Science finds Nicotine Enormously Helpful to Humans

I dont know that Nicotine has any negative effects at low doses (for instance from smoking a pack a day)....are you sure that you do? There are about 70 potentially harmful substances in tobacco smoke, maybe the other 69 do the bad stuff and Nicotine is the positive one .

Take anti-smoking statistics. Brignell contends that the oft-used figure of 400,000 premature deaths a year in the United States because of smoking is a "total fabrication". He asserts that the figure depends on 60 per cent of those "premature deaths" occurring in smokers aged over 70, and 17 per cent of them at age 85 and above. Brignell argues that the same data can be used to "prove" that tobacco saves 200,000 lives each year. He also quotes a study from the University of Athens that asserts that Greece has the highest per capita consumption of tobacco in the world but the lowest rate of lung cancer. And Japan, with a high smoking rate, has an average life expectancy of 79.1 years.

Talk to physicians and they'll tell you there are few things you can put in your mouth that are worse for you than a cigarette. But it's not all doom and gloom. Smokers are at least doing their bit to slow down the runaway obesity epidemic that is sweeping through the western world. "In many studies, you often find smokers are slimmer. We've certainly seen it in our studies," says Jodi Flaws at the University of Maryland school of medicine. "Some people think it's due to certain chemicals in cigarettes somehow making them burn more calories, but others believe it suppresses appetite. It may well be both."

Drastically upping your chances of cancer and heart disease might not be the best way to avoid obesity, but it's certainly easier than running round the block.

Scientists have also found evidence that smoking might, in some circumstances, help prevent the onset of various dementias. Many dementias go hand-in-hand with a loss of chemical receptors in the brain that just happen to be stimulated by nicotine. Smoking seems to bolster these receptors, and smokers have more of them. The theory is that smokers may then have more to lose before they start losing their minds. "It does seem that nicotine has a preventative effect, but the problem is that the other stuff in the cigarette tends to rot everything else," says Roger Bullock, a specialist in dementia and director of the Kingshill Research Centre in Swindon. So if your time is nearly up anyway, and you have somehow managed to steer a course past the Scylla and Charybdis of heart attacks and tumours, smoking might just help you retain your marbles

Smoking can help boost memory and concentration, say scientists. The discovery offers hope of a nicotine pill that mimics these effects to treat Alzheimer's disease.
Experts are developing drugs that copy the active ingredients in tobacco that stimulate the brain without causing heart disease, cancer, stroke or addiction.
The move follows the discovery that nicotine can boost the intelligence and recall ability of animals in laboratory experiments.
The researchers, who present their latest findings at a brain conference today, hope that the new drugs, which will be available in five years, could have fewer side effects than existing medicines for dementia.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1034701/Smoking-good-memory-concentration.html#ixzz1PC9z36fx

(Reuters Health) - A new study adds to the previously reported evidence that cigarette smoking protects against Parkinson's disease. Specifically, the new research shows a temporal relationship between smoking and reduced risk of Parkinson's disease. That is, the protective effect wanes after smokers quit.

"It is not our intent to promote smoking as a protective measure against Parkinson's disease," Evan L. Thacker from Harvard School of Public Health emphasized in comments to Reuters Health. "Obviously smoking has a multitude of negative consequences. Rather, we did this study to try to encourage other scientists...to consider the possibility that neuroprotective chemicals may be present in tobacco leaves."

As reported in the March 6th issue of Neurology, Thacker and colleagues analyzed data, including detailed lifetime smoking histories, from 79,977 women and 63,348 men participating in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. During about 9 years of follow-up, 413 subjects developed definite or probable Parkinson's disease.

Compared to people who had never smoked and were considered to have "normal" Parkinson's disease risk, former smokers had a 22-percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease and current smokers had a 73-percent lower risk.

"The results were similar for men and women, and were also similar to the results of studies by many other researchers looking at the same topic," Thacker noted.

In former smokers, more years of smoking, fewer years since quitting, more cigarettes per day, and a higher total amount of lifetime smoking were all related to a lower Parkinson's disease risk. The researchers also found that the duration of smoking and the time since quitting influenced risk more than the average daily amount of smoking.

"A 30 percent to 60 percent decreased risk of Parkinson's disease was apparent for smoking as early as 15 to 24 years before symptom onset, but not for smoking 25 or more years before onset," the investigators report.

Ten years ago, researchers stumbled onto a striking finding: Women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were nearly four times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn't hold such fatalistic views.

Ive seen two close family members succumb to metastisi of lung cancer this year and I dont think I will support your logic .

Did either regret smoking

Did either support the government action to make smoking difficult and expensive?

Thats true. Their dying was a terrible inconvenience to my life. Im so glad you are able to see these things with your usual crystalline focus

Until you figure out a way to make your voluntary addiction pleasant to people who don't share it, rather than obnoxious, you're not going to get much support.

tell that to African-Americans.