Comment by scottlocklin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottlocklin | Hacker News Reader

Classic Sleeper prediction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFxksNcLfcA

I have a friend who studies the history of plagues; was telling me last summer that smokers were viewed as more immune to historical plagues. I never asked him for detailed evidence, as it was one of those conversations you have on the balcony over a smoke. I enjoy entertaining wacky ideas, and figured smokers might be fumigating the fleas, or in the case of pneumonic plague, filtering the air. Never thought of the nicotinic hypothesis. Never really took it real seriously; taking it seriously now. The evidence is pretty overwhelming. A lot of people are going to lose their freaking minds over this, as anti-smoker posturing has become a sort of substitute morality among the upper middle classes (really it's just social class shitting on poor people).

Of course, nicotine is known to statistically significantly reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, so it wouldn't be the first example of something like this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/faluhv/an_exhausti...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.13.20063669v...

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/561

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/581

Nearly all the ill health effects of smoking come from other stuff in the smoke, not nicotine. It's easy to get nicotine via gum, pill, patch, or vaping.

yeah but I would argue that today most people benefiting from these effects are smokers, so it stays true?

> It's easy to get nicotine via gum, pill, patch, or vaping.

.. or snuff! Which I think is one of the most elegant ways of delivering nicotine to your body

'Elegant'? Have you ... ever tried it?

My experience of it decades ago was anything other than 'elegant', unless having one's face scrunch up like a bulldog pissing on a nettle before exploding into a sneezing fit can be considered 'elegant'.

It's totally 17th century elegant. Take a sniff, scrunch up your face, blow snot on the ground, load up your elephant gun and head to Africa for King and Country! All you need is a monocle.

The OP may be referring to Snus, which is often referred to as Snuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus

I had that stuff too, around the same time* - and re-visited it on a trip to Sweden last year.. and, I'd still not consider it particularly 'elegant' :)

* we had a deal with our English teacher - my Swedish friend would supply him with little snus bundles, and we'd all get to sit in class using it ourselves. As a 17 year old, I thought it was the coolest thing, 'getting away with smoking in class with the teacher', even if i thought the actual process was utterly, utterly disgusting :)

</reddit>

What's your favorite? Big fan of Fribourg & Treyer brands here. Taking a sniff of something Lord Byron enjoyed hundreds of years ago can be a heady experience (I forget ... old paris or prince's)

I do feel like I should be wearing a powdered wig when I indulge in the stuff. Blowing my nose brings me down to earth; it's pretty gross!

Yep, I've looked into the health effects of nicotine independent of smoking. It definitely raises blood pressure; we know exactly how this works; there's a long term mechanism (I think involving aldosterone)and the short term stimulant mechanism. There's also a small but significant increase in pancreatic cancer[1], one shared by most stimulants (I think including caffeine). Otherwise, it's not a terrible thing. The parkinsons thing might make nic gum worthwhile.[2]

If you look at long term effects of snusers and people who use nasal snuff; it's pretty difficult to find any measurable negative health outcomes.

FWIIW the nicotinic hypothesis may not prove to be correct with respect to C19; Sweden will be a great test case, as there are more snus users than smokers there.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/carcin/article/30/3/506/2476826

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430096/ -for example; too many papers to list

Some additives in cigarettes have been shown to dilate lung airways, suppress coughing, and disguise symptoms of illness:

https://www.verywellmind.com/cigarette-additives-2824737

Perhaps the additives are keeping COVID-19 patients alive by supporting breathing in difficult circumstances? There are hundreds of additives so figuring out if any of them help would be difficult:

https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/d...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com