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BIOHACKING WITH NICOTINE
A recent book from renowned author Dr Gundry talks about how to improve your gut health, and how this can lead to a wide array of benefits. Titled ‘Gut Check: Unleash the Power of your Microbiome to Reverse Disease and Transform Your Mental, Physical, and Emotional Health’, Dr Gundry covers a plethora of subjects on improving gut health to improve longevity and stave off disease, as well as function better overall.
Dr Gundry also spoke with Dave Asprey, the aptly named the ‘father of biohacking’ – a term used to describe using science and technology to improve how your body functions – to talk about the book and their experiences. One topic of discussion was the benefits of nicotine that are often overlooked due to its association with smoking.
So, this is a great opportunity to talk about the benefits of nicotine, some relatively well known, some not, and how biohackers can use nicotine as a tool to help improve aspects of their bodies’ functionality.
NICOTINE IN CIGARETTES
So often, nicotine is associated with smoking due to its responsibility as the addictive chemical in tobacco. It is linked with smoking so commonly that many people conflate the negative effects of smoking with nicotine itself. However, nicotine is being studied separately from cigarette smoking and we can see some of the potential benefits of nicotine itself in this article.
For smokers, quitting is hard due to the addictive nature of nicotine, as well as the habits formed around smoking such as having a cigarette with your morning coffee, or smoking at the pub with friends, not to mention how the nicotine consumption from smoking helps them feel like they are functioning ‘normally’. This is one of the reasons that E-Cigarettes are proving to be one of the most effective ways to quit smoking!
The other challenge that smoking presents is the amount of nicotine that it gets into your blood due to the additives that tobacco companies use to ‘increase the effectiveness’ of their cigarettes.
DOES NICOTINE HELP COGNITIVE FUNCTION?
While you may be unaware of the fact, it’s not new information that nicotine has shown promise for cognitive improvements. There are many studies indicating that nicotine can help to improve coordination, vigilance, memory and reaction time. These benefits define nicotine as a ‘nootropic’, which is to say it is a cognitive enhancing substance.
Similar substances may already be included in your diet that are also nootropic – the biggest one is probably coffee, or rather the substance caffeine! (1) If you are a coffee drinker, no doubt you feel a little tired and have a bit of a foggy brain before that morning cup, it may even perk up your mood! This indicates the nootropic effect of caffeine, that many of us take advantage of to get going in the mornings.
The advantage that nicotine has over coffee is that the effects of coffee last between 5 and 6 hours, which is why many coffee experts say to leave in the region of 8 hours between your last cup of coffee and going to bed. Nicotine, however, lasts about 1 to 2 hours, making it a better choice for cognitive activity late in the day.
DOES NICOTINE PROVIDE NEUROPROTECTION?
How nicotine stimulates cells may help explain some of the neuroprotective effect of nicotine. Evidence shows that nicotine use appears to stave off the onset of Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s. Many groups of smokers, for example, have lower incidences of some inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. (2)
CAN YOU USE NICOTINE FOR FAT LOSS?
Nicotine increases your heart rate, and therefore increases your metabolism. This leads to the use of more energy, and nicotine taken through smoking increases energy expenditure by about 10%, which means you burn about 200 more calories per 24 hour period. (3)
Nicotine is also an appetite suppressant, reducing the desire to eat. This, in addition to the increased metabolism makes nicotine a double-whammy for weight loss and preventing weight gain.
Further to this, there is evidence that nicotine helps to control mitochondrial function. It is in the mitochondria that our energy is effectively ‘made’, so nicotine helps to regulate the ‘powerhouses of the body’ as well as increasing ‘mitochondrial biogenesis’ which means nicotine may help increase the number of mitochondria. (4)
DOES NICOTINE IMPROVE LONGEVITY?
Recently it has been suggested that nicotine may play a role in something called ‘mitochondrial uncoupling’. This process was initially thought to be a dysfunction, an unwanted effect, however uncoupling proteins found locally in the body indicate that this process may be more significant that first thought and could have relevance in other biological processes.
We have already talked about the effect that nicotine has on mitochondria, but mitochondrial uncoupling appears to have beneficial effects on longevity, certainly in mouse models. This process activates signal pathways linked to the life-extending effects of calorie restriction, and a process called ‘mitohormesis’ which is a response to stress that actually increases stress resistance, producing beneficial health effects. (5)
HOW DOES NICOTINE AFFECT THE GUT BIOME?
There is a focus on the gut biome when it comes to health these days, with many experts indicating the importance of a healthy gut and how this links back to our overall health. While more studies need to be done, some do indicate a positive effect from nicotine on the gut.
One such study found that oxidative stress response and DNA repair genes were increased in male mice subjected to nicotine. (6) This could mean nicotine is helping to tackle ‘free-radicals’ in the gut, and the presence of higher levels of DNA repair genes could be contributing to longevity as the aging process is attributed to the ‘fraying’ of DNA.
BIOHACKING WITH NICOTINE - CONCLUSION
It is important to remember that the positive effects of nicotine will not outweigh the negative effects of smoking, so if you want to use nicotine without that harm you need to stop smoking and get your nicotine by other means.
This is where vaping can help! The largest evidence review to-date, conducted by Cochrane, found ‘high-certainty’ evidence that E-Cigarettes are more effective for quitting smoking that traditional forms of nicotine replacement therapy, like nicotine patches and nicotine gum! (7)
So if you are a smoker who is concerned about quitting, but you don’t want to lose the beneficial effects of nicotine, make the switch with SMOKO and grab one of our E-Cigarette starter kits today – you can still enjoy that morning coffee with our great-tasting, UK made e-liquids that are available in tobacco flavours, or something a little different to pique your taste-buds!
The important thing is to stop smoking today!
REFERENCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Written by Dan Overgage
Dan Overgage is a former smoker of 10 years until he became a client of SMOKO E-Cigarettes. Dan started working with SMOKO 5 years ago after successfully quitting using our e-cigarettes and works across our Customer Service and heads up our content creation and research with a strong focus on all things quitting smoking. During his tenure with SMOKO, Dan has written countless blogs and consults with countless clients every day to help them to stay smoke-free.
