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Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

neurosciencenews.com

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Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#11

Post by lcfcjs »

eganist wrote: post #5

Original DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.4274 Edit: Please read abandonliberty's comment below before reading mine. I didn't properly elucidate the position on the harms v. benefits tradeoff (net harm) the way abandonliberty did. My own opinion: it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see many harmful substances only be harmful to a majority subset of a population space, though that's why the scheduling system (…

"it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see many harmful substances only be harmful to a majority subset of a population space"

Huh? There are numerous studies that prove smoking cigarettes are bad ... for everyone

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#12

Post by DanBC »

thomasjames wrote: post #8

For those who have seen severe mental illness up close, this is not surprising in the least. Many, many people with schizophrenia or other disorders characterized by psychosis self-medicate heavily with cigarettes. Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

It's not particularly surprising, but it's good to have the evidence.

> Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

It's a bit more complicated than "self treating with nicotine". A number of people go into hospital as non-smokers and come out as addicted smokers.

Smoking cessation combined with decent occupational therapy is important to reduce harm.

The knee-jerk banning of vaping in many hospitals is a bit worrying.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#13

Post by tlarkworthy »

thomasjames wrote: post #8

For those who have seen severe mental illness up close, this is not surprising in the least. Many, many people with schizophrenia or other disorders characterized by psychosis self-medicate heavily with cigarettes. Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

Well, its the same thing in prisons, so I always assumed its boredom/stress relief as the explanation for chain smoking.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#14

Post by BurningFrog »

That Schizophrenia patients smoke a lot is well known. I guess this explains it.

The other weird Schizophrenia fact is that blind people are never Schizophrenic. Congenital Blindness, that is. Poking your eyes out won't cure Schizophrenia once you have it.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#15

Post by z2210558 »

eduren wrote: post #9

Can anyone with access to the paper give a few technical details? The abstract mentions "Chronic nicotine administration" does this mean the nicotine dosage is high enough to not be a viable basis for treatment? The linked article claims that this could be a basis for new drug research, which sounds exciting, but how much do we already know about drugs that affect the nicotinic receptors?

I'm sure that means "smoking or equivalent".

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#17

Post by troygoode »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #13
thomasjames wrote: post #8

For those who have seen severe mental illness up close, this is not surprising in the least. Many, many people with schizophrenia or other disorders characterized by psychosis self-medicate heavily with cigarettes. Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

Well, its the same thing in prisons, so I always assumed its boredom/stress relief as the explanation for chain smoking.

Or it indicates that prisons also contain many mentally ill inmates...

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#18

Post by jamestnz »

jessaustin wrote: post #7

It won't really be a surprise, when science learns that most "harmful addictive" substances can improve aspects of brain function for many people.

I think this comes back to the old expression that The dose makes the poison (or: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison").

So, the idea that vaporizing a small amount of nicotine daily may be beneficial for certain conditions, does not contradict the idea that sucking down 20-30 unfiltered cigarettes a day is probably a net harm in all cases.

Science understands this already. Government and society, not so much. Even serious research is pretty much banned with certain substances, which seems ridiculous to me.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#20

Post by alexmingoia »

eganist wrote: post #5

Original DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.4274 Edit: Please read abandonliberty's comment below before reading mine. I didn't properly elucidate the position on the harms v. benefits tradeoff (net harm) the way abandonliberty did. My own opinion: it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see many harmful substances only be harmful to a majority subset of a population space, though that's why the scheduling system (…

Unfortunately drug schedules aren't evidence based, and there's no evidence based measurement for "potential for abuse" in use by the DEA or FDA.
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