70 replies to this topic

[teacult]

 

 

 

So is there a doubt that nicotine is carcinogenic if it's pro angiogensis? or are the two processes not necessarily related.
 

 
I believe the real definition of nicotine is that it's a co-carcinogen, while it does not initiate cancer it promotes the growth of existing tumors. I never meant to imply that it alone is a carcinogen, but remember that it metabolizes into NNN when taken orally and the combination of the two could pose some real risks.
 
Until we see some long term human NRT studies, I would urge caution, especially in ex-smokers or those that are at higher risk of cancer due to age.

You are boring. Do you really believe that nicotine is so dangerous. I can't imagine a significant number of people chewing gum for fun. It's so not recreational. I assume chewing gum for smokers still is better than smoking gum.

 

Any psycho stimulant at its core not YOU. Its so dangerous that beyond unrecoverable health, you might not be able to get yourself back.  (check Bio-psychiatry) 
You are right that its not recreational its a need for being robotic robust and emotionless. Most of the time its the cure of neurosis for public. Public is public because they are neurotic. (Please refer at social psychology ...)
When someone states that something boring, it usual means that the person has nothing interesting in his head about the subject. 
In real life, all subjects are boring but your *knowledge, wisdom and the particular way of looking them makes them interesting. 

If you are a good spirit I believe this answer would make a lot of sense than tagging you dangerous and irresponsible (tho you are) . 

 

[Peak Noots]

Nicotine is severely addictive and there is still some debate as to whether it is a carcinogen by itself. Both these make it unqualified as a true nootropic. It does enhance cognition but not worth it. Stick to the racetams.

[eon]

I've never tried nicotine by itself. If it's truly addictive why isn't it scheduled? I noticed at Walmart the nicotine patches have a note that there are cameras looking at the shelf location. I don't see it fly off the shelves though since it is expensive and since people would rather smoke cigarettes plus I doubt the general public even have a clue about nicotine use as nicotine nor do they know what a nootropic is.

 

Even an amphetamine like Vyvanse do not feel addictive for me. I would assume those that abuse them at high doses would trigger an addiction but not at therapeutic dose. Same may be true with nicotine or anything else.

 

Nicotine is severely addictive and there is still some debate as to whether it is a carcinogen by itself. Both these make it unqualified as a true nootropic. It does enhance cognition but not worth it. Stick to the racetams.

 

[Major Legend]

 

 

 

 

So is there a doubt that nicotine is carcinogenic if it's pro angiogensis? or are the two processes not necessarily related.
 

 
I believe the real definition of nicotine is that it's a co-carcinogen, while it does not initiate cancer it promotes the growth of existing tumors. I never meant to imply that it alone is a carcinogen, but remember that it metabolizes into NNN when taken orally and the combination of the two could pose some real risks.
 
Until we see some long term human NRT studies, I would urge caution, especially in ex-smokers or those that are at higher risk of cancer due to age.

You are boring. Do you really believe that nicotine is so dangerous. I can't imagine a significant number of people chewing gum for fun. It's so not recreational. I assume chewing gum for smokers still is better than smoking gum.

 

Any psycho stimulant at its core not YOU. Its so dangerous that beyond unrecoverable health, you might not be able to get yourself back.  (check Bio-psychiatry) 
You are right that its not recreational its a need for being robotic robust and emotionless. Most of the time its the cure of neurosis for public. Public is public because they are neurotic. (Please refer at social psychology ...)
When someone states that something boring, it usual means that the person has nothing interesting in his head about the subject. 
In real life, all subjects are boring but your *knowledge, wisdom and the particular way of looking them makes them interesting. 

If you are a good spirit I believe this answer would make a lot of sense than tagging you dangerous and irresponsible (tho you are) . 

 

 

I agree with what you are saying, but a balanced regimen of the right things can "enhance" your personality not decrease it, and I do think alot of times people are looking for a cure of neurosis, however things like brain fog caused by immune system problems are not "imagined". Nootropics and psychostimulants should be looked on as tools and crutches, both of which mankind has used since the dawn of technological advancement.

[Major Legend]

 

I've never tried nicotine by itself. If it's truly addictive why isn't it scheduled? I noticed at Walmart the nicotine patches have a note that there are cameras looking at the shelf location. I don't see it fly off the shelves though since it is expensive and since people would rather smoke cigarettes plus I doubt the general public even have a clue about nicotine use as nicotine nor do they know what a nootropic is.

 

Even an amphetamine like Vyvanse do not feel addictive for me. I would assume those that abuse them at high doses would trigger an addiction but not at therapeutic dose. Same may be true with nicotine or anything else.

 

Nicotine is severely addictive and there is still some debate as to whether it is a carcinogen by itself. Both these make it unqualified as a true nootropic. It does enhance cognition but not worth it. Stick to the racetams.

 

Addiction is closely related with tolerance, therefore the rapidness of how fast tolerance develops to drugs like Vyanese and Nicotine plus their relatively short half life, creates a recipe for "addiction". Tolerance creates withdrawal and rebound which ultimately is what leads to habits. Cigarettes have a ridiculously short half life, hitting your brain in seconds which is why they are so addictive.

 

To some extent you could say people who have an issue with addiction, are probably to some extent unaware that escalating doses is not solving the problem, but rather increasing the rebound. Responsible use of drugs rarely lead to addiction. Alchohol is a drug, most people drink 1 or 2 units a week at least in the west, I would not consider them addicts.

 

In particular dopamine is special because it also happens to be the body's natural reward drug, people who are addicted to caffeine are just stimulant addicts - lite.

 

Technically you could be addicted to anything both physiologically or psychologically so this concept is if anything but vague. It just gets called an addiction when the negatives of the habits outstrip the positives.

[Ames]

I agree that most of the harmfulness of cigarettes seems to be from the smoke inhalation, though I think that a negative additive effect from tobacco itself is also present. To wit, marijuana doesn't cause all of the negative physical symptoms of smoking a lot of tobacco does, while still inarguably causing a type of lung 'impairment' over time. It is difficult to determine if it is the increase in the volume of smoke that causes cigarette smokers to incur more lung damage than marijuana smokers, or if there is a physical effect of tobacco on the lungs that transcends mere particulate and smoke inhalation.

 

I do know that vaping messed up my lungs quicker and more acutely than cigarettes ever did. My suspicion lies with particulate inhalation and/or the dehydrating effect of vegetable glycerine vapor.

 

I disagree that pure nicotine should carry more stigma as a nootropic than other commonly used nootropics, at least insofar as potential negative effects from normal doses are concerned. It is undoubtedly an effective nootropic by the standard that we apply to some other chemicals that can also cause significant side effects at 'safe' doses over time. That it is a stimulant is not only inconsequential to any such disqualification, it supports its categorization as a nootropic, again, to the standard that many not vets here apply to nootropics. In fact, some old timers here consider stimulants to be the only true nootropics in the sense that they are truly effective. Whether they take them or not due to health concerns is another matter. The quintessential nootropic piracetam, at least insofar as reputation is concerned, has caused many people here seemingly irreversible cognitive side effects. If such a substance is included in the category of nootropic, then I can't see how we can exclude nicotine at a safe dose. 

Edited by golgi1, 06 October 2015 - 10:55 PM.

[gamesguru]

reposting this video

basically a productive intellectual smoked it most of his 97 years

obviously he was very smart to begin with.  but from one perspective, he's another Erdos, relying on a stimulant to access parts of his brain he couldn't naturally (just substitute tobacco for speed).

if nicotine had a longer half life, i would be hooked, vaporizing daily

 

[Ames]

Point well taken, though it is clear that cocaine is more addictive than is tobacco irl. Perhaps that graph is adjusted by substance weight and not average user doses.

 

For almost two decades I couldn't get hooked on tobacco past intermittent flirtations with cigarettes. Not only was there no withdrawal process, I'd have an active aversion after a certain amount of smoking. A short stint with Bidi cigarettes, however, produced one of the most addictive experiences of my life punctuated by a significant and difficult psychological withdrawal effect that lasted a few months. Currently, any significant amount of smoking leads to alarming levels of oropharyngeal and lung tissue inflammation that has me abandoning tobacco cigarettes. I don't understand how everyone isn't subject to this negative feedback cycle and quits as a result. 

 

One thing that I did notice, after recently quitting, is seemingly raised levels of antioxidant capacity in my system for weeks afterwards. I wonder if short term smoking, toward theoretically raising natural antioxidant response significantly, could be a viable strategy for attacking difficult disease processes. It is noteworthy that I had started, most recently, after having one strong cigarette that had immediately eliminated a stubborn cough (likely a lung infection) that I wasn't able to shake going on two months. After the cigarette, I felt something dislodge in my upper lung.

 

I wonder what the effect on memory would be, for instance, of smoking one pack of medium strength cigarettes (my experience hints toward a greater effect with stronger cigarettes) over a few days and quitting. I hypothesize that there might be a statistically significant change, possibly due to structural anatomy changes afforded by theoretically increased antioxidant capacity. A difference in my memory has been noticed, as has my ability to abuse my system through lack of sleep that was not there before I started smoking. I expect the capacity will wear off, but it is still more or less here several weeks later. Whether the damage to the lungs is worth it I suppose would depend on the risk / reward balance for the individual.

 

Again, the strategy would be to start and immediately quit. I realize that that it is difficult to determine whether or not any theoretical effect is from the nicotine, the smoke, the nicotine smoke, or a combination of other factors. Also, I can't say for sure that increased antioxidant capacity is what I am experiencing. It's merely a guess.

 

If that is what I am experiencing, then that opens the discussion up to broader short term and carefully administered pro-oxidant strategies that may work toward upregulating the body's anti-oxidant response.

Edited by golgi1, 08 October 2015 - 04:37 AM.

[gamesguru]

you're just in the 68% of occasional tobacco users who never go onto develop addiction

 

if you keep it up long enough, this starting and quitting business will lead to addiction one way or another

better just carry around a vaporizer to spare your throat and lungs

[Ames]

Thanks. Though, as aI before stated, my experience with vaping is that it is ironically worse on the lungs than cigarettes; at least for short term use. Vaping hardware is a cowboy market, and there is no priority on filtering out particulate in the vape smoke. In my opinion, vaping needs better filter technology. In addition, there isn't any research on the effect of glycerine vapor on the lungs. My lungs quickly recover after short term cigarette use. After my stint with vaping, my lungs took a few months to recover from noticeable impairment indicative of particulate in the lung.

 

I've started and quitted enough to know my addiction potential with tobacco. Also, I don't start and quit with any regularity. The last time that I did, before this time, was over a decade ago. My 'start/stop' cycles were more frequent in my twenties and it was never, ever a problem to stop. That being said, I have a hypothesis that addiction potential increases with decreased brain plasticity. A highly plastic, young brain might even have a tendency to reject anything but short term tobacco use due to tobacco's relative inability to decrease plasticity quickly. Whereas cocaine, for instance, likely works to quickly decrease plasticity and increase addiction quickly. However, as one gets older and plasticity decreases with age, cigarette addiction potential, from short term use, might increase.

 

As an aside, my last smoking daliance was after smoking a cigarette that was unkowingly abnormally high in free-base tobacco. Avoiding such cigarettes, for occassional smokers, is llikely crucial to avoidance of habit.

 

Last, just to reiterate, my primary point wasn't to address addiction and use cycles. I have no current inclination toward tobacco use.

 

My primary point was to continue and expand on a discussion of possible therapeutic useage of nicotine or even cigarettes in the very short term. That discussion could possibly be expanded to either pro-oxidant therapy or even more specific adaptive therapy using substances that are shown to cause specific disease states. 

 

To begin, might short term use of a substance that is statistically shown to slowly lead to alzheimers, over years, create an anti-alzheimers adaptive response in the brain should the substance be used in the short term and then abandoned? I noticed very mild (hardly notieceable but I'm sensitive) cognitive impairment while smoking over the course of about one month recently. After quitting, my memory and resistance to the negative effects of cognitive abuse (sleep deprivation) continues to be noticeably greater weeks later (to a degree that transcends my relative sensitivity) than before I began the smoking. This is an effect that virtually no other substance mentioned or used on this forum has ever produced or has any chance of producing.

 

I'm not advocating smoking, but these anecdotal results might be a substrate for a discussion to include ramifications and strategies that may include but also extend beyond tobacco use. Again, as I before stated, personal risk and reward would be a consideration. To illustrate. if I have a cognitive impairment then short term lung damage might be an acceptable risk. These decisions are made all of the time by doctors. For instance, chemotheray tends to noticeably age anyone but young people, but the risk of such a thing is acceptable given the propsect of being free from cancer. Also, perhaps other such theoretical adaptive strategies can be found that avoid the emotional response in the average person that often accompanies discussion of tobacco use

 

 

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC2906761/

 

Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease: an analysis controlling for tobacco industry affiliation.

 

Cataldo JK¹, Prochaska JJ, Glantz SA.

Author information

• ¹Department of Physiological Nursing, Gerontology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0610, USA. cataldo@nursing.ucsf.edu

Abstract

 

To examine the relationship between smoking and Alzheimer's disease (AD) after controlling for study design, quality, secular trend, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, electronic databases were searched; 43 individual studies met the inclusion criteria. For evidence of tobacco industry affiliation, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu was searched. One fourth (11/43) of individual studies had tobacco-affiliated authors. Using random effects meta-analysis, 18 case control studies without tobacco industry affiliation yielded a non-significant pooled odds ratio of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.75-1.10), while 8 case control studies with tobacco industry affiliation yielded a significant pooled odds ratio of 0.86 (95% CI, 0.75-0.98) suggesting that smoking protects against AD. In contrast, 14 cohort studies without tobacco-industry affiliation yielded a significantly increased relative risk of AD of 1.45 (95% CI, 1.16-1.80) associated with smoking and the three cohort studies with tobacco industry affiliation yielded a non-significant pooled relative risk of 0.60 (95% CI 0.27-1.32). A multiple regression analysis showed that case-control studies tended to yield lower average risk estimates than cohort studies (by -0.27 +/- 0.15, P=0.075), lower risk estimates for studies done by authors affiliated with the tobacco industry (by -0.37 +/- 0.13, P=0.008), no effect of the quality of the journal in which the study was published (measured by impact factor, P=0.828), and increasing secular trend in risk estimates (0.031/year +/- 0.013, P=0.02). The average risk of AD for cohort studies without tobacco industry affiliation of average quality published in 2007 was estimated to be 1.72 +/- 0.19 (P< 0.0005). The available data indicate that smoking is a significant risk factor for AD.

 

 

 

 

Edited by golgi1, 08 October 2015 - 10:24 AM.

[gamesguru]

I just don't buy the particulates being worse than smoke... it's like inhaling steamed spinach or kale chips, almost sounds healthy.  When I regrind my cannabis multiple times to a powder, I do notice my lungs getting coated, rejecting the residue (eg phelm).

anyway, i think the aromed, with its water chamber, bypasses this issue.  but it's not portable, nor does it deliver quite the same vapor quality/potency as other high end vapes