You'll also learn how nicotine can be protective against a variety of health conditions including:
- Parkinson's disease
- Dementia
- Inflammatory bowel diseases
- Depression
- Schizophrenia
- COVID/mortality due to other viral infection
#Therapeuticnicotine
Nicotine is an alkaloid derived from tobacco
After entry into the blood, it is broken down into several different metabolites...
The primary bioactive metabolite is called cotinine, although others are currently being studied
Acetylcholine:
In the brain, nicotine essentially "mimics" the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh)
It does this through binding with 7-a-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors
Nicotine also upregulates these receptors
Recent evidence suggest nicotine may also inhibit acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme responsible for breaking down ACh, in the brain.
The result is increased cholinergic neurotransmission in the nervous system, which is thought to be one of the ways by which nicotine enhances memory and learning.
This has downstream effects on numerous other neurotransmitter systems including:
- Dopamine
- Serotonin
- Glutamate
- GABA
Acetylcholine & cognitive impairment/Alzheimer's:
Abundant evidence suggests a cholinergic deficit in the CNS is one of the drivers of MCI/Alzheimer's (AD)
One study found subcutaneous nicotine to improve:
"primary and secondary cognitive measures of attention, memory, and mental processing"
Another study found inverse association between AD and smoking:
"A statistically significant inverse association between smoking and Alzheimer's disease was observed at all levels of analysis, with a trend towards decreasing risk with increasing consumption"
Cognitive benefits:
"1. Nicotine improves attention in a wide variety of tasks in healthy volunteers.
2. Nicotine improves immediate and longer term memory in healthy volunteers.
3. Nicotine improves attention in patients with probable Alzheimer's Disease.
4. While some of the memory effects of nicotine may be due to enhanced attention, others seem to be the result of improved consolidation as shown by post-trial dosing."
The nicotine : acetylcholine interaction extends beyond cognitive benefits
Acetycholine is one of the primary tools used by the body to suppress inflammation and immune-hyperactivation
In this way, it can “switch off” an overactive immune system
It does this through a network of neuronal connections known as the "cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway", which operates through the vagus nerve
Stimulating this pathway via different means has yielded promising results in a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases
"Nicotine stimulation plays a key role in suppressing inflammatory cytokine production
- Can significantly down-regulate and delay inflammatory and autoimmune responses in the central nervous system
- Could further attenuate neuro-inflammation"
Anti-inflammatory effects pt.2
The following paper discusses anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory effects of nicotine at length.
Read it and you will see the "anti" far outweighs the "pro"
"Of all the diseases summarized here concerning systemic inflammation, especially in sepsis and endotoxemia, nicotine exerted the most pharmaceutical effect and significantly improved the survival.
Next, nicotine is also a potential candidate for treating ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, multiple sclerosis, and myocarditis;"
"In this model of abbreviated inflammation, nicotine exposure attenuates the febrile response to LPS and promotes a more prominent anti-inflammatory phenotype."
Dopamine:
Nicotine stimulates the release of dopamine in the midbrain and prefrontal cortex
Smokers are vastly less likely to develop Parkinson’s.
Even exposure to secondhand smoke drastically reduces the chances.
“The link between smoking and a lower risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the strongest environmental or lifestyle associations in neuroepidemiology. Growing evidence supports the hypothesis that the association is based on a neuroprotective effect of smoking on PD”
Nicotine exerts neuroprotective effects through reducing glutamate excitotoxicity in several regions of the brain, including the hippocampus.
This may help to explain positive neuropsychiatric benefits in conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD and anxiety ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Neurogenesis, NAD+ and Anti-Aging:
“F-FDG PET imaging revealed that nicotine is also capable of efficiently inhibiting glucose hypermetabolism in aging male mice.
Additionally, nicotine ameliorated cellular energy metabolism disorders and deferred age-related deterioration and cognitive decline by stimulating neurogenesis, inhibiting neuroinflammation, and protecting organs from oxidative stress and telomere shortening.
Collectively, these findings provide evidence for a mechanism by which low-dose nicotine can activate NAD+ salvage pathways and improve age-related symptoms.”
Smokers on average have higher T3 levels, lower TSH and lower markers of thyroid autoimmunity.
Smokers have a significantly lower risk of developing hypothyroidism and autoimmune thyroid disease. This protection disappears 3 years after quitting smoking.
The fix for long-COVID (or vaccine-induced) Dysautonomia?
For many, its NICOTINE
Why? Top-down control of the autonomic nervous system depends on cholinergic neurotransmission, involving the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Researchers found evidence of an interaction between SARS-CoV-2 spike protein & nicotinic-acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), and hypothesize that this may impair the cholinergic system.
When the body loses control of acetylcholine, it loses control of the autonomic nervous system = dysautonomia.
Nicotine binds with nAChRs and potentiates the action of acetylcholine.
Nicotine UPREGULATES nAChRs. It is hypotethized that nicotine may "counteract the viral blockade of nAChRs" and restore cholinergic activity.
It was known in the early days that smokers had much higher protection against infection, and it was thought this was related to the ACE2 receptor.
However, many are using it post-covid and even post-vaccination to re-establish autonomic balance.
A lot of people already know HIGH DOSE THIAMINE can be effective for long-covid/post-covid vaccine effects.
What many don't know is that thiamine is necessary for the release and action of acetylcholine at every step!!
The combination of thiamine + nicotine could be a game changer.
Nicotine can be used in gum, patches, or of course... combusted.
Low dose of nicotine inhibits aromatase, the enzyme which catalyses the conversion of androgen hormones into estrogen
This has been shown to occur in numerous regions of the brain
In animals: "In laboratory studies on female rats, we confirmed the aforementioned epidemiological findings that chronic nicotine exposure reduced endogenous 17β-estradiol (E2; a potent estrogen) levels"
Mechanism behind thiamine's unique ability to reverse disease (even without a deficiency):
- Oxidative stress, inflammation, and toxins inactivate our cell machinery used to generate energy
- Sustained mega doses of B1 can re-activate these enzymes, restoring energy & function
The thiamine-dependent enzyme a-KGDH is extremely sensitive to oxidative stress and toxicity.
This is a RATE-LIMITING enzyme. When it becomes inactivated, mitochondrial energy metabolism shuts down.
This enzyme is decreased in a variety of neuro-degenerative conditions
Pharmacological doses of thiamine can "saturate" the enzyme, forcing it to start working and overcome the inactivation caused by toxins/oxidative stress/inflammation.
In this way, thiamine is being used pharmacologically.
Here are 5 nutritional supplements which can be effective for benzo withdrawal.
At the cellular level, withdrawal appears to involve:
- Structural changes in the GABA-a receptor
- Loss of sensitivity to GABA
- Rebound glutamate excitoxicity
Explanation in following tweets...
1) Agmatine is a metabolite of arginine which modulates NMDA receptor function.
A recent study on benzo withdrawal demonstrated:
-Significant reduction in symptom scores
- Increased GABA
- Lower glutamate
- Major improvement across the board