June Russell's Health Facts

Smoking — Reported Health Benefits
(along with some negative consequences)

[Benefits]   [Negative Side Effects]   [Books - Resources]

Reports Citing Benefits

A review of 61 studies suggests that smokers have a 60% lower risk of Parkinson's disease, a neurological disease. Also coffee drinkers have a 30% lower chance of developing Parkinson's, but no one suggests smoking or drinking coffee to combat this disease.
{People's Pharmacy, Public Radio, Sep. 20, 2002}

Despite its evil image, new research suggests that nicotine is a surprisingly potent drug for a variety of diseases that afflict the brain, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Tourette’s syndrome.
{“An image makeover for nicotine: It shows promise against brain diseases,” HealthCentral.com - Feb. 21, 2000}

Nicotine itself is a potent drug, and the properties that make it addictive may also help ease the symptoms of mental disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers added other ailments, including attention deficit disorder and depression, to the list. Paul Sanberg and Archie Silver of the University of South Florida studied 70 young Tourette’s syndrome patients and found significant increases in the control of muscle tics and verbal outbursts associated with the disease when using nicotine.
{“A Little Nicotine Could Be Good For You,” ‘Medicine,’ Newsweek, Mar. 6, 2000}

Nicotine may have some therapeutic effects. In the future, physicians may prescribe nicotine as a drug (not smoking) to relieve symptoms for a variety of diseases from schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s for attention deficit disorders and colitis. Scientists and physicians are hesitant to talk about the potential benefits of nicotine because the risks of tobacco use outweigh the benefits. Nicotine can help focus attention and improve memory, says Edward Levin of the Neurobehavioral Research Laboratory at Duke University Medical Center, adding that smoking is obviously a hazardous way to take a drug.
{“Nicotine’s Nice Side,” Abigail Trafford, Washington Post Health, Apr. 22, 1997}

People who smoke may be less likely to contract Alzheimer’s disease. What’s more, it seems that the risk of developing the disease lessens, the more cigarettes that are smoked. These curious findings may, somehow, open up undiscovered lines of research into the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, but the researchers stress that any possible good effects of smoking do not outweigh the risks of serious damage to the heart and lungs. Smoking may actually help decrease the side effects of antipsychotic medication — but it may work against those same medications requiring higher doses, and with a higher chance of side effects.
{Family Doctor, Alan E. Nourse, MD, Good Housekeeping, Apr. 1992}

Smokers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s Disease.
{Tobacco Control News 1996}

Tobacco, used to make malaria vaccine, might prove a source of cheap therapies, and in lab tests the tobacco plant produces a medicine used in Goucher’s disease.
{The Wall Street Journal, 1995}

Scientists have known that even small amounts of nicotine trigger a release of the feel-good hormone dopamine.
{Reuters Health, HealthCentral - Aug. 2000}

In carefully controlled doses, as in a skin patch or synthesized as a drug, nicotine may provide some of the benefits without the harmful effects of smoking the nicotine in cigarettes. Nicotine has a positive effect on ulcerative colitis, which is an inflammation of the stomach lining, and this disorder affects nonsmokers more than smokers. Cigarettes boost DHEA which is a sex hormone that increases libido and helps trim your weight, but is unappealing because it makes you taste like an ashtray, and smoking is hazardous to erections.
{ People’s Pharmacy, Public Radio, Dr. Teresa Crenshaw, author of ‘Alchemy of Love and Lust,’ a sex therapist and founder of the Crenshaw Clinic for treating Sexual Dysfunction, and past president of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, Jan. 1997}

Smokers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, a nerve disease aggravated by dopamine shortages. Smokers have about 40% less of the enzyme that breaks down dopamine, so they have more dopamine.
{Tobacco Control News, American Cancer Society, Apr. 1996}

Evidence emerged from studies on nicotine and Alzheimer’s in the late 1980’s that the chemical might help short-term memory. Scientists cite obstacles to using nicotine because it can be toxic and does not remain in the body long. Nicotine provides for temporary relief from symptoms for those with schizophrenia. However, smoking is not recommended because of the ‘killer diseases’ it causes.
{Reuters 1996}

Studies indicate that smoking may enhance memory, learning and attention. However, this was a test of smokers. Those who had not taken a puff for 12 hours took more time to identify words than those who inhaled one minute before the test. Jaime Pineda, Associate Professor of Cognitive Sciences, who headed the study, stated that this should not encourage people to go out and smoke, and added the warning that the results said nothing about the long-term damaging effects of smoking.
{Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC, UPI Science News, Reuters 1996} Editor's comment: This is a ‘no-brainer,’ as it is apparent that those smokers whose brain is in withdrawal from the drug nicotine for 12 hours would not be as able to perform as a smoker who had just gotten his ‘fix.’

Smokers actually recovered better from a heart attack than nonsmokers. However, the earlier risk of heart attack far outweighs any protective benefit. One of the possibilities of smokers having better outcomes was that smokers are younger at the time of a heart attack. The message of the study is not that smoking improves the prognosis after a heart attack, but that it actually causes heart attacks earlier.
{Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Reuters - Nov. 1996}

Smoking was found to reduce the risk of estrogen-dependent endometrial cancer.
{Jon Michnovicz, in his book, “How to Reduce your Risk of Breast Cancer,” 1994}

Nicotine’s pleasure comes in part from its ability to increase the production of a brain chemical called dopamine. The lowered enzyme level from the smoke could make alcohol and cocaine more pleasurable. Lorna Role, researcher from Columbia University in “Science,” says that nicotine speeds up the communication between brain cells, and that is one of the reasons smoking is so hard to break and why smokers are willing to inhale hundreds of class A carcinogens.
{Doug Levy, USA Today, Internet, Spring 1996}

The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reported that nicotine “patches” can help treat the intestinal ailment ulcerative colitis — affirming two previous studies. However the study warned that for tobacco (and alcohol) there are obviously major downsides. Seventy-seven percent of the patients reported adverse reactions to the nicotine, such as skin ailments, nausea and dizziness, and 13% had to quit because of the side effects. While smokers have a lower rate of ulcerative colitis, the study said they have a higher rate of a similar ailment called Crohn’s disease.
{Mar. 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Reuters, Feb. 28, 1997}

Schizophrenics (4 million Americans) who smoke can get enough nicotine stimulation to switch on a brain receptor that helps filter information. One of the problems with schizophrenics is that they are unable to filter out stimuli and suffer from information overload. It is not recommended that schizophrenia patients take up smoking because it lasts only a few moments, and smoking causes many killer diseases.
{‘Schizophrenia gene linked to smoking,” AP, Washington, Daily Progress, newspaper, Charlottesville, VA, Jan. 21, 1997}

After giving nicotine by intravenous injection and wearing a nicotine patch, nine people with early Parkinson’s disease showed improvement in both learning and memory. The improvement was sustained for up to one month after the drug was discontinued. After chronic use of nicotine, the researchers also saw improvements in the ability to move. In laboratory culture dishes it has been shown that the presence of nicotine causes a release of dopamine.
{151st Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, June 1998, in Life Extension newsletter, Nov. 1998}

A research team in Virginia, funded by NIH, is working with tobacco plants to create an HIV vaccine. “There is some good in tobacco,” says Don Wright, a Washington County burley tobacco grower.
{“Tobacco might produce AIDS vaccine,” Virginia Farm Bureau, Mar. 2000}

Stanford researchers have discovered that low doses of nicotine, a major component of cigarette smoke, appear to promote new blood vessel growth (in mice).
{“Nicotine to be used to treat heart disease,” Reuters Health, HealthCentral.com - Sept. 2000}

One claimed benefit of tobacco is that the nicotine improves memory. John Dani and colleagues at Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston reported in the journal ‘Nature,’ that nicotine strengthens communications between neurons in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain involved in learning and memory. A 1991 study found that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is lower in smokers, and last week a study by neurologists at Case Western Reserve University, found that nicotine seems to inhibit — in the test tube and not on actual brain tissue — formation of the plaques that gum up the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The problem with using nicotine as a memory aid is that the delivery system contains 400 known carcinogens, but a transdermal patch may be the answer.
{“Memories are made of ... nicotine? New clues to how it affects the brain,” Newsweek, Nov. 4, 1996}

If you have ulcerative colitis (500,000 people in the U.S.), nicotine may be good for you. Those who suffered from this inflammatory bowel disease and who use a nicotine patch can get relief from their symptoms, which includes abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Nicotine has immuno-suppressant properties, says William Sandborn, MD, one of the study authors and head of the bowel disease research, at the Mayo Clinic. The side effects of the nicotine patch were nausea, lightheadedness, and contact dermatitis (from the adhesive}.
{“Nicotine may be good for you,” Prevention magazine, Dec. 1999}

Scientists have known for years that smokers are less likely than nonsmokers to develop Parkinson’s disease, but could not explain why. Researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, have identified a chemical in tobacco smoke that inhibits an enzyme in the brain, called monoamine oxidase (MAO), which normally destroys excess dopamine. Without sufficient dopamine, people develop the tremors and jerky movement characteristic of Parkinson’s. The new research suggests that cigarette smoking probably keeps dopamine levels higher than they would be otherwise. Other studies confirm this, but all warn that this advantage does not outweigh the risks of smoking.
{“Chemical in tobacco smoke may protect against Parkinson’s,” Reuters Health, HealthCentral.com - Mar. 2000}

Philip Morris commissioned a study from Arthur Little that shows how the financial benefits of smoking outweigh the risks — by the “indirect positive effects” of early deaths. This year 4 million people worldwide will die from tobacco, mostly in developed countries.
{“Cigarettes still kill, but now they're not afraid to admit it,” Ellen Goodman, a columnist with the Boston Globe, in the Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va., July 24, 2001}

Nicotine has an effect on the formation of new blood vessels following a heart attack or stroke, just the effect you want in a heart drug.
{“Is Nicotine Good for the Heart?” HealthCentral.com - Aug. 2001 - taken from Nature Medicine, July 2001}

Chronic smoking produces ‘antidepressant-like’ effects on the human brain researchers say. The investigators found that the brains of long-term smokers had neurochemical abnormalities similar to the brains of animals treated with antidepressant drugs, according to the report published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Sept. 2001), but one of the lead authors warned, “There are so many bad things about smoking you can't justify the use of it.”
{“Cigarettes may function like antidepressant drugs,” Reuters Health, HealthCentral.com - Sep. 2001}

According to an article published in 'General Dentistry,' by Wynn et al., the antibody that protects the mouth and gums and prevents caries can be made in large quantities in genetically engineered plants, especially the tobacco plant. However, the connection of smoking and periodontal disease has been documented as having a direct and indirect effect on the gums. Smokers have less defenses to the irritants, and they experience impairment of healing after an injury or periodontal treatment. When smoking, there is an increase in blood flow for the first five minutes, but within ten minutes blood flow rates are decreased, and can continue for three hours after smoking just one cigarette. This decreased circulation can result in a lack of bleeding from the gums when probed with an instrument, but this does not necessarily indicate healthy gums as it does in a nonsmoker.
{"Tobacco: a pro and a con," dentistry.about.com - Jan. 2002}

Reports Citing Negative Effects

. . . . . AND AGAIN LIKE ALCOHOL, THE NEGATIVE STUDIES FAR OUTWEIGH ANY POSSIBLE POSITIVE ONES. HERE ARE JUST A FEW WHICH ADDRESS SOME OF THE SAME CONDITIONS AS THE POSITIVE STUDIES:

It was discovered that the brain functions of smokers with Alzheimer’s disease improved after wearing the nicotine patch. However, the nicotine patch also resulted in harmful side effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, sleep disorders, nausea, dizziness, fainting and vomiting.
{USA Today, July 8, 2004, on mercola.com}

U.S. and European studies published over the past year indicate that nicotine has a protective effect in laboratory animals whose conditions mimic Alzheimer’s. Nicotine patches on people with Alzheimer’s reduced some of their mistakes by 10 to 80%. Researchers are concerned that the public might misinterpret the results and conclude that smoking is beneficial. Smoking cuts life expectancy by seven or eight years, and some would argue that that is a way of getting rid of Alzheimer’s patients before they come down with the disease, says Ken Kellar, a Georgetown University Professor in Washington. It was thought that half as many smokers as nonsmokers came down with Alzheimer’s, but recent analyses of Alzheimer’s data has turned up neither a positive nor a negative connection. Nicotine is in the public domain, and the drug’s new medical uses cannot be patented.
{“Nicotine enhances memory, study finds,” a soon-to-be published study by scientists in NC, The Globe and Mail: Breaking News, July 2004}

Contrary to the belief that smoking may help ward off dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, scientists from Oxford University reported on the longest-running study of smoking and disease, and has concluded that cigarettes provide no protection against mental decline. It tracked British doctors since 1951, and has shown that male doctors who smoked were just as likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s as their counterparts who had never smoked or had quit years before. The previous scientific studies that have indicated that smokers were less likely to develop dementia were based on too few people to be reliable, and were fundamentally flawed according to the authors of the Oxford study.
{“Smoking does not protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s,” London AP, HealthCentral.com - Apr. 2000}

In another year-long study of more than 650 London residents aged 65 and older, the current smokers were four times as likely to be in mental decline than those who never smoked.
{“Older smokers risk mental decline, Reuters Health, Health Central, Apr. 2000}

Previous studies suggested a protective effect of smoking on Alzheimer’s disease, but the results of a population-based follow-up study of almost 7,000 people aged 55 or older found that smoking doubled the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The onset of the illness also occurred about four years earlier in smokers. Diet, exercise, dietary supplements and lifestyle can significantly lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
{“Smoking, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease,” Life Extension newsletter, Oct. 1998}

The risk of smokers developing dementia was twice as high as compared to those who had never smoked, says author Dr. Alewijn Ott, from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The risk of developing Alzheimer’s, which is the most common cause of dementia, was also doubled. This study appeared to contradict earlier research that found smokers were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting a possible protective effect of nicotine. Dr. Ott and his colleagues believe the previous studies showing a positive effect for smokers were biased.
{“Smoking Increases Risk of Dementia,” Reuters, Yahoo.com - Apr. 1997}

Researchers at Texas A&M University found that in rats, low doses of nicotine were enough to suppress blood alcohol, suggesting that even a cigarette or two might hinder efforts to achieve the perfect ‘buzz’ from the alcohol. Also individuals are more likely to suffer from long-term harmful effects of alcohol, such as kidney damage.
{“Smoking May Stymie the ‘Perfect Buzz,’ Reuters Health, alcoholism.about.com - July 2001}

Texas University says nicotine reduces blood alcohol concentration. Nicotine does not, however, affect levels of alcohol’s toxic breakdown product, acetaldehyde. This means that smokers who drink more will be exposing their brains and bodies to more acetaldehyde, and doing more damage.
{Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research July 2001 in “Why smokers drink more,” healthandage.com}

Migrant farmers who harvest tobacco are at risks for headaches, dizziness and nausea that are symptomatic of nicotine poisoning, researchers report in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Nicotine can also affect the gastrointestinal system, causing nausea and vomiting. The water on the plant foliage contains high levels of nicotine which can penetrate clothing.
{“Nicotine poisoning common among tobacco pickers,” HealthCentral.com - July 2001}

The link between smoking and early menopause and fertility has been around for a while. The class of compounds abundant in cigarette smoke triggers the death of women’s eggs.
{“Smoking may kill off women’s eggs,” Reuters Health, HealthCentral.com - July 2001}

Sick smokers may burden a country’s health care system but dead smokers save governments money, was the conclusion of a study on the financial cost of smoking commissioned by tobacco giant Philip Morris. Researchers looked at the Czech government and concluded that its government saved $30 million in 1999 because it did not have to support, house and care for smokers who prematurely died from tobacco-related illnesses. There were also ‘indirect positive effects’ of the early deaths such as savings on health care, pensions, welfare and housing for the elderly. The government’s net gain from the tobacco industry was $146 million. The study was severely criticized as a callous disregard for life.
{“Philip Morris report highlights financial benefits to government from smoker’s deaths,” HealthCentral.com - July 2001}

Additional Information

The following books contain many tobacco facts:

Reclaiming Our Health, by John Robbins
Healing Anxiety with Herbs, by Harold Bloomfield
The Last Puff, by Dr. John Farquhar, 1990
Dying to Quit, by Janet Brigham, 1998