Posted on 06/02/2023 8:19:01 AM PDT by ConservativeMind
A drug that was originally developed to treat diabetes and severe overweight might also help people with nicotine dependence, concludes new research.
Smoking is one of the greatest threats to public health.
And 75% of smokers want to quit.
So why don't they? The answer is: nicotine. It is one of the most addictive known substances.
Unfortunately, there is no treatment for nicotine cravings.
But new research might be able to change that.
"In connection with a mouse study focusing on overweight, we discovered, more or less by accident, that a well-known drug, liraglutide, used to treat diabetes and overweight, affects the impact of nicotine on the brain. Liraglutide inhibits the effect that nicotine has on the brain's reward system," says Associate Professor Christoffer Clemmensen.
He explains that GLP-1 and nicotine are the two substances that affect the brain's reward system. Nicotine from tobacco, for example, releases a large amount of dopamine in the brain, which acts as a kind of reward. This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to quit nicotine products.
In the study, the researchers studied two known appetite inhibitors: GLP-1 and nicotine. GLP-1 is used in various diabetes and weight loss drugs.
The researchers already knew that nicotine increases energy expenditure, and many who quit nicotine products subsequently gain weight.
Together, the two substances appear to promote weight loss, while GLP-1 alone seems to reduce nicotine cravings. And, according to the international database of clinical trials, many researchers are currently testing whether GLP-1-based drugs can help people quit smoking.
Christoffer Clemmensen explains that it was only recently discovered that a combination of GLP-1 and nicotine has a greater effect on the body than either of the two substances alone.
The two substances affect the same neurons in specific parts of the brain.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
Ozempic is also showing promise as a potential anti-addiction treatment.
In 1976 I was at my hunting camp climbing the hills looking for deer. By the time I reached the top of one hill I was so out of breath I had to sit down for 15-20 minutes. I had been a 2 pack a day man for around a decade. When I got home I took my open pack and half a carton of cigarettes and poured gasoline on them and lit them. It was a nasty 2 weeks but after that I was done with cigarettes forever.
It’s given by injection so I doubt it will be popular unless it is really effective. It has side effects some serious.
A fellow I use to work with switched to rolling his own to avoid all the chemicals in cigarette. Uses pipe tobacco ....His health improved - smokers cough completely stopped. Tobacco was much smoother he said.
I wouln’t want to take anything that messes with the brain. Over Time you could really mess things up!
Copenhagen satisfies my nicotine cravings.
We did that at the end of our addiction, too.
There were ‘roll your own’ tobacco stores around then that you could get cigs made by a machine after you purchased the pipe tobaccos.
They would dump the package of tobacco into a bin on the machine and it would automatically stuff the tobacco into the paper tubes, and you had to have your own container to put them in. It was about half the price of a carton at the time, mid 90’s...................
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” ― Mark Twain
Chantix (varenicline) has been very effective for me. After 2 months I have gone from an over 2 packs a day to 1 pack a day. The side affects have been a little weight gain, and somedays I need a quick nap after work. Beyond that. I’m sticking with it.
Good Luck. Its hard quitting something you enjoy. :)
Gather your will power and go “cold turkey”, that’s how I quit about 40 years ago.
“Copenhagen satisfies my nicotine cravings.”
Yeah, me too. I can’t quit to save my life (pun intended).
I had quit smoking after oral cancer surgery, probably caused ny smoking (not HPV). Then one day I thought it wouldn’t hurt to buy a pack and just smoke a couple.
I tried Wrlbutrin, didn’t help. What has helped me is the price and the fact that I have the beginning of Emphazima.
I never had smoked 2 packs a day, only 1. But I xmoke American Spirit, pure tobacco. So I’m down to 6 to 10 cigarettes a day. On stressful days more, so I try to avoid stress.
Good luck to you!
Please Freepmail me if you wish. I would love help from a fellow addict than someone that’s not.
The article by Medical Express/Sarah Falk et al. issues two presumptuous challenges as follows:
The answer is: nicotine.Both these clains are quite wrong. They (1) state that nicotine dependency is caused by the nicotine itself, as it would be with first-time usage narcotics like heroin or fentanyl, which is simply a false claim. Then the authors (2) declare that without argument there is no treatment commonly available. This assertion is also easy to believe, but glaringly false by scientific research and innovative application to an OTC product.
(1) It is one of the most addictive known substances.
Unfortunately,
(2) there is no treatment for nicotine cravings.
Then, to top it off, they ignore the basic totally dominating principle that it is the delivery system--smoking (inhaling the nicotine-laden heated vapor/burnt particle smoke)--that is inseparable from the process.
=========
What I maintain is that:
It is proven fact that the best substance that mitigates cessation of (tobacco) smoking is nicotine! And that changing the process for self-administration of nicotine is a successful method to abandon smoking and the intake of nicotine from it!The partaker nay comfortably progressively rid oneself of the craving through changing the process of ingestion.. Because it is unlike morphine, a pain-killing narcotic, also a deadly self-addictive toxin. Without that addictive quality, one's body of its own accord rejects nicotine as a poison rather than craves it when the body's defenses are not overcome by immoderate intake of it.
In fact, after reading the documentation supplied by my prescribing physician, I was able to completely quench the 35 years of smoking that otherwise I was not able to walk away from.
The innate problem is that the delivery system, the inhaling of the vaporized nicotine in the particulate smoke, always propels the level of intoxication above an ability of one's body to reject it by metabolism such that the owner's human body must be forced to accept.
At that level, when the system has become accustomed (conditioned, trained) to this level of poisoning, the diminishing of it by metabolism results in increasing the person's physical and mental discomfort. This state of unease is satisfied only by resupplying the toxin through smoking (or "chewing"; that is, lining the person's absorbing gum line with) more tobacco.
However, this delivery system each time supplies far above the amount needed to remove the discomfort, and that very quickly than the smoker begins to sense. So, even in the single isolated moment of inhaling the smoke of a cigarette, the delivery system quickly yields an immoderate intake of nicotine, each time. Thus the uncontrolled self-administration by smoking keeps the body continually in a state of intoxication of this substance, a state that becomes very hard to escape.
So, what is the "treatment" that the authors have ignored? Well, comparatively, the self-administered nicotinamide polyacrylex gum with a more controlled level of available nicotine offers a more moderate, slower, self-controllable way to regulate the body's level of nicotine without overwhelming its metabolic elimination.
The idea here is that supplying a limited but sufficient amount of nicotine to the bloodstream by mastcating, then placinf the pliable cud next to the absorbing gum line, will remove the discomfort for a while. At that point, the gum mass will have become less tasty as a candified chicle tree gum might have done similarly, and thus it is removed, spit out.
After that while of satisfying ones habit of oral activity, the discomfort of the lessened concentration of transient nicotine reappears, for which another instance of the gum-administered toxin from another fresh tablet may be resumed to appease the discomfort.
But what is happening concurrently is that successively, the effect of discomfort becomes marginally and imperceptibly less and less as time goes on, so that the residual amount of nicotine that the body is conditioned for becomes less and less. And as time passes, the averaged interval between instances of self-administration becomes longer and longer, according to the self-will of the partaker.
Of course, that will be sensed by the one desiring to "quit" perceiving the longer and longer waits between the intakes as being productive to one's sense of accomplishment, and a reward for this changed delivery system that does not leave one in a continual state of discomfort.
The rate of decline in a daily sense will vary according to the stress one experiences; but overall, the time comes when one is quite comfortable without nicotine for days at a time. Eventually the body's residual nicotine becomes zero, and the gum tablets, being a sufficient unneeded expense that one does not wish, are discarded. He/she is satisfactorily going on with life without the craving, not even excited by challenging stressful experiences that now invite other methods of fending off one's feelings of dissatisfaction.
What happened in my own anecdotal personal account was that after understanding that the literature (containing time-lapse graphs of blood nicotine concentration according to the smoking vs. the nicotene polyacrylex nicotine delivery) showed me (as a research scientist) that I ought to undertake my physician's advice by submitting to a change of delivery system for my nicotine, and to expect an outcome of cessation from the smoking habit. impregnation.
What I decided was that;
(1) Inability of ceasing the smoking habit is not a character flaw.What happened to me asa result was this:
(2) The delivery system is the cause of dependence, not the poison itself.
(3) Trying to obtain cessation while avoiding discomfort by mixing the two systems of self-administration would be wholly illogical, which then would indicate an unwillingness to live a reasoned life style.
(4) Using the nicotine polyacrylate would never be unacceptible at any time to family, employers, public forums, restaurants, churches, even whilst pumping gasoline.
(5) Self-administration of nicotine was becoming a very self-inflicted expensive habit, and the cigarette machines were no longe easily accessible.
(6) Therefore, I could have all the nicotine I wanted so as to remain comfortable, sticking with only the one reasonable intelligently and biologically reasonable delivery system, whilst going forward with my life.
Since the gum at that time was still on the pharmaceutical list, I got my first prescription of a specific amount endorsed by my physician Keeping myself comfortable with the pills as if It was smoking going on (but not compulsive as a habit), that amount of gum-based nicotine lasted a week and a half.In that time I did see that at the end, the amount I was using daily had somewhat diminished. So I got another of the prescribed amount. That sufficed me spread over two months, the rate of consumption varying with stress and other conditions that might have similarly resulted in uneven rates of intake; but overall, tapering off very obviously. After getting the next amount, after another six months I had never used it up, and was neglecting to even keep the gum close to hand.
Then, I was down to three or four remaining tablets, so I asked myself, "Should I just take these last ones, one by one as I felt, for a jolt, because I have paid for them?"
My alter ego replied, "Nah, why?" so I threw them away. The period of using the new schedule began in November of 1990 (when I was regularly coughing and snorting from the smoking) and lasted well into 1991. Since then, I have never wanted to or been tempted to light up a fag or even one of those great Cuban cigars that one could find in Canada, not one; not even in my dreams.
What I learned without argument is that:
(1) Nicotine is a poisonous substance that is NOT addictive by itself.It is interesting to compare the effect of deliberately intoxicating oneself with nicotine, and conditioning one's body to accept--even demand--a high residual presence of it, as compared to the use of another substance from the much deadlier nightshade belladonna plant(click here). Its poison that some people have deliberately conditioned their body to accept, have regularly dosed themselves with adosage that from it uninitiated other people would die.
(2) There is at least one, and possibly many other treatments that bring cessation of smoking tobacco in a way that is not painful, even one day.
(3) Nicotine dependency is caused by the substance delivery system employed, NOT the substance itself alone.
Here you have gotten the answer, a much simpler and logical solution to the smoking problem discussed in the original article above. Please note that the method of using nicotene skin patches is another delivery system that does not work because it continually supplies more nicotine, NOT self-administered moment-by-moment than you really need, always forcing your body's metabolism to fail in its desire to be completely rid of the nicotine (as well as the accompanying lung tar and coughing/snorting of nasal and throat irritation).
A slow nicotine taper from an electronic device would be much preferable and successful to the smagletude reeking havoc on your liver and pancreas.
To respond to your comment, you'll have to make it clearer For me.
(1) I have no idea what "smagletude" means. Pease define, eh?
(2) You used the word "reeking" which is the emission of an odor, something smelly. Is that what you meant? Or did you want to convey the idea of the homophonic word "wreaking" which sounds the same but has a very different meaning?
(3) How does your "electronic device " work? Is it someting that is worn by an individual while continually injecting the intoxicant into a person's blood stream? or is its use based on a multiple of ongoing time-spaced separate injections of the intoxicant. Or is the activation of the devce dependent on the wilful choice of the user? How would that be different than the method of using chewable nicotine=bearing materil formed by mastication to fit along the person's gum where the active but limited amount of the toxin slowly leaches from the chewed mass at thecontact with the person's gum line into the peron's blood vessels? (Two uses of the word "gum" here, the chewed substance as one kind of gum, a "cud"; and the person's dental dermis-covered blood-carrying flesh surrounding the teeth that brings nutrients to the living inner core of the tooth).
(4) Would you please illuminate me the embodiment of your scheme and how it works. Would it be more expensive than just buying the polyacrilex chewable material as a box of individual tablets each of which contains a limited amount of accessible nicotine, and administered only and wholly as the user desires? Andwishes to spend money on?
You’re an idiot, arent you?
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