I was born in 1947, the war was over , unemployment was high as the baby boom had yet to start to drive the economy. A coke or a coffee was 7 cents and a pack of cigarettes was 20 to 25 cents but many people rolled their own so a pack was probably a nickel. Homemade cigarettes would not continue to burn if placed in an ash tray so you could come back to it, while purchased factory made continued to burn down, so the smoker tended to smoke the complete cigarette and developed into a chain smoker. Smoking a pipe was distinguished and indicated a life of leisure, a man with the time on his hands to spend keeping a pipe burning . Smoking a cigar showed a man who had a bit of money and the position to afford complete disregard for others ( W. C. Fields). Workers in the foundry used chewing tobacco tucked up inside the gums and upper lips while cowboys in the movies could ride a horse and roll a cigarette with one hand, very impressive and tobacco companies were advertising everywhere. The whole world smoked , men, women , doctors , teachers and children in the school yard and everywhere : inside the house, inside the car, in all public places including restaurants and theaters and buses, and in passenger airplanes ( although only in the smoking section. ) The actors in the movies and later on TV, the coach and trainers at the hockey game and the players before and after the game , and the beautiful people and the well known / famous people / our heroes on posters and in magazines smoking.
My mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, smoked in the house and car so I was addicted to nicotine before I was five and before I ever smoked a cigarette which was when I was eight. People thought that it had medicinal properties, helped them relax and think and certainly was necessary after a big meal or with a drink. My grandmother said that because she did not inhale the smoke it was harmless because her sister the nurse did that also because it kept virus away, although my grandmother was not sure what a virus was, maybe a kind of bacteria.
This basically continued through the 1950s and 1960s until finally research , education , petitioning and sanity started to slowly make a difference and laws were put into place. The damage in humanity that was the toll of this all became so obvious and so costly and so pathetic that change was past due . I have smoked for 68 years. I have used nicotine patches, nicotine gum , hypnotism and tapering off, but even with the success of not smoking for 3 months it always came back . In the world at large , chewing tobacco use resulted in cancer of the mouth and lips, cigars and pipes the same, lung cancer, asma, heart attacks , stroke, babies born with problems and billions of dollars that could have fed the world , up in smoke. My grandmother died at age 60 of "angina" my grandfather 68 after several strokes by heart attack , followed shortly by my father in the same way. In the previous generation their family had lived into the high nineties .
Now I see discussions about trying nicotine. That is why great stock market crashes and world wars happen every 80 to 90 years, because everyone who would remember is gone. Run , run as fast as you can. you can't catch me. I am the stinky cheese man . In memory of them all.
Be happy
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Nicotine and smoking are 2 different things. The 2nd most nicotine containing plant is eggplant. 3rd Tomatoes. Why would God put it in those unless it was for our use?
In high doses, nicotine is lethal. Concentrated nicotine is also used as an insecticide. It is unclear what exact quantity is lethal for humans: the literature usually refers to 30-60 milligrams.
Although there is approximately 10 mg of nicotine in a cigarette, smoking introduces about 1 to 2 mg into your body. In theory, 30 cigarettes can be lethal. Smokers have a higher fatal dose because they become less sensitive to the effects of nicotine.
The average nicotine content in eggplants is about 0.01 milligrams per 100 gr. Consuming 300 kilograms of eggplants can result in nicotine poisoning and be fatal as well. 🙂
Nicotine, however has potential benefits such as cognitive enhancement, mood regulation, weight management, and potential disease prevention, like PD, but everything in moderation. As He/She/It lets us know in Proverbs 25:16: "If you find honey, eat just enough—too much of it, and you will vomit."
Pure nicotine is a powerful poison and every old farmer can confirm it to you, but in small doses it is like a drug, that is, a relief from some ailments and as a drug it causes addiction and withdrawal crisis. Any inveterate former smoker like me can tell you.
But nicotine is also an alkaloid capable of modifying the structure of the brain and receptors of nicotine and who knows what others.
I think it should be studied more for therapeutic purposes.
For these characteristics I think that young I could also try it , but when I was old I wouldn't do it.
Smoking is the fastest way to take in nicotine into your body and into your brain. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet and once introduced in any manner results in that body craving the ultimate way to absorb it, that is smoke it. This craving lasts forever , a life time. You can quit smoking and be smoke free for any length of time, years later and if you have one single puff you will be back smoking again and buying cigarettes.
You dont believe us ? Well you are very young but if you are going to make it to very old then you need to listen. No you can not separate nicotine and smoking. I challenge you to give me a single name of a person who uses nicotine by any methods and has done so for more than 6 months who does not now smoke. The picture of a man wearing 6 or 8 nicotine patches is very funny unless it is you. The world is well aware that nicotine increases the speed of the ability to think and to calm nerves and this has been known for many hundreds of years. The people who smoked in the 50s and 60s were not stupid . They were caught in a trap of very efficient machine made nicotine dispensers that quickly became the preferred method over hand made .
My first neurologist was a very wise man , head of neurology, and cardiology and surgeon in a large world recognized teaching and research hospital in Toronto. Dr. Bayer (RIP) died of a brain hemorrhage. He told me, that before the discovery of Levodopa there had been some success with using: nicotine, alcohol and antihistamines to treat Parkinson's . The effects wore off quickly while the damage remained , the cures had long term and dangerous consequence. It was agreed between medical colleges to not recommend or use them. He said that I should save the use of alcohol for a big event like my daughters wedding day to help me walk down the aisle and dance with her and to limit it to two drinks, which I did . The isle was at a lodge outside by a lake down a grassy hill and about two hundred yards long. The dance was a compilation of 1960,s songs and was about 20 minutes long.
Many times the world has learned the same lessons over and over again because the lesson is eventually forgotten . It will be different this time, they say but it is not. War, famine, disease, pestilence , economic collapse / depressions , dark age loss of civility, loss of freedom and rights and the loss of paradise to hordes of barbarians are within our ability to stop but it all will always be with us. In the span of one mans life time the lessons are forgotten .
I guess you’re smarter than this famous doctor? I can tell you one person that been using nicotine for the last six months and has not started smoking. It would be me. You never answered my question? Do people have eggplant breaks? Are tomatoes addictive?
I’m not saying smoking is not addictive. But nicotine by itself to non-smokers is not at all. You keep saying smoking. I’m not advocating for smoking. If nicotine was so addictive, why aren’t people addicted to eggplants? I personally think they’re gross. Tomatoes I only like in salsa. Could it be you’re so close minded because of your smoking Bias? I’m young, but I’m not dumb. 2015 Harvard try to get mice addicted to nicotine. They couldn’t. They could get them addicted to alcohol, sugar, and all sorts of drugs. But they couldn’t get them addicted to nicotine? Is Harvard not prestigious enough?
Nicotine is known as the drug that is responsible for the addicted behaviour of tobacco users, but it has poor reinforcing effects when administered alone
Eggplant seeds contain nicotinoid alkaloids, which are responsible for the slightly bitter taste of the purple berry. The concentration of nicotine itself is about 100 nanograms per gram of eggplant, compared with 2 milligrams of nicotine per cigarette. So, if you’re willing to eat 20 000 grams of eggplant (around 20 eggplants) for breakfast, you could skip your morning cigarette. Of course, eggplants aren’t alone in containing nicotine: tomatoes, bell peppers and potatoes do too! There is an allegation floating around that these "nightshade" vegetables (so-called because they can grow in shade), vegetables should be shunned, particularly by arthritis sufferers, because they cause inflammation. There is no scientific evidence for this and avoiding these vegetables unnecessarily restricts diets.
IMO the problem with these substances such as nicotine, cannabioids, opiates, some psychoactive pharmaceutical drugs is that they initially give relief to symptoms and pain, after all you are playing with brain neurotransmitters, but then at some point they stop working and are often the cause of apoptosis i.e. programmed death of damaged cells by the immune system.
Now a still young body replaces the lost cells, while an elderly person finds it harder to fully recover.
In the case of PwPs?
I would avoid like the plague anything that increases the signal of apoptosis like nicotine and I would focus on detoxification through autophagy and cell repair through vitamins, diet and exercise as much as possible.
In the '50s Nicotine was used to euthanize dogs. My parents smoked for decades. When I left home at age 17 my parents were able to quit the habit. My mom is pushing 90 and still smoke-free. Unfortunately my dad developed prostate cancer. Surgery cured him but he went back to smoking. After two strokes the third one killed him. If there's a point to be made here it's that nicotine damages the brain and 40 years being smoke-free wasn't enough to be safe.
You keep saying tobacco. Nicotine. I now know why I got off these boards. For your information, I’m getting off c/l. I have been on as much as 8 c/l a day. I’ll be off c/l in a month or 2. I wish you guys the best.
My favorite Mark Twain quote. “It’s easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled”
38Y, I think you are making some valid points, and I encourage you to stay on, at a minimum for those of us that understand that you are NOT talking cigarettes, but nicotine itself.
It will be interesting to see how you do once you fully quit C/L. I have been following your posts, and even went and purchased some nicotine gum myself to conduct my own research.
This distinction is correct, however, according to this research it would seem that in smokers there is a greater release of dopamine when satisfying a short period of abstinence than in non-smokers who use nicotine gum and have no addiction to satisfy. In other words, it would appear that more dopamine release is related to the pleasure of satisfying a nicotine addiction, but I could be wrong.
As a former heavy smoker I know very well the phenomenon of the increased release of dopamine when smoking a cigarette. IMO In use of nicotine in PD the risk is much greater than the benefit according to current knowledge.
Disagreement is good. It is how we learn. If everyone agreed with everything you or anyone else said, you/they wouldn't learn a thing and, oh, how boring life would be.
Congrats on getting off C/L! My husband is still doing good with his nicotine gum, exercise and keto diet, considering lowering C/L doses. The recommended big pharma drugs he was on almost ended our relationship and has currently compromised our daughter's mental health. The adverse effects he experienced almost destroyed my entire family. Not so safe or effective. Please do not leave this platform.
The human body is also chock full of nicotine receptors. Artificial versions of compounds called Pyrizines have been added to cigarettes to increase addictiveness since around 1970. It’s an interesting topic. I was experimenting with 7 mg nicotine patches with great effect. Improved coordination and cognition for example, I stopped after approximately two months. I will probably start again on a lower dose maybe 3.5 mg daily at some point I believe in experimentation as thinking can only get me so far without doing.
I am also using nicotine in water 3mg in a 2 liter bottle delivered throughout the day. I don't mind being addicted to water. Much better delivery than patches, gums and pouches. We all need to remember to much water can a kill a person. I use vinegar, salt and soap to kill weeds - do we stop using vinegar and salt in our food - do we stop washing our dishes in soap? Nicotine is known to promote neurogenisis in mice and increase short term memory. What do we have to lose when the medical world tells us their is nothing they can do to slow the progress or deliver a cure. I sure feel the benefits outweigh the risk (if any).
I think I know enough about medicine and physiology that I feel safe experimenting. I tried nicotine "Stop Smoking" patches. I cut them into quarters and placed one on my forearm daily for two weeks. I never felt any change; The arm tremor was unchanged. II never smoked. I lit a cigarette once and handed it to a friend. That was the only time I ever tried smoking. I tried the patch after reading that smokers had a lower incidence of PD compared with non-smokers. Maybe two weeks wasn't long enough for a decent trial but I got bored with it. Then I tried fasting. Then I tried mitochondrial support drugs.
"The American College of Cardiology reports that the earliest documented case of coronary atherosclerosis – a build-up of plaque in the arteries that can cause a heart attack – was in an Egyptian princess who lived between 1580 and 1550 B.C. The study found that heart disease was more common in ancient times than previously thought."
Yes, Egyptians and North Africans have a sweet tooth and eat a lot of dried fruit and love their sweet desserts and pastries (sratch is a bunch of glucose molecules weakly bonded together).
If one looks hard enough you can find a study that shows just about anything but yes there were studies that showed people who consumed nicotine were in a group with less frequency of getting Parkinson's and if they did get it then the severity was less.
That effect of smoking was probably over powered by the group with the highest frequency . Those men who worked in stressful jobs long hours to put a roof over their heads and food on the table and did not take enough vacations or go fishing enough. If I thought people that consumed nicotine could not get PD I would own shares in Philip Morris.
“Those men who worked in stressful jobs long hours to put a roof over their heads and food on the table and did not take enough vacations or go fishing enough.”
Here is an authentic work of art that only those who know life and have lived it can create.
The following research suggests that the impact of smoking on the age at onset (AAO) is still uncertain. Some studies indicate a delay in AAO, while others show no clear effect or even an opposite effect. Although smoking may prevent the onset of PD, it is unclear whether it actually delays AAO. Further research is needed to understand the underlying causes and separate the effects of smoking on former and current smokers with the condition.
38yroldmale I totally get the desire to give up on these boards. So proud of you for getting off the meds! I have learned to ignore the vitriol and see it as a justified manifestation of fear and rigidity. People do believe easier when they are willing to see beyond their fears. It's about them, and not at all about you.
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Neupro (Rotigotine transdermal patches) for Parkinson's disease 
Rotigotine/Neupro patches causing deep drowsiness after food
Any advice? Good/bad experiences with the Neupro patch for PD? 
