Showing posts with label nicotine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nicotine. Show all posts

Thursday, February 01, 2024

How Nicotine Impacts Your Brain & Enhances Focus | Dr. Andrew Huberman

Oct 15, 2022 | Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses how nicotine impacts your brain and can enhance focus. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine and host of the Huberman Lab podcast.

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Nicotine’s Effects on the Brain & Body & How to Quit Smoking or Vaping | Huberman Lab Podcast #90

In this episode, I explain how nicotine impacts the brain and body, including its potent ability to enhance attention, focus, and alertness, increase blood pressure and metabolism and reduce appetite. I discuss nicotine’s ability to increase the action of neurochemicals, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine and activate sympathetic (alertness-promoting) neural circuits. I also discuss common nicotine delivery methods, such as cigarettes, vaping, dip, and snuff, and how they each create their own unique experience and how they, but not nicotine itself, cause cancer and other adverse health effects. I also explain science-based tools to permanently quit smoking cigarettes or vaping, including peer-reviewed clinical hypnosis tools, antidepressants, and alternative nicotine replacement (patches, lozenges, gums etc.). As nicotine is one of the most widely used substances with billions of users — most of whom report wanting to quit — this episode ought to be of interest to former/current nicotine users, those who want to quit smoking or vaping and/or those interested in learning the biology behind how nicotine impacts the brain and body.

Monday, July 04, 2022

Vape Haze – The Thriving Black Market of Vaping | Four Corners | ABC News

Jun 28, 2022 | Vaping was hailed as a new way to quit smoking. But now there are serious concerns it’s hooking a new generation on nicotine. An investigation by Four Corners has found there is a thriving black market, fueled by rising demand among young people and a failure to police the rules. We delve into the fierce battle about the harms of vaping, in what’s become a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Vaping advocates claim any harms caused by e-cigarettes pale in comparison to the dangers of smoking - and that vaping can be an effective quit tool. But public health experts say there’s limited evidence they help to quit smoking, and warn that vaping poses a significant long-term public health risk.

What a surprise! Vaping has become a problem in Australia, especially for young people. Well I never!

Politicians of every stripe, but particularly left-wing politicians, are engaged in social engineering; they are trying to change people’s preferences and habits, and in so doing are causing distortions in the marketplace and are engaging in social engineering. Sometimes things are better left alone. the vowel of your choice—leave things alone?

First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a conventional cigarette as long as one’s smoking is kept within limits and it is done in moderation. I have smoked for most of my adult life; though I have given up now. (With ease, I hasten to add.) Smoking is not an addiction; rather, it is a habit.

They try and say that nicotine is “the most addictive substance known to man”. TOSH! POPPYCOCK! NONSENSE! Nicotine is hardly addictive at all! It is only addictive if you let it be so. I smoked twenty cigarettes a day for most of my adult life and when I gave up, I suffered no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. Not one! Nor have I had any cravings since giving up. (It will be three months on July 10th since giving up.)

Smoking has become the bête noire of our day; but it is actually a very pleasurable habit. The secret is not letting it control you. Many things can become addictive if you allow them to become so: chocolate, alcohol, sugary foods, gambling, and many other things besides. Self-control and self-discipline are called for.

Governments have been pushing vaping as an alternative to smoking for several years. I find this totally and utterly irresponsible, because we do not know the long-term effects of the habit. Fact is, too, they are very appealing to young people, because they are often high-tech, and because they can be purchased in all sorts of weird and wonderful flavours. So these young people are becoming dependent on them and they are convincing themselves that they are addicted to nicotine. Young people are young are often impressionable, weak-willed, and lacking in discipline.

What needs to be done is for governments to put pressure on the cigarette manufacturers to take the crap out of real cigarettes. Make them take out all those nasty chemicals, make them manufacture safer real cigarettes; and governments should bring the price of real cigarettes right down by taking all that excessive tax off them.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for bringing down the incidence of smoking; but it should be done by education and gentle persuasion. Social engineering is not only wrong; it is also very dangerous. Because people will get their kicks in life, one way or another. Take one pleasure away from them and they will find another pleasure to replace the one taken away. Moreover, that pleasure denied to people may well turn out in the long-run to be far less injurious to health than the new-fangled habit used to replace it.

Further, while we are on the subjects of smoking and vaping. Smoking a cigarette can look extremely sexy when done by an attractive person. That’s why they have been used to good effect in movies/films over the decades to make handsome actors and beautiful actresses look sexy. Vaping will never be used to replace cigarettes for this purpose. It just doesn’t have that allure. There is hardly anything about vaping which increases one’s sex appeal. Forget it! When I have seen people vaping, cloud-chasing, they look as though there’s a locomotive ahead! Furthermore, putting a hard piece of plastic onto one’s lips is hardly a sensual experience. – © Mark Alexander

Saturday, March 27, 2021

On Smoking: Mark Littlewood in Conversation with Simon Clark

On 16th May 2019, to mark the 40th anniversary of the smokers' group FOREST (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, spoke to Forest director Simon Clark.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

DOCU | You Don't Know Nicotine

Amidst radical changes in nicotine use globally, one filmmaker's journey through the confusion & fear leads to a startling discovery about Earth's most hated stimulant. Society may be changed forever.

Friday, March 31, 2017

Will Self and Gregor Hens on Nicotine, Smoking, Vaping and More


Gregor Hens discusses his book, Nicotine, and the joys and perils of smoking, with Will Self. Filmed at the London Review Bookshop on 10 November 2015.


Gregor Hens’ book: Nicotine »

Auf deutsch: Nikotin »

Book Review – NYT: ‘Nicotine,’ the Stuff of Burning Desire »