[storus]

Paradoxically, nicotine has some medical use in e.g. displacing viral debris and autoantibodies from nAChR (nicotinic acetylcholine receptors) due to having highest affinity to these receptors, which seems to help with (long) Covid; "smoker paradox" in lower covid-related hospitalizations.

[SwtCyber]

A molecule can be socially and medically associated with a very harmful delivery mechanism, while still having specific biochemical effects that are worth studying on their own. Ant that's interesting

[chasil]

I was expecting to see a longer list of medical uses, but the wiki says that nicotine has performance impacts on cognition, improving fine motor motion and memory.

The pharmacology section is sophisticated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Uses

[yard2010]

Nicotine is nice as much as coffee. Smoking kills though. I am not a doctor

[DANmode]

Great to see this here.

CIGS are bad, nicotine is pretty neutral to good,

as a lozenge or patch or gum.

Edit: Nicotine can be way more medically relevant than “less bad”.

Not sure what the person replying to me is even on about, tbh

[Aloha]

Really inhaling something burning is bad.

Pretty much every other form of tobacco that is not cigarettes is less bad.

[dyauspitr]

Chewing tobacco causes mouth cancer. Nicotine is okay, everything else in the tobacco leaf no so much.

[Aloha]

They changed how they make chewing tobacco (aka moist snuff) about 20 years ago and it has less of the cancer causing stuff (Nitrosamines) in it, its now closer chemically to snus - I’ll point out that Scandinavian countries have some of the highest use of oral tobacco in the world, yet last I looked some of the lowest incidences of oral cancer per capita.

The function of if tobacco causes cancer has as much to do with processing (it used to be cured by wood fire at a higher temperature which is where much of the carcinogenic properties came from) and the byproducts that processing creates, particularly Nitrosamine, its now cured differently in a process which is closer to snus, and somewhat safer.

Nicotine addiction (which I have) should be about harm reduction first, cigarettes are the only product that I can think of if used as commonly used will kill you or dramatically shorten your life, and it probably wont be cancer, it’ll be COPD, heart disease, or other cardiovascular issues - which are the same issues firefighters get from repeated smoke exposure. Breathing the byproducts of combustion is what’s really awful (and deadly).

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

[avadodin]

On a scale from the-state-of-california cancer to exposed-to-sublethal-amounts-of-ionizing-radiation cancer, how worried should I be?

[lunchbucket]

It's a serious concern and switching to synthetic nicotine products may prolong your life. All tobacco products are highly carcinogenic. Contrary to what was said earlier it is not really about the smoking (though of course that makes things worse).

Nicotine products aren't safe; they are highly addictive and may exacerbate tumors that are already there. But they're far less addictive than tobacco products and they probably won't kill you.

[derektank]

>it is not really about the smoking

I agree with you that tobacco is uniquely harmful, but smoking by itself is also bad by itself. Even exposure to smoke from campfires, if chronic, will elevate your risk for COPD, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, etc.

[dyauspitr]

You’re conflating danger and addiction. In this case nicotine is highly addictive but close to harmless.

[dyauspitr]

Pretty seriously worried.

[Aerroon]

I would even go further: inhaling pretty much anything other than air is harmful in the long-term.

I imagine if you inhaled helium several times a day for decades that it would also mess something up.

[PUSH_AX]

I don’t think this really holds up, for example helium itself is chemically inert and not toxic. The main risk from inhaling helium is probably oxygen displacement at a push.

Millions of people have been using inhalers to control asthma too, this well studied and agreed to be safe. This is just off the top of my head.

[DANmode]

Turned this thread absolutely useless, thanks.

[cromka]

Inhaling? We're talking about a compound here, not tobacco.

[falcor84]

The HN guidelines say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says". The way I understand it is that different people on the thread often have different ways of thinking about the topic, and we shouldn't dismiss something because it's not what "we" were talking about. In this case, it was obvious to you that the parent was talking about smoking tobacco, right? So you can either engage with it, or not, but there's no need to reject someone's comment for not adhering to what you decided is the topic.

[DANmode]

Which parent?!

No!, we’re specifically trying to avoid talking about tobacco.

We’re trying to talk about nicotine!

[falcor84]

Who's trying to avoid talking about tobacco? TFA is titled "Scientists solve 200-year-old puzzle of how tobacco plants make nicotine", and my sense is that the thread is very much about which of the effects of smoking are explained by nicotine, and which are better explained by other factors of smoking tobacco.