One thing specifically for smoking cigarettes is it helps with symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but that isn't the nicotine specifically and is only affective if you inhale the smoke (so chew, snuff don't help, pipes and cigars don't help unless you inhale), they think it has something to do with oxygen deprivation or the carbon monoxide.
Obviously not efficacious as a treatment for Parkinson's disease.
There's long been suggestions of looking into a nicotine based medication for the negative and cognitive symptoms of various mental health disorders, but nothing's come of it so far. I guess nobody wants to work on it because "cigarettes/tobacco are evil", and anything connected to tobacco is evil by the transitive property of "muh feelz" or something.
Nicotine by itself isn't that harmful though, not any more than most anything else at any rate. It's the dose that determines medicine vs poison. Either way, regulating nicotine is dumb... sure it's addictive, but it's been studied that theoretically, it's not terribly addictive by itself (about on par with caffeine), it's extreme addictiveness comes when it's co-administered with MAOIs, which the tobacco plant has naturally and can be found in tobacco smoke, or so I've read before. Nicotine gets a bad rep by association.
So they're potentially regulating one of the least-harmful aspects of cigarettes and it may not do much to decrease their addictiveness.
And make no mistake, using tobacco for health benefits is not efficacious at all, you'll do more harm than any benefits you might get, and many of the benefits can be had in greater amounts and with less risk through other means, there's very few things that nicotine (not tobacco, but nicotine itself) is the best thing for (cognitive and negative symptoms of severe mental illness the only one I am aware of which there isn't any currently known other option that has any effect). I'm not saying tobacco is beneficial for your health by any means, far from it. I just mean to point out how dumb a lot of this crap is. It's a personal choice that consenting adults should be allowed to make as it mostly only harms the self (especially compared to other substances people can consume, the social harm is actually relatively low, thanks in part to public smoking bans where people who choose to not use tobacco aren't subjected to secondhand smoke like they were in times past).
Obviously not efficacious as a treatment for Parkinson's disease.
There's long been suggestions of looking into a nicotine based medication for the negative and cognitive symptoms of various mental health disorders, but nothing's come of it so far. I guess nobody wants to work on it because "cigarettes/tobacco are evil", and anything connected to tobacco is evil by the transitive property of "muh feelz" or something.
Nicotine by itself isn't that harmful though, not any more than most anything else at any rate. It's the dose that determines medicine vs poison. Either way, regulating nicotine is dumb... sure it's addictive, but it's been studied that theoretically, it's not terribly addictive by itself (about on par with caffeine), it's extreme addictiveness comes when it's co-administered with MAOIs, which the tobacco plant has naturally and can be found in tobacco smoke, or so I've read before. Nicotine gets a bad rep by association.
So they're potentially regulating one of the least-harmful aspects of cigarettes and it may not do much to decrease their addictiveness.
And make no mistake, using tobacco for health benefits is not efficacious at all, you'll do more harm than any benefits you might get, and many of the benefits can be had in greater amounts and with less risk through other means, there's very few things that nicotine (not tobacco, but nicotine itself) is the best thing for (cognitive and negative symptoms of severe mental illness the only one I am aware of which there isn't any currently known other option that has any effect). I'm not saying tobacco is beneficial for your health by any means, far from it. I just mean to point out how dumb a lot of this crap is. It's a personal choice that consenting adults should be allowed to make as it mostly only harms the self (especially compared to other substances people can consume, the social harm is actually relatively low, thanks in part to public smoking bans where people who choose to not use tobacco aren't subjected to secondhand smoke like they were in times past).
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