Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Writer REBECCA LEY tried the latest fad nicotine products and found striking results<!-- wp:html --><div></div> <div> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Smoking <span>is terrible for us. We know this to be unequivocally true. And vaping – although touted as a ‘safe’ alternative – itself poses serious health risks.</span></p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">But users have difficulty quitting both habits because of nicotine, the highly addictive chemical they deliver. And yet nicotine is growing in popularity as a ‘nootropic’ – a substance that improves cognitive function, supposedly without harmful effects.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">On his popular podcast, The Huberman Lab, Andrew Huberman, a distinguished neuroscientist and an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University in California, discusses ‘science-based tools for everyday life’.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">He recently spoke about his own occasional use of small amounts of nicotine for its cognitive benefits.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">When it enters the body, nicotine can cause a temporary feeling of well-being through a surge of endorphins. It can also improve concentration and memory.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">And when you first look at it, you discover that a surprising number of people – from medical students to CEOs – are tactically altering their brain chemistry with nicotine by taking small doses in lozenges, gum, sprays or patches (the kinds of products commonly used). to quit smoking) to improve their cognitive performance.</p> <div class="artSplitter mol-img-group"> <div class="mol-img"> <div class="image-wrap"> </div> </div> <p class="imageCaption">Smoking is terrible for us. We know this to be unequivocally true. And vaping – although touted as a ‘safe’ alternative – itself poses serious health risks. But users have a hard time quitting both habits because of nicotine, the highly addictive chemical they deliver</p> </div> <p class="mol-para-with-font">These advocates know how dangerous smoking can be, but they want to exploit the effects of nicotine, a potent drug widely available from supermarkets and high street chemists.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Smoking is harmful to us because of the toxins it produces, such as carbon monoxide and tar. In contrast, nicotine is not so obviously harmful in small amounts – the biggest risk it poses is making smoking so addictive in the first place.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Nevertheless, nicotine carries risks: raising blood pressure and heart rate, narrowing arteries and hardening their walls, potentially increasing the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke with regular use.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Still, says Dr. James Gill, a GP and a lecturer at Warwick Medical School, who has seen an increase in awareness of nootropics among students, “people are increasingly finding ways to hack their bodies with nootropics, one example being the widely available and legal nicotine’ .</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">He says: ‘We have nicotine receptors throughout our brain and body. Ingesting nicotine stimulates these receptors to produce acetylcholine, one of the main chemical messengers in our nervous system, as well as dopamine, another chemical messenger, and the hormone adrenaline – with far-reaching effects that can improve mood, motivation and focus.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">The nicotine begins to have an effect after two to 15 minutes and lasts for about 45 minutes. The drug has a half-life (that is, the time it takes for the active substance to reduce by half in your body) of about two hours.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Dr. Gill adds: ‘Nicotine also appears to activate receptors in the hippocampus, the region of the brain that converts our short-term thoughts into long-term memories. So when we take nicotine, it can also help stimulate memory.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">The truth is that humans have been using nicotine for thousands of years. The substance occurs naturally in several plant varieties – including nightshades such as tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and potatoes.</p> <div class="artSplitter mol-img-group"> <div class="mol-img"> <div class="image-wrap"> </div> </div> <p class="imageCaption">Smoking is harmful to us because of the toxins it produces, such as carbon monoxide and tar. In contrast, nicotine is not so obviously harmful in small amounts – the biggest risk it poses is making smoking so addictive in the first place</p> </div> <p class="mol-para-with-font">But it is found at its highest level in the tobacco plant (named after Nicotiana tabacum, a plant again named after Jean Nicot, a French ambassador who sent tobacco from Brazil to Paris in 1560 to promote its medicinal use for health problems, including headaches). Andrew Huberman devoted a recent episode of his podcast to nicotine, talking about an unidentified Nobel laureate he met who regularly chewed nicotine gum because of growing research suggesting that nicotine can prevent age-related cognitive decline.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">When it comes to its supposed benefits for focus, Dr. Rachel Taylor, a neuropsychologist at Manchester University: ‘Neurotransmitters are essential for our focus and state of mind. It is interesting to note that people with schizophrenia, adult ADHD and major depression often smoke more than the population without these disorders.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">‘All these conditions involve an inability to focus on certain stimuli while avoiding others, and it may be that they are effectively self-medicating with nicotine.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">She adds: ‘It also helps with bowel movements. However, it is toxic in high doses and can be fatal.’ Taken to excess, nicotine can be toxic. While extreme toxicity has been relatively rare, it has become more prevalent in recent years thanks to a slew of new nicotine products such as e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine. Symptoms of nicotine poisoning include nausea, dizziness, abnormal heart rate and high blood pressure.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">And, as Dr. Gill explains, even a little too much can undermine any cognitive benefits. “Nicotine shows an ‘inverse J dose response,’ meaning that while a low dose and short exposure may provide a benefit, higher, longer doses may actually impair cognitive function,” he says.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Then, of course, there is the inevitable question of how highly addictive nicotine is. Dr. Gill says: ‘It’s addictive because it boosts dopamine, which feels good – and especially if you use a delivery method, like cigarettes, that hits the brain with the drug almost immediately.’</p> <div class="art-ins mol-factbox health"> <h3 class="mol-factbox-title">Secrets of an A-List body: How to get the enviable physique of the stars</h3> <div class="ins cleared mol-factbox-body"> <p class="mol-para-with-font mol-style-bold">This week: Tess Daly’s waist</p> <div class="mol-img-group float-r"> <div class="mol-img"> <div class="image-wrap"> </div> </div> <p class="imageCaption">The jumpsuit she wore to the launch of Strictly Come Dancing highlighted presenter Tess Daly’s trim waist</p> </div> <p class="mol-para-with-font">The jumpsuit she wore to the launch of Strictly Come Dancing highlighted presenter Tess Daly’s trim waist.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">The 53-year-old mother keeps fit with swimming, trampoline and yoga — ‘I don’t like to sweat a lot’ — and often starts her day with five minutes of skipping.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">What to try: This walk-out tones the core, strengthens the shoulders, and stretches the legs and lower back.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Start standing with your feet slightly apart, reach into a forward fold and plant your hands in front of your feet. Shift your weight into your hands and walk them out in front until your back, glutes and heels are aligned in a plank, with your palms and toes supporting you.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Take a few breaths, then return your hands to the starting position.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Repeat three sets of five daily.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font"> </p></div> </div> <p class="mol-para-with-font">That brain boost is reduced with regular use, he says. ‘Your body has a thermostat for everything. If you have a lot of exposure to a drug, the benefits are reduced as your brain learns to compensate and you want and need more to achieve the same effect.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">As a lifelong non-smoker who doesn’t rely on anything stronger than regular mugs of PG Tips to fuel days of writing at my kitchen table, I have to admit I’m curious about nicotine’s touted nootropic benefits. I decide to do my own careful research and consult with David Tomen, a self-proclaimed ‘nootropics expert’ and author of Secrets of the Optimized Brain, on how to proceed.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">He warns me that the key is to keep the dose low. ‘And use it only occasionally. Too much nicotine desensitizes the receptors, so tolerance is a problem. But your receptors recover quite quickly if you give them a break for a day.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">I decide to experiment with low doses, separated from each other, to see if nicotine does anything to my productivity.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Chewing gum: I start by trying a piece of Nicorette chewing gum, which contains 2 mg of nicotine (a smoker typically gets between 1 mg and 2 mg of nicotine from each cigarette). I chew enthusiastically before getting down to work and am surprised to find myself, just ten minutes later, nauseous and shaking. It is deeply unpleasant and not conducive to concentration. I end up gagging over the sink.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">When I ask Dr. Gill, where I went wrong, he says: ‘You got nervous, just like you would if you never drank caffeine and decided to have a double espresso. Even a 2mg dose is enough to make you feel that way if you’re not used to it.’ This reaction is called being ‘nic sick’. It makes me shudder to think about the increasing number of children vaping and exposing themselves to large doses of nicotine.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Lozenges: A few days later I slowly suck a 1mg nicotine lozenge – David Tomen says these are ‘the safest effective delivery for using nicotine as a nootropic’ with ‘far fewer toxic ingredients than other delivery methods’. This time there are no tremors or nausea, instead I experience a noticeable lift, as if I had gone for a run or drank a strong coffee: I can feel the adrenaline. This alarms me. I can see how addictive it can be.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Spray: Nicotine spray is faster and more comfortable to use than chewing gum or lozenges and provides the same noticeable boost as the lozenge. I also find that I am less hungry at lunchtime – decreased appetite is another nicotine side effect. When I ask about the risk of addiction, says Dr. Gill ‘Daily use may well form an addiction – and probably for weeks rather than months’.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Patches: I am ending my attempt at nicotine with Nicorette patches. Here, the release of nicotine into the bloodstream is slower. The lowest dose is a 7mg patch, which is the amount it should release over 24 hours. However, I don’t experience any jitters and I may feel more focused and productive. But as Dr. Gill says: ‘If you think something will help you focus better, it probably will.’</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Having said all that, there is no doubt that nicotine provides a cognitive boost if you get past the novice side effects, and I can see how tempting this might be for students or academics. But I’m afraid of developing any kind of addiction—and skeptical of the burgeoning nootropics industry that suggests we look beyond healthy behaviors like exercise and good nutrition to ‘optimize’ our existence.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Dr. Gill perhaps puts it best: ‘We are all a bundle of chemicals in human form. There are many things we can do to adjust these chemicals – sometimes for the positive and sometimes for the negative.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">“But if you’re going to mess with your chemistry, don’t forget that your chemistry is going to mess with you.”</p> </div><!-- /wp:html -->

Smoking is terrible for us. We know this to be unequivocally true. And vaping – although touted as a ‘safe’ alternative – itself poses serious health risks.

But users have difficulty quitting both habits because of nicotine, the highly addictive chemical they deliver. And yet nicotine is growing in popularity as a ‘nootropic’ – a substance that improves cognitive function, supposedly without harmful effects.

On his popular podcast, The Huberman Lab, Andrew Huberman, a distinguished neuroscientist and an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University in California, discusses ‘science-based tools for everyday life’.

He recently spoke about his own occasional use of small amounts of nicotine for its cognitive benefits.

When it enters the body, nicotine can cause a temporary feeling of well-being through a surge of endorphins. It can also improve concentration and memory.

And when you first look at it, you discover that a surprising number of people – from medical students to CEOs – are tactically altering their brain chemistry with nicotine by taking small doses in lozenges, gum, sprays or patches (the kinds of products commonly used). to quit smoking) to improve their cognitive performance.

Smoking is terrible for us. We know this to be unequivocally true. And vaping – although touted as a ‘safe’ alternative – itself poses serious health risks. But users have a hard time quitting both habits because of nicotine, the highly addictive chemical they deliver

These advocates know how dangerous smoking can be, but they want to exploit the effects of nicotine, a potent drug widely available from supermarkets and high street chemists.

Smoking is harmful to us because of the toxins it produces, such as carbon monoxide and tar. In contrast, nicotine is not so obviously harmful in small amounts – the biggest risk it poses is making smoking so addictive in the first place.

Nevertheless, nicotine carries risks: raising blood pressure and heart rate, narrowing arteries and hardening their walls, potentially increasing the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke with regular use.

Still, says Dr. James Gill, a GP and a lecturer at Warwick Medical School, who has seen an increase in awareness of nootropics among students, “people are increasingly finding ways to hack their bodies with nootropics, one example being the widely available and legal nicotine’ .

He says: ‘We have nicotine receptors throughout our brain and body. Ingesting nicotine stimulates these receptors to produce acetylcholine, one of the main chemical messengers in our nervous system, as well as dopamine, another chemical messenger, and the hormone adrenaline – with far-reaching effects that can improve mood, motivation and focus.’

The nicotine begins to have an effect after two to 15 minutes and lasts for about 45 minutes. The drug has a half-life (that is, the time it takes for the active substance to reduce by half in your body) of about two hours.

Dr. Gill adds: ‘Nicotine also appears to activate receptors in the hippocampus, the region of the brain that converts our short-term thoughts into long-term memories. So when we take nicotine, it can also help stimulate memory.’

The truth is that humans have been using nicotine for thousands of years. The substance occurs naturally in several plant varieties – including nightshades such as tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and potatoes.

Smoking is harmful to us because of the toxins it produces, such as carbon monoxide and tar. In contrast, nicotine is not so obviously harmful in small amounts – the biggest risk it poses is making smoking so addictive in the first place

But it is found at its highest level in the tobacco plant (named after Nicotiana tabacum, a plant again named after Jean Nicot, a French ambassador who sent tobacco from Brazil to Paris in 1560 to promote its medicinal use for health problems, including headaches). Andrew Huberman devoted a recent episode of his podcast to nicotine, talking about an unidentified Nobel laureate he met who regularly chewed nicotine gum because of growing research suggesting that nicotine can prevent age-related cognitive decline.

When it comes to its supposed benefits for focus, Dr. Rachel Taylor, a neuropsychologist at Manchester University: ‘Neurotransmitters are essential for our focus and state of mind. It is interesting to note that people with schizophrenia, adult ADHD and major depression often smoke more than the population without these disorders.

‘All these conditions involve an inability to focus on certain stimuli while avoiding others, and it may be that they are effectively self-medicating with nicotine.’

She adds: ‘It also helps with bowel movements. However, it is toxic in high doses and can be fatal.’ Taken to excess, nicotine can be toxic. While extreme toxicity has been relatively rare, it has become more prevalent in recent years thanks to a slew of new nicotine products such as e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine. Symptoms of nicotine poisoning include nausea, dizziness, abnormal heart rate and high blood pressure.

And, as Dr. Gill explains, even a little too much can undermine any cognitive benefits. “Nicotine shows an ‘inverse J dose response,’ meaning that while a low dose and short exposure may provide a benefit, higher, longer doses may actually impair cognitive function,” he says.

Then, of course, there is the inevitable question of how highly addictive nicotine is. Dr. Gill says: ‘It’s addictive because it boosts dopamine, which feels good – and especially if you use a delivery method, like cigarettes, that hits the brain with the drug almost immediately.’

Secrets of an A-List body: How to get the enviable physique of the stars

This week: Tess Daly’s waist

The jumpsuit she wore to the launch of Strictly Come Dancing highlighted presenter Tess Daly’s trim waist

The jumpsuit she wore to the launch of Strictly Come Dancing highlighted presenter Tess Daly’s trim waist.

The 53-year-old mother keeps fit with swimming, trampoline and yoga — ‘I don’t like to sweat a lot’ — and often starts her day with five minutes of skipping.

What to try: This walk-out tones the core, strengthens the shoulders, and stretches the legs and lower back.

Start standing with your feet slightly apart, reach into a forward fold and plant your hands in front of your feet. Shift your weight into your hands and walk them out in front until your back, glutes and heels are aligned in a plank, with your palms and toes supporting you.

Take a few breaths, then return your hands to the starting position.

Repeat three sets of five daily.

That brain boost is reduced with regular use, he says. ‘Your body has a thermostat for everything. If you have a lot of exposure to a drug, the benefits are reduced as your brain learns to compensate and you want and need more to achieve the same effect.’

As a lifelong non-smoker who doesn’t rely on anything stronger than regular mugs of PG Tips to fuel days of writing at my kitchen table, I have to admit I’m curious about nicotine’s touted nootropic benefits. I decide to do my own careful research and consult with David Tomen, a self-proclaimed ‘nootropics expert’ and author of Secrets of the Optimized Brain, on how to proceed.

He warns me that the key is to keep the dose low. ‘And use it only occasionally. Too much nicotine desensitizes the receptors, so tolerance is a problem. But your receptors recover quite quickly if you give them a break for a day.’

I decide to experiment with low doses, separated from each other, to see if nicotine does anything to my productivity.

Chewing gum: I start by trying a piece of Nicorette chewing gum, which contains 2 mg of nicotine (a smoker typically gets between 1 mg and 2 mg of nicotine from each cigarette). I chew enthusiastically before getting down to work and am surprised to find myself, just ten minutes later, nauseous and shaking. It is deeply unpleasant and not conducive to concentration. I end up gagging over the sink.

When I ask Dr. Gill, where I went wrong, he says: ‘You got nervous, just like you would if you never drank caffeine and decided to have a double espresso. Even a 2mg dose is enough to make you feel that way if you’re not used to it.’ This reaction is called being ‘nic sick’. It makes me shudder to think about the increasing number of children vaping and exposing themselves to large doses of nicotine.

Lozenges: A few days later I slowly suck a 1mg nicotine lozenge – David Tomen says these are ‘the safest effective delivery for using nicotine as a nootropic’ with ‘far fewer toxic ingredients than other delivery methods’. This time there are no tremors or nausea, instead I experience a noticeable lift, as if I had gone for a run or drank a strong coffee: I can feel the adrenaline. This alarms me. I can see how addictive it can be.

Spray: Nicotine spray is faster and more comfortable to use than chewing gum or lozenges and provides the same noticeable boost as the lozenge. I also find that I am less hungry at lunchtime – decreased appetite is another nicotine side effect. When I ask about the risk of addiction, says Dr. Gill ‘Daily use may well form an addiction – and probably for weeks rather than months’.

Patches: I am ending my attempt at nicotine with Nicorette patches. Here, the release of nicotine into the bloodstream is slower. The lowest dose is a 7mg patch, which is the amount it should release over 24 hours. However, I don’t experience any jitters and I may feel more focused and productive. But as Dr. Gill says: ‘If you think something will help you focus better, it probably will.’

Having said all that, there is no doubt that nicotine provides a cognitive boost if you get past the novice side effects, and I can see how tempting this might be for students or academics. But I’m afraid of developing any kind of addiction—and skeptical of the burgeoning nootropics industry that suggests we look beyond healthy behaviors like exercise and good nutrition to ‘optimize’ our existence.

Dr. Gill perhaps puts it best: ‘We are all a bundle of chemicals in human form. There are many things we can do to adjust these chemicals – sometimes for the positive and sometimes for the negative.

“But if you’re going to mess with your chemistry, don’t forget that your chemistry is going to mess with you.”

By