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Which Nicotine product are you using?[VOTE] + Nicotine Benefits!
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31-12-2013 2:50amIt is great that you have choosen to give up smoking and switched to a Nicotine product or a smoking cessation medication, there are many benefits which we will look at below.
Also, consider the great benefits of the Nicotine.
Now, you have STOPPED smoking and switched to a Nicotine product or Nicotine smoking cessation medication.
Benefits from Nicotine: (mainly Nicotine itself from gum,patches,medication,etc. So you can still enjoy nicotine without the need to smoke).
Source: http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine- nicotine boosted IQ scores in a small sample of smokers, specifically scores on the RAPM10 (possibly related to its increasing global connectivity since IQ is being increasingly reified as measuring the global connectivity of multiple brain subsystems)
- reaction time is improved, as is inspection time and visual search et al") (but perhaps due solely to faster motor reaction?)
- pilots’ performance enhanced 4/5 as much as donepezil does; improves late-day piloting
- driving performance enhanced
- overnight performance on various memory & attention11 tasks (These data suggest that when performance is being measured overnight, smokers show little or no impairment, whilst the performance of non-smokers showed performance decrements.)
- faster performance on Stroop and word classification
- acute nicotine administration may exert direct beneficial effects on novelty detection and subsequent memory recognition
- in smokers, improved prospective memory (things one intends to do); Rusted et al 2005
- can improve handwriting
- helps ADHD (Conners et al 1996; or Levin et al 1996 - as well as OCD, see previous footnote): Results indicate significant clinician-rated global improvement, self-rated vigor and concentration, and improved performance on chronometric measures of attention and timing accuracy.
- may help depression1213
- may help symptomsof schizophrenia via increased synthesis of GABA & increased effectiveness of cognitive training (see Wikipedia), and protect against Parkinson’s & Alzheimers, see Fratiglioni & Wang 200014 (or just general cognitive impairment in the elderly)
- A meta-analysis of nicotine studies reports results similar to older literature reviews (eg. Warburton 1992, Newhouse et al 2004):
There were sufficient effect size data to conduct meta-analyses on nine performance domains, including motor abilities, alerting15 and orienting attention, and episodic and working memory. We found significant positive effects of nicotine or smoking on six domains: fine motor, alerting attention-accuracy and response time (RT), orienting attention-RT, short-term episodic memory-accuracy, and working memory-RT (effect size range = 0.16 to 0.44).
- A 2011 ADHD review16 covers nicotine:
Dozens of studies have assessed the effects of nicotine on cognition in healthy, nicotine-naïve samples including studies of memory (McClernon et al., 2003), attention (Froeliger et al., 2009) and inhibitory control (Potter and Newhouse, 2004). In a recent meta-analysis of 48 studies in which nicotine was administered to non-smokers or only minimally deprived smokers (Heishman et al., 2010), nicotine was shown to have positive effects on multiple domains including attention and working memory. Twenty-nine studies specifically assessed non-smokers and among those, positive effects were observed for reaction time on tests of sustained (or alerting) attention and working memory.
Studies of the effects of nicotine on inhibitory control were not included in the meta-analysis, but a handful of studies suggest potential positive effects of nicotine on this domain. Two small studies have observed acute (Levin et al., 1998) and chronic (McClernon et al., 2006) transdermal nicotine administration to result in trends toward decreases in errors of commission on a CPT task. Moreover, nicotine has been shown to reduce CPT commission errors in nonsmokers with schizophrenia (Barr et al., 2007), non-smokers low in attentiveness (Poltavski and Petros, 2006); and decrease stop signal reaction time in adolescents nonsmokers with ADHD (Potter and Newhouse, 2004). Despite these findings, nicotine was not shown to improve response inhibition in adults with ADHD as measured with a CPT task (Levin et al., 2001). - nicotine confirmed to have short-term boosts to attention and memory17; similar results (with one negative18):
- Kumari et al 2003, Cognitive effects of nicotine in humans: an fMRI study,
- Foulds et al 1996, Cognitive performance effects of subcutaneous nicotine in smokers and never-smokers
- Heishman et al 1994. Nicotine and smoking: a review of effects of human performance
- Le Houezec et al 1994 A low dose of subcutaneous nicotine improves information-processing in non-smokers and Effects of cotinine on information processing in nonsmokers (cotinine is a nicotine metabolite with effects of its own)
- during withdrawal, performance returns to baseline (but not below; in tension with Ernst 2011, and see also a similar possible example with neuroplasticity)
- In non-humans, mice learn faster on low doses (see also Levin et al 1998, Nicotinic acetylcholine involvement in cognitive function in animals)
- One amusing result - nicotine can apparently reduce bad cholesterol (in addition to its famous weight-loss properties)
- perhaps unsurprisingly given all this, nicotine has been found helpful in the elderly; see Nicotine treatment of mild cognitive impairment: A 6-month double-blind pilot clinical trial (slides; mention no withdrawal symptoms)19 and its citations. (In keeping with our usual nicotine vs smoking dichotomy, note that smoking may be bad for mental functioning in the elderly20.)
- expectancies don’t seem to be a large part of the effect
- but doses past 14mg seem to harm performance in Poltavski et al 2012
Which new product do you use? 10 votes
Nicotine Gum0% 0 votesNicotine Patches20% 2 votesOther Nicotine products20% 2 votesMedication60% 6 votes0
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