Edit: Both boys and girls are dependent on these things now and they seem socially acceptable (no smoke, no spit, just swallow the chemical nicotine). Get ready for a huge wave of GI problems due to this.
My understanding is that the relationship between nicotine and gut health (indeed, overall health) is much more complex and nuanced than that. I know that nicotine has a positive effect on ulcerative colitis symptoms for many sufferers.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8895249/#s4
A quote:
Of all the diseases summarized here concerning systemic inflammation, especially in sepsis and endotoxemia, nicotine exerted the most pharmaceutical effect and significantly improved the survival. Next, nicotine is also a potential candidate for treating ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, multiple sclerosis, and myocarditis; the in vivo data provided a much better foundation. For local inflammation, the nicotine administration route may be more important to avoid its accumulation in other healthy organs—for example, the effect of nicotine on arthritis will be more pronounced when nicotine is directly injected into the focus of infection. Perhaps that is why, in the early years, tobacco was used to treat enteritis as enemas (4). It is evident that nicotine has a significant pro-inflammatory effect on periodontitis. However, the latest research also found that nicotine positively affects periodontitis at a lower dosage. In this regard, we consider that the effect of nicotine on periodontitis is mainly due to the influence of inevitable and original oral microbes. At present, most studies focus on the cellular level, and in vivo studies may be limited due to the difficulty of model construction. Therefore, we recommend that individuals with poor oral hygiene avoid excessive direct exposure to nicotine for oral diseases.
Not gut health specifically, but we run the tests on taking nicotine orally for nicotine sprays. It's definitely makes ulcers more likely to happen in short term usage.
What's even worse, it definitely fucks up your neuromodulators, which is very bad for children and young adults. That's a well known fact, it's why it's addictive, and that's why quitting it will make you have very bad mood swings.
The body adjusts to the dopamine spikes by lowering dopamine, and if it happens during brain development, it's just not good. Any addiction during brain development is not good, but especially a chemical one. Kids need to learn what their emotions are and how to control them before they can control them by chewing. Kids usually do it through teens and up to early adulthood.
fwiw despite decades of research into nicotine, we have very little data on how bad it actually is at low dosages and via delivery methods other than tobbacco. The vast majority of research on nicotine by itself is in the context of smoking cessation. A lot of the risks people warn about wrt nicotine (dopamine spikes, vasoconstriction, dependence, etc.) is also present in any stimulant, including ADHD medication and even coffee. Also, again, very limited research on this, but some of it suggests nicotine could be helpful for ADHD.
That said, none of this really detract from your point about risks in children, and the trendy delivery methods like vapes and pouches seem to be extremely addictive.
Not true, we have a lot of data about using nicotine as pesticide. And quite a lot about oral toxicity. Pharma had nicotine sprays and tablets tasted for decades. Wouldn't be allowed on european market otherwise.
>> A lot of the risks people warn about wrt nicotine (dopamine spikes)
you misunderstand. The dopamine from coffee is purely from a personal enjoyment, while nicotine binds directly into nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain. It doesn't matter how it enters the blood, it will alter neurotransmitter activity.
That's why сytisine is so good for battling a nicotine addiction — it binds the same receptors and prevents the nicotine binding. It's like swapping one addiction for another, except nicotine stays in your system for a week while сytisine leaves quickly (5h).
So, you see, it's not "the same" as coffee, it's more like taking longlasting antianixiety or ADHD meds recreationally.
When you need meds like that, altering your brain chemistry is a desirable outcome, of course. I'm not against drugs overall.
But drugs like that are prescription only for a reason.
>> some of it suggests nicotine could be helpful for ADHD
some of what I've read also suggests that nicotine could be helpful for schizophrenia. But given that we know what mechanism it targets, I fully believe we can find an alternative formula that wouldn't be so toxic to humans.
Edit: yikes sounds like it gets worse and might not even work
That was the “let me stop you right there” moment.
(Not even going into how much these horrendous procedures cost!)
We get along great and I find that’s both hard to find and super important - no better way of putting off dentist visits than having a dentist you dread seeing every 6 months.
I passed on the jaw realignment surgery, knowing that the consequences are more bone wear over time and that I’ll never fully recover usage on the left side of my mouth.
None of the dentists/orthos/surgeons involved said I *had* to do it, there is a trade off. Breaking your jaw might weaken it down the line, but bone wear along the tooth line isn’t great either. It’s a tough call.
Grafting is another thing I’ve been postponing, but now the proximity to my roots is getting painful as sensitivity piles up.
Again: this is all optional and full of trade-offs. Sibling comment suggesting you change dentists is not doing a fair assessment of the situation.
People with bad teeth, on average, die younger and have worse diets.
I’m not in Europe :)
Nah my dude, my dentist peddles all sorts of ridiculous unnecessary treatments. Invisalign? I’m 50, I don’t give a shit about how my teeth look, just want them not to fall off all at once. Invisalign is a subscription for your teeth. No thanks.
I stay with this dentist because they are friendly, technically competent and a 5-minute walk from home. Literally the only downside is the FUD to get me to go for those treatments but it’s just steeling myself to say “no thanks” every 6 months.
The recovery period sucked, I needed antibiotics and couldn’t eat anything solid for two weeks.
If you can behaviourally prevent needing gum grafts you should.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus
It is basically the same thing but not synthetic. Supposedly nicotin pouches are not as harmful because they do not have tobacco leaves.
I am a bit ambivalent about it, on one hand people don't smoke as much because snus which means I don't get as much second hand smoke.
On the other hand it is WAY easier for kids to get started on it as they don't need to hide it after they put it in their mouths. I know a few people who are heavily addicted to it (one even keeps one in when he is sleeping) and they all started in their early teens.
Also see this other comment on this thread about this issue:
BTW, colon cancer is rising among men in their 40s, and there is no known reason why.
IE, e-cigarettes used to be promoted as safe, until the popcorn lung incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans#E-cig... (TLDR, some e-cigarettes used diacetyl as a flavoring, which is safe to eat but very toxic to inhale.)
(Kinda stinks because nicotine is a cool drug.)
The outbreak was initially hard for users to trace in particular because of how brands worked in that (again, moderately illegal) industry - a "brand" was basically a paper label/bag production line shipped in the clear from a printer, to hundreds of individual manufacturers, who negotiated their own distribution. Conclusions like "Mellow Mallow Blurple is a safe brand, I tested it" ended up being invalid.
Not true, see the above link.
https://www.inverse.com/science/59207-vitamin-e-acetate-thc-...
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/58581-dank-vapes
All you need to defend a Wikipedia claim staying in the article is a journalist writing something, and journalists with zero idea of what they were talking about outnumbered informed writers a thousand to one.
Quoting chemical highlight 25-1 from "Organic Chemistry" 6th edition by Vollhardt & Schore:
Nicotine appears to play a dual contributory role, because its metabolites are outright carcinogens and because the parent system itself, while not causing cancer, is a tumor promoter.
The metabolic pathway has as the initial step the N-nitrosation of the azacyclopentane (pyrrolidine) nitrogen. Oxidation and ring opening (compare Chemical Highlight 21-3) then take place, giving a mixture of two N-nitrosodialkanamines (N-nitrosamines), each of which is a known powerful carcinogen.
Upon protonation of the oxygen in the nitroso group, these substances become reactive alkylating agents, capable of transferring methyl groups to nucleophilic sites in biological molecules such as DNA, as shown below. The diazohydroxide that remains decomposes through a diazonium ion to a carbocation, which may inflict additional molecular damage (Section 21-10).
You can read more at https://archive.org/stream/VollhardtOrganicChemistryStructur...
I don't think this is necessarily true everywhere/for everyone, it's really not common in Sweden to walk around spitting just because you have tobacco under your lip, as people sit in offices and stuff with this in their mouth, can't really go around a spit indoors.
The Snus saliva (actual snus) just gets swallowed. Same with Zyn and others.
Yes, people have used tobacco products for a long time. However, they have not sucked on them like candy and swallowed the contents 16 hours a day. They spit, exhaled, etc. Chewing tobacco and snuff are not acceptable and they ruin your teeth/gums. Smoking is not acceptable and it ruins your lungs/breathing ability. This stuff is socially OK, because no one can tell you are using it (no spit or smoke).
Check out all the reports of GI issues on reddit (QuittingZyn). This stuff causes all sorts of GI issues from the top of the stomach to the bottom of the bowel.
Again, maybe not where you are, but there are definitively countries where both adults and children have tabacco under their lip for most of their waking hours, with no spitting or exhalation involved, as they're inside school/offices, can't really just spit there, even the non-synthetic stuff, as that's relatively new.
Zyn is specifically synthetic isn't it? You still seem to be mostly focused on synthetic nicotine, but the same behavior been observed for many, many decades with non-synthetics too.
We developed, in Snus, an apparently cancer-free chewing tobacco. We developed, in Zyn, a cancer-free, hygienic chewing tobacco with fewer GI issues. We developed, in e-cigarettes / vapes, a cancer-free, COPD-free, carbon monoxide free cigarette.
These should be regarded as public health miracles even if there remain some symptoms of partaking. If 80% of the population is addicted to Zyn or vapes but there are no smokers, you get far better health outcomes than a situation where 20% of the population are smoking and 5% are chewing.
Swedish Snus has been around a long time, isn't linked to cancer at all, and has no bad effect on your teeth and gums. Snus is actually associated with vast drops in cancer rates, because it usually replaces smoking. Snus is also no-spit - I think the difference between it and chewing tobaccos is that they are roasted and that snus is steamed. Makes a huge difference healthwise.
I don't have anything to say about the synthetic stuff, I'm not familiar. It's a bizarre industry that cropped up during a period where snus was trying to get into the market and the tobacco companies were trying to keep them out.
Somehow, cigarette companies lobbied to get snus caught up in cigarette taxes, even without the actual health risk. They were only even required to put the weakest possible warning on the package, because the health effects of snus have been well-studied and they're not associated with anything serious, except for nicotine addiction itself (which makes it a good substitute for smoking.)
The big US cigarette companies marketed a few horrible "snus" lines, with the marketing and goal that they would be a replacement product for when a smoker couldn't take a smoke break, and they were weak. I assume these synthetic lines developed to avoid taxes in some way by pretending to be a sort of medical product rather than a tobacco product, like a nicotine gum.
Snus is actually a better Nicorette, I suspected that the nicotene replacement industry had something to do with the sabotage of snus. Snus is cheap, free of health consequences, and doesn't lead you to associate something as addictive as chewing with nicotine consumption. Snus just quietly sits behind your lip, the minis are undetectable by the people you're interacting with, and they smell nice so they don't ruin your breath. Why would you choose a more expensive synthetic alternative?