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medpundit |
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Thursday, September 26, 2002There is a physiological basis to its medicinal effects. The cells in the brain and in the gut have receptors that respond to nicotine. They’re even called nicotinic receptors because nicotine was used to study them before chemists were able to synthesize the biological transmitters in the lab. Recently ,studies have been done to test nicotine's effectiveness in gastroinestinal illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease and in neurological illness, such as Parkinson's disease. The results as they pertain to nicotine’s effectiveness can be summed up as: “Maybe yes. Maybe no. You know what? We don’t know.” The question becomes, is it more effective than the therapy we already have, and is it worth the risks. Nicotine patches make its use as therapy more acceptable, and the studies I mentioned above relied on them, not cigarettes. Smoking tobacco for its potential health benefits, however, can’t be recommended. It’s far more harmful in terms of causing emphysema and lung cancer than it is beneficial. OOPS: That wasn't Queen Isabella the sixteenth century physician and tobacco promoter was talking to. I got my queens and promoters mixed up. It was a Frenchman, Nicot,(from whom the word nicotine is derived) who sold Catherine de Medici, the queen of France, on tobacco. It cured her son's migraine headaches, so she promoted it to the court of France and thus to the rest of Europe,since France was the cultural leader of the time. posted by Sydney on 9/26/2002 08:22:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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