Nicotine is good for you

When I was a teenager, I worked in a furniture factory, there was sawdust and wood chippings flying about everywhere. The only heating was from wood burning stoves, where all the waste product was burnt, which kept us quite warm, but also belched out thick black smoke.

In the actual woodmill, workers wore masks over their mouths to protect them from the sawdust and fumes, but elsewhere in the factory, we did not wear any protection. The order of the day was to stick a cigarette in your mouth and it would filter out the dust and smoke from the fire, stopping it from getting into your lungs. I did this, along with practically everyone else in our firm.

At that time, I used to smoke about 60 cigarettes a day, sometimes more. I kept this up for many years until I ran a bar in London, where I found it quite awkward to smoke all the time, as I often had to serve behind the bar or collect glasses. I didn't give up, but I did cut down.

Whenever I have a cold or the flu, I stop smoking immediately, not because it makes me feel worse, I just stop because when I have a cold my taste buds do not work properly, and I just do not get the same satisfying and wonderful taste and smell from a cigarette as I do normally. I now smoke on average about 4 to 5 cigarettes a day, black tobacco, with no added chemicals, just beautiful smelling, pure tobacco.

Two weeks ago I went to my doctor for a medical check up, and I was very pleased to hear that I passed with flying colours, and was proclaimed to have the heart and lungs of a twenty year old, and I am in my fifties by the way.

Smoking has for centuries, been associated with preventing illness. In the 1600s, men digging graves for victims of the plague, were given pipes to smoke by their employers to prevent them catching the plague. Many of these pipes have been unearthed in plague pits since, and are now known as plague pipes.

Tobacco has for centuries been associated with preventing illness and disease in one form or another, and now researchers and biotech companies are quietly developing pharmaceuticals that are decidedly good for brains, bowels, blood vessels and even immune systems -- and they are all inspired by tobacco's most active ingredient: nicotine.

Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.

Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety.

"Nicotine is highly stigmatised, says Don deBethizy, CEO of Targacept. "But the drug itself and the research generated by studying its effects on the brain both show great promise for helping us improve our physical and mental health."

For a couple of thousand years, smokers have sought a quick concentration boost by firing up a cigarette.

It turns out that cognitive buzz isn't just in smokers' heads. Scientists have found that nicotine really does boost certain transmitters in the brain that can help people think better, which obviously shows why so many anti smokers lack communicative skills. Now, the pharmaceutical industry hopes to improve on the effect.

Last year, biopharmaceutical company Targacept reported that a compound called ispronicline acted like nicotine to increase memory and concentration in elderly test subjects. Targacept next plans to test the drug on people with Alzheimer's disease.

If successful, ispronicline will be at the head of a whole new class of drugs that target neuronal nicotinic receptors. The receptors, found on nerve cells in the brain, respond to two chemicals: acetylcholine, which is found naturally in the brain, and nicotine.

Maybe anyone who wants to join in this debate on a sensible level, should take a leaf out of the scientists books and try lighting up a cigarette first.....it might work?

Its just so obvious, everyone knows that smoking gives the brain a boost.

Why do you think so many people that dont smoke are so thick!