Super N
Lambasted in some recent studies and by the Antz – Is there more to nicotine than they would like you to believe?
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by Dave Cross
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Maryka Quik, program director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Program at SRI International, said: “I understand that smoking is bad, my father died of lung cancer. I totally get it.”
Quik is responsible for publishing many studies highlighting the positive effects of nicotine on the brain. “The whole problem with nicotine is that it happens to be found in cigarettes. People can’t disassociate the two in their minds.”
It was Harold Kahn, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health, who first linked nicotine to beneficial effects back in 1966. He noted that in his studies incidents of Parkinson’s disease occurred at least three times less often in smokers.
Initial response to the finding was that Kahn’s subjects were simply dying from smoking-related illnesses prior to the onset of Parkinson’s. Multiple studies have since gone on to confirm his observations endorse the belief that nicotine prevents the disease.
Marie-Françoise Chesselet, a neurobiologist from University of California, Los Angeles, demonstrated that nicotine increases levels of dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical in the body that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centres. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses and it enables us not only to see rewards but also to take action to move toward them. Parkinson’s is noted for featuring low levels of dopamine so it is proposed that this is the part nicotine plays in its treatment.
Research has demonstrated that nicotine promotes the uptake of calcium into human cells – leading to stronger cells and better rates of survival. Evil Nic is also described as an effective toxin clean-up agent in the body. Free radicals were eliminated by the introduction of nicotine, thereby benefitting the brain.
In studies of Alzheimer’s sufferers it was recorded that significant improvements in attention, memory and psychomotor speed were observed after subjects were given nicotine. Of interest to those using scare tactics to highlight the toxicity of nicotine, the results emphasized the use of nicotine was met with excellent safety and tolerability responses – in other words it was totally safe in use.
Jennifer Rusted, a psychologist at the University of Sussex says: “(Nicotine is) the most reliable cognitive enhancer that we currently have. It’s a small effect, maybe a 15 percent improvement. It’s not something that’s going to have a massive impact in a healthy young individual” - but it has major implications for sufferers of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and schizophrenia.
Notably, Discovery mention: “Perhaps most surprising is that, in studies by Boyd and others, nicotine has not caused addiction or withdrawal when used to treat disease. These findings fly in the face of nicotine’s reputation as one of the most addictive substances known, but it’s a reputation built on myth.”
Built on myth or an engineered reputation created by public health advocates? It is clear that there is far more to nicotine than those opposed to vaping would care to admit.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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