Tobacco and nicotine use
Note: this page is not meant to be a definitive statement from Dr. Peat on tobacco or nicotine use. It is simply a collection of statements he has made on the subject.
"Increased intracellular calcium, in association with excess nitric oxide and excitatory amino acids, is involved in several neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS, Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, Huntingtons chorea, and epilepsy. Magnesium, nicotine, progesterone, and many other substances are known to protect against excitotoxic calcium overload, but there is no coherent effort in the health professions to make rational use of the available knowledge." from Calcium and Disease: Hypertension, organ calcification, & shock, vs. respiratory energy https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/calcium.shtml
"The correspondence between heart disease and consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol is little more than advertising copy. If people were looking for the actual causes of heart disease, they would consider the factors that changed in the US during the time that heart disease mortality was increasing. Both increases in harmful factors, and decreases in protective factors would have to be considered.
The consumption of manufactured foods, pollution of air and water, the use of lead in gasoline, cigarette smoking, increased medicalization and use of drugs, psychosocial and socioeconomic stress, and increased exposure to radiation--medical, military, and industrial--would be obvious things to consider, along with decreased intake of some protective nutrients, such as selenium, magnesium, and vitamins." from Cholesterol, longevity, intelligence, and health. http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/cholesterol-longevity.shtml
"People who take aspirin, drink coffee, and use tobacco, have a much lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease than people who don’t use those things. Caffeine inhibits brain phospholipase, making it neuroprotective in a wide spectrum of conditions. In recent tests, aspirin has been found to prevent the misfolding of the prion protein, and even to reverse the misfolded beta sheet conformation, restoring it to the harmless normal conformation. Nicotine might have a similar effect, preventing deposition of amyloid fibrils and disrupting those already formed (Ono, et al., 2002). Vitamin E, aspirin, progesterone, and nicotine also inhibit phospholipase, which contributes to their antiinflammatory action. Each of the amyloid-forming proteins probably has molecules that interfere with its toxic accumulation." from BSE - mad cow - scrapie, etc.: Stimulated amyloid degeneration and the toxic fats http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/madcow.shtml
"One of the older therapeutic uses of niacin is in the treatment of "trench mouth," which is a reaction to stress (Cohen, 1973), though a protein deficiency is also probably involved. Since the gums are responsive to many agents (including Dilantin and cigarette smoking) and are easy to inspect, they may provide an additional means for following the course of recovery when schizophrenia is being treated with niacin." from A Biophysical Approach to Altered Consciousness http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1975/pdf/1975-v04n03-p189.pdf
"In old people, a little nicotine can have a balancing effect, improving alertness, and probably protecting nerves, for example in the negative association with Parkinson's disease. But in younger people, its vasoconstrictive effect tends to promote the development of wrinkles in the skin, and I think it's likely to contribute to periodontal disease." from an email exchange (Note about email exchanges)
"After middle age, nicotine isn't likely to become addictive, and in small amounts it has nerve protective effects. Some of those effects probably overlap with the nerve protective effects of niacinamide. I haven't experimented with nicotine or tobacco, but I think transdermal application is preferable to smoking; carbon monoxide and other serious toxins are produced by burning the tobacco." from an email exchange (Note about email exchanges)