will likely disappear. Smoking is the number one cause of preventable deaths in the Unites States and other developed countries, causing lung cancer, heart disease, and chronic bronchitis. But smokers are, on average, skinnier than nonsmokers. New research reveals how nicotine, the active ingredient in cigarettes, works in the brain to suppress smokers' appetites. The finding also pinpoints a new drug target for nicotine withdrawal—and weight loss.
The nicotine receptor in the brain has 15 subunits; they can combine in a multitude of ways to form different receptors with different jobs. Nicotine can bind to each combination and spur a cascade of distinct events; some lead to the addictive properties of cigarettes, others to an increase in blood pressure or a feeling of relaxation. It's long been known that nicotine causes a slump in appetite, and scientists suspected that this worked through receptors associated with reward and behavior reinforcement. After all, the brain considers both cigarettes and food to be rewards. But the new finding suggests that appetite has its own pathway.
Behavioral neuroscientist Marina Picciotto of Yale University set out to study whether activating one particular nicotine receptor, dubbed α3β4, had antidepressant effects on mice. But as postdoctoral researcher Yann Mineur was caring for the mice, which had received drugs engineered to stimulate only α3β4 receptors, he noticed a side effect: the mice were eating less.
"Before this study, we really didn't think that this type of receptor would have such a big role in the brain in food intake," Picciotto says. She and Mineur went on to show that nicotine does, in fact, bind to α3β4 receptors, which then send a signal throughout the rest of the brain, signaling satiety. It's indistinguishable from the signal the brain propagates after eating a large meal. Mice that received the drug binding to the α3β4 receptor ate half the amount of food as untreated mice in the 2 hours following administration of the drug. Their body fat dropped 15% to 20% over 30 days, the team reports online today in Science.
Since the weight gain that comes with stopping smoking is often one deterrent for smokers to quit, Picciotto suggests that the new pathway could be targeted by pharmaceuticals to suppress appetite during the initial stages of smoking cessation. In addition, such a drug could have wider reach as an appetite suppressant to aid in weight loss, without the health hazards tied to cigarette smoke.
Neil Grunberg, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, was the first to prove, through rat studies in 1982, that nicotine causes a decrease in appetite. He says the new study is a step forward in understanding the phenomenon he first observed.
"Most people had accepted that the decrease in appetite was caused through a dopamine-reward pathway and left it at that," Grunberg says. "So I think the most important contribution of this paper is to prove that there is another whole pathway that nicotine is working through."
Grunberg notes, however, that the study looks only at male mice. In his previous work, he has found differences in the effects of nicotine on weight between males and females. Females, he says, experience larger weight loss when they start smoking and a larger weight gain if they quit. Whether this means nicotine is working through an additional, hormone-regulated pathway in the female brain is yet to be determined.
Picciotto says her group is repeating the experiments on female mice. "We're also still trying to get back to that original question we had," she says: "Does this also have antidepressant actions?"
“Tricking” your brain is probably not a good idea over the long run. I wonder what other side effects that could trigger? The best way to lose weight is to portion your food and drink a lot of water.
Because you're looking at skinny smokers. Try looking in a city with fat people, and you'll see fat smokers.
>> “Tricking” your brain is probably not a good idea over the long run.
It’s only a matter of tricking the stupid part of the brain.
“Smoking is the number one cause of preventable deaths “
I had no idea that death was ‘preventable’
you’ve never smoked before.
Two things that satisfy your hunger...tobacco and coffee. Been there done that. Alcohol also will temporarily suppress hunger pangs. A person can get by comfortably for a long time on only alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. Add something oily now and then like sunflower seeds, french fries, bacon, hashbrowns, or plain doughnuts and you can survive almost indefinitely without discomfort.
I can tell you why EX-smokers bloat up like a freaking beachball (smoked for 30 years and even if I gained a “few” pounds quitting was the 3rd smartest thing I ever did)!
1) You get HUNGRY! The cigs were suppressing your appetite (the point of the article I gather)
2) Food tastes GOOD! When the cilia stop laying down, they rise up and start telling your body “HEY This is freaking GOOD!” Everything for the first year or so after the taste buds reawaken tastes like ambrosia! You really see that food was God’s way of telling you He loves you and wants you to be happy.
I think it’s dangerous to trick this portion of your brain. How about finding a way to stimulate the facts and logic portion of your brain?
I would be willing to bet that most people that have this issue is because they have a lack of self discipline. Another word for it is your “Will” factor. How willing you are to do anything.
>>“Smoking is the number one cause of preventable deaths “
I had no idea that death was ‘preventable’<<
O M G!! That is one of the funniest posts I have read on FR!!!
Sheldon was right, there is a gap between when we of these generations will die and when we can transfer our consciousness to a cyborg...
Will Wheaton!!!!! You will pay for this!!!!!!
well sure. when everything tastes like dirt, you eat less. Gosh, whodathunk?
>> FOAD.. STFU...
Pipe down, fatty.
3) You also forget the effect that a starved body experiences when finally getting food. The body balloons up to a huge point because the body is desperate to operate on minimal calories and the body greedily seizes and stores whatever fats it can get into it’s body. It’s the same effect of someone recovering from anorexia. Then to protect the stored nutrients, the body refuses to just let go, it clings to whatever it can get.
All the smokers I know are over weight. They over eat and smoke and don’t do any exercise. Don’t know one skinny smoker.
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Though I like many of your postings, this time I say:
Horse bits!
EVERYTHING tasted like rabbits raisins for the first 3 years after quitting smoking. My (ex)wife was concerned about me because I wouldn’t eat until the food was cold, and I ate less than half what was set out for me because it smelled horrid and tasted worse.
1) I had LITTLE appetite. Food repulsed me.
2) Meat tasted like dirty socks, and vegetables tasted like uncooked oatmeal mixed with bits of straw, with the occasional rat dropping added for variety. Veggies were the pleasant sensation of overcooked squash that smelled like weeks old catbox.
FOOD WAS DISGUSTING, but I put on a LOT of weight. More than some calorie counter can account for, even in a worst case scenario.
As a previous poster said, it’s far easier to tell the never-smoked from the reformed smokers. If they only knew how utterly foolish they ARE.
>>Then to protect the stored nutrients, the body refuses to just let go, it clings to whatever it can get.<<
Well, that is my new story and I am sticking to it!
;) :)
(seriesly, I used to be skinny as a rail — picture a shorter but same proportioned Bobby from L&O:CI. My weight sort of tracked the same way, but it is like seasons 4-6 happened in a month)
I respect smokers rights and I used to smoke and my wife still does
But that was no way to speak using the f bomb to an obvious freeper woman who may well be an older grandma...way uncalled for
I understand the resentment of smoke nazis but the f flame should be used more selectively
How about you read and try to understand the big concepts, profound descriptions, and polysyllabic words that I use, rather than focus on the acronyms I use so the simple-minded can follow along. Or is that all you can understand?
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