Nicotine – The Zombie Antidote

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“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” – Sherlock Holmes

I’m sick and tired of the anti-smoking culture that has taken over the entire world. I have had enough of hearing “don’t smoke, it’s bad for you!!” The ignorance that betrays such remarks is utterly abysmal, especially coming from people who should know better. So for all those who have asked me why do I actually smoke, I’m going to explain my reasons in this article.

I have found anti-smoking activists to be intolerant, judgmental Authoritarian Follower types. They believe and parrot emotionally charged catchphrases taken straight from government anti-smoking propaganda. Doctors and non-smokers alike are guilty of this. They feel righteous when providing such ‘advice’ yet fail to take notice of how ill they themselves look, and forget that, in many cases, their own health issues went downhill when they stopped smoking. Thanks to some pretty convoluted thinking, if they are some day diagnosed with a serious disease, they will later blame their ‘smoking years’, while overlooking the real culprits of today’s modern diseases: junk diets high in carbohydrates and the industrial-scale toxicity that has choked our environment.

Yes, the changes in our diet, particularly since the introduction of mechanised agriculture, the Industrial Revolution and arrival in the ‘enlightened’ Modern Age, have systemically destroyed our health. The mismatch between our ancient physiology – which thrived with little or no edible plant food – and our current diet, is at the root of many so-called diseases of civilization: coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, etc. But I’m not here to talk about that. You can read more about it here. My aim here is to defend the rights of people who choose to smoke. It may surprise you to know that, while the percentage of the population that smokes has declined in recent years (due to government propaganda), the incidence of heart disease has not declined. The reason, shock! horror! is that smoking is not the real problem to begin with!

Almost all smokers I know feel guilty about smoking and are planning to quit one utopian day when life gets ‘less stressful’. The way things are going, good luck with that one! I arrived in Europe when there was still a smoking culture and it wasn’t seen as the profound ‘evil’ it is today. The European smoking bans were introduced during my time here and, coincidentally enough, the general state of society has deteriorated badly during the same time. Could that deterioration have something to do with the replacement of nicotine – a chemical that enhances learning and memory – with Big Pharma tranquilizer drugs and dissociative technology?

From my vantage point in the medical profession, everybody and their friend is taking some kind of calming pill that numbs their feelings and further alienates them from reality. It is beyond me how a person who eats food that is completely mismatched to their physiology, and takes drugs to cover up the damaging effects of that food, can claim to be an authority on any health-related matter. I have found that, typically, those who look more diseased are those who feel more self-righteously entitled to use smoking as a scapegoat for all the world’s health problems.

I remember when people used to smoke on airplanes, trains and in restaurants. It was really not that long ago! How have things changed so rapidly? I have colleagues who tell me that they used to smoke in their offices while attending patients. It seems to me that things were definitely better back then, when we were still able to think!

Tobacco has nicotine in it, which is related to acetylcholine, and this fact is very important indeed, as we are going to learn.

Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter responsible for learning and memory. It is also calming, relaxing and is also a major factor regulating the immune system. Acetylcholine also acts as a major brake on inflammation in the body and inflammation is linked to every known disease. For example, inflammation of the brain is linked to every known mood, behavior and attention disorder and every neuro-degenerative disease.

Receptors for acetylcholine, also known as cholinergic receptors, fall into two categories based on the chemicals that mimic or antagonize the actions of acetylcholine on its many target cell types. In classical studies, nicotine, isolated from tobacco, was one of the chemicals used to distinguish receptors for acetylcholine. That is why there are nicotinic receptors for acetylcholine.

People who smoke often experience cognitive impairment when they stop smoking. This worsening is due to the fact that nicotine acts as an agonist (that is, it mimics) receptors of acetylcholine which are important for learning, memory and cognitive functions. Daily infusions of nicotine actually increase the number of acetylcholine receptors.

As in a kind of ‘blessing from above’, local and systemic inflammation is calmed down by the brain through what is called the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, which is a mechanism consisting of the vagus nerve and its neurotransmitter acetylcholine, a process dependent on a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor1. Nicotine, the prototypical nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist, counteracts inflammatory cytokine production and has demonstrated protective effects in blood poisoning2.

Nicotine has also been used to prevent kidney failure and improve kidney function. Nicotinic receptors in the brain are associated with neuronal plasticity and cell survival, which is why tobacco has been linked with better thinking and concentration. Nicotine has been used to treat ulcerative colitis, a disease characterized by inflammation of the large intestine3. It is clear from available medical literature that the benefits are far-ranging when it comes to this natural compound – nicotine – that acts as an anti-inflammatory and facilitates the creation of new brain cells!

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Doctors and anti-smokers are, in my opinion, completely deluded on this topic. They say things like “smoking is bad because it has thousands of chemicals including arsenic and cadmium.” For God’s sake, there are far more toxic levels of arsenic in the chicken they eat! Factory poultry farms produce enormous amounts of concentrated waste, and poultry processing byproducts, which are later fed to pigs, cows and fish, are loaded with arsenic4. Dangerous concentrations of arsenic in the water supply is a global threat because it induces both genetic and epigenetic changes related to lung cancer and other diseases5.

Yes, tobacco has its pollutants, but they are found in the water we drink, the air we breathe, in baby food, you name it, in even higher concentrations. A conservative estimate is that over 80,000 new chemicals have been introduced into society since the 1800s, only a few hundred of which have been tested for safety; this doesn’t even take into consideration nanotechnology and GMOs, which are already pervasive in the food chain. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about 2.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released annually by large industrial facilities. And the authorities are worried about a plant that produces the learning and memory-enhancing, natural chemical nicotine? It really is laughable. You see what mainstream education indoctrination does to your brain? You breathe thousands of chemicals every time you inhale air, whether you like it or not, and whether or not you are sitting next to a smoker.

Outdoor air contains some of the nastiest cocktails of pollutants. Most people tend to think of air pollution as having effects on the lungs, but exposure to road traffic and air pollution may also trigger heart attacks6. But people are right: air pollution does cause lung cancer. A much-anticipated government study of more than 12,000 miners has found that exposure to diesel engine exhaust significantly increases the risk of lung cancer. For NON-smokers, the risk was seven times higher. The authors of the study say “we also observed an interaction between smoking and 15-year lagged cumulative REC [marker for estimation of diesel exhaust exposure] such that the effect of each of these exposures was attenuated in the presence of high levels of the other.7” What does that mean? It means that research suggests that people who smoke are less vulnerable to the toxic effects of inhalation of diesel fumes than people who don’t smoke.

You have no idea how many times we have found again and again the protective properties of tobacco smoking. When it comes to hard-core petrochemical industry pollution, smoking really is a blessing from above. Take for instance this report by Riki Ott from Sound Truth & Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill:

Workers in jobs with high oil exposure to oil fumes, mists, and aerosols have a greater prevalence of self-reported symptoms of respiratory problems, neurological problems, and chemical sensitivities than unexposed workers. Among workers with high oil exposure, nonsmokers reported a greater prevalence of symptoms of chronic bronchitis than smokers. Symptoms of chronic airway disease included sleep apnea, pneumonia, other lung conditions, chronic sinus and/or ear problems, asthma, persistent hoarseness. […]. [Annie O’Neill, a graduate student at Yale Medical School’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, conducted an internship with ACAT and AFER, the two nonprofit organizations investigating the health effects of the EVOS cleanup. She conducted independent research on Exxon’s cleanup and an investigation of self-reported chronic health problems among EVOS cleanup workers for her master’s thesis.]

Want to know more about the real enemy? As Laura Knight-Jadczyk wrote soon after the Fukushima fallout:

Well, thinking about that and the fears about nuclear fallout from a power-plant melt-down made me ask the question: why didn’t anybody get excited about all the nuclear bomb tests that were being done all over the planet since WWII? I mean, just take a look at this time-lapse map of every nuclear explosion since 1945 and ask yourself if that is not one heck of a lot of radioactive fallout to be dumping on our planet – sometimes right in our back yard – and nobody was saying a thing about it? […]

In short, while I think that what is happening as a result of the Japan nuclear reactor disaster is a lot worse that the authorities are saying, I don’t think that is any reason to get hysterical right now. The time for hysteria was long ago. You are already poisoned and don’t know it.

The timeline she is referring to is the “1945-1998” video by Isao Hashimoto. It documents 2,053 nuclear explosions conducted in various places around the world, and it doesn’t even cover the tests made by North Korea. It is based on a report made by Nils-Olov and Ragnhild Ferm8.

 

So much for the anti-smoking campaign where we have been led to believe that smoking is practically the sole cause of all humanity’s health problems. Before the fascist anti-smoking legislation, people in Spain, Italy and France were happily puffing away, and as a result, were enjoying much longer life expectancy than the U.S. with its fewer smokers. Incidentally, more nuclear bombs have been detonated in the U.S. than in any other country.

Professor Chris Brusby, Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, explains that we are probably only looking at the tip of a very nasty radioactive iceberg. In a meeting which took place in Stockholm 2009, he said:

“The global death yield of the nuclear age to 1992 has been horrifying. According to objective calculations by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (using weapons fallout radiation exposure) there have been (up to 2003) 61 million cancer deaths; 1,600,000 infant deaths; 1,880,000 fetal deaths. There has been a loss of life quality of 10% (in terms of illnesses and ageing effects). The blame for this can be squarely placed at the door of those scientists and administrators (WHO, UNSCEAR, ICRP) who developed and supported the scientific risk models. This is a war crime far greater in magnitude than any that has occurred in recorded human history.”

So there you have it.

Yes, you’re reading this right; as a doctor, I don’t discourage patients from smoking in this increasingly stressful world. I do encourage them to choose organic tobacco and papers, or to go back to the old traditional ways of smoking pipes or cigars. The smartest people on Earth smoke and it is a veritable sign of the times that smoking is so highly discouraged in this modern, zombie culture.

Further reading

For more information on the benefits of tobacco smoking, please read:

Let’s All Light Up!
Pestilence, the Great Plague and the Tobacco Cure
Comets, plagues, tobacco and the origin of life on earth

Notes

1. Pavlov V.A. Tracey, K.J. The cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2005: 19, 493 – 49.

2. Van Westerloo D.J. The vagal immune reflex: a blessing from above. Wien Med Wochenschr 2010, 160/5 – 6: 112 – 117.

3. Rosas-Ballina M., Tracey K.J. Cholinergic control of inflammation. Journal of Internal Medicine 2009: 265; 663-679.

4. Nachman KE, Raber G et al. Arsenic species in poultry feather meal. Sci Total Environ. 2012 Feb 15;417-418:183-8.

5. Martinez VD, Vucic EA. Arsenic biotransformation as a cancer promoting factor by inducing DNA damage and disruption of repair mechanisms. Mol Biol Int. 2011;2011:718974.

6. Mills NL, Miller MR, Lucking AJ. Combustion-derived nanoparticulate induces the adverse vascular effects of diesel exhaust inhalation. Eur Heart J. 2011 Nov;32(21):2660-71.

7. Silverman DT, Samanic CM, Lubin JH, et al. The Diesel Exhaust in Miners study: a nested case-control study of lung cancer and diesel exhaust. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2012 Jun 6;104(11):855-68.

8. Nils-Olov Bergkvist and Ragnhild Ferm. Nuclear Explosions 1945-1998. Swedish Defence Research Establishment (FOA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2000. Available at iaaea.org

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Comments

  1. VeritasM  January 15, 2013

    A simple websearch for “alveolar glutathione” yields more resources in support of tobacco smoking’s health benefits. I used to work on the legal side of tobacco producer defense, thus had access to overwhelming evidence showing protective effects of tobacco smoke against a multitude of establishment-created diseases and deficiencies; as you can imagine, such evidence was minimized or thrown out entirely by the court as “irrelevant” if we dared offer it in defense of a prosecuted client.

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  2. Jan Stoeten  January 22, 2013

    Was it not in Laura Knight-Jadzyk’s Cassseiopaean transcripts that read that the favorite food of the Lizards was non-smoking vegetarians?

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    • Max  July 10, 2020

      I would love if you could publish an article tackling the claim that tobacco smoke is deadly and damages nearly every system in the body. Cheers from California!

      reply
  3. Jan Stoeten  January 22, 2013

    Forgot to mention that guess who is behind all the anti-smoking campaigns?

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  4. Steve Boshkov  February 7, 2013

    The latest on nicotine is here:

    http://www.uu.se/en/news/news-document/?id=1783&typ=pm&area=2&lang=en

    It is self-explanatory but basically the researchers isolated the mechanism for nicotine’s learning and memory improvement effects more cogently than known previously. If you have a nicotine receptor right at the heart of your learning and memory gatekeeper cells, you might reasonably think of beneficial ways to get the stuff into your body, no? Like smoking, a great delivery system. (He says, smokling his cigar.)

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  5. victor  March 1, 2013

    Thank you very much for all the information here, that we have “used” it in portuguese to talk about these matters in our blog.(Posting links to your website, of course.)
    this was very eye opening for us, and at the same time very strange to find out, as we continue our research, just how much we did not know!
    And if you will let us, we will translate more of your work into portuguese, to support the stuff we write in our blog , if and whenever it is relevant to the matter.
    thank you for the work you do, and the courage to write about it.

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    • Gabriela Segura, MD  March 1, 2013

      Thank you victor, this is such a frustrating thing. We are living in a world where up is down and down is up. It is baffling to say the least! Cheers!

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  6. John  April 7, 2013

    Julian Whitaker, MD( October 1995) “Since 1950, the incidence of all cancers in people between the ages of 50 and 60 years has increased by 44%, with even higher increases in some of the more deadly forms of cancer. Breast and colon cancer went up 60%, prostate up 100% and testicular cancer for men between the ages of 28 and 35 went up 300%. Lung cancer has gone up 262%, an increase that is obviously not related to cigarette smoking, because over the same period the number of people smoking cigarettes dropped from 50% to 25%…” Doctor Whitaker expresses no opinion as to the reasons for the startling increases in cancer in recent years.

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  7. James van Oosterom  December 24, 2014

    Bang on! Reads like the Book of Revelation…. And still valid, even more so nearly two years later, as witch-hunters and demonizers continue their onslaught they know little about.

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  8. James van Oosterom  December 24, 2014

    correction: “…their onslaught on what they know little about.”

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    • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 24, 2014

      This subject still blows my mind, on a daily basis…

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      • Steve B.  December 24, 2014

        It appears that even the prostitute mainstream disinfo organs seem now compelled to expound on the benefits of nicotine, as witnessed by this recent Discover article:

        http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/13-nicotine-fix

        Yes, tobacco is predictably demonized, but we’ll take what we can get from the scumbags.

        I also saw this recent piece from a website previously unknown to me, without any trashing of tobacco, indeed, the opposite:

        http://www.forces.org/evidence/hamilton/other/nicotine.htm

        Says he while puffing a nicotine=laden monster cigar (Cuban heirloom seed, Central American, lots of ligero), which is ringing my cranial bell most admirably. (That would be the nicotine.) Which chiming befits the Yuletide season equally admirably, especially as I gave up the Christian religion and its chiming bells over 50 years ago on grounds of fraud and that it was corrupting my ability to think cogently. Do I ever get nicotine cravings? No! Never! But if I did, who cares?

      • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 24, 2014

        Fascinating. Thanks!

      • James van Oosterom  December 24, 2014

        I’m of an age (75, of which 60 smoking) when I’m less likely to have my mind blown and more likely to simply raise a middle finger. That said, I must admit that some years ago I felt sufficiently intimidated by doomsayers to switch to additive-free tobacco (American Spirit) which, in addition to reducing my smoking considerably, gave me the justification I felt I needed as a consequence of said intimidation. I have always rolled my own (RYO), in no small part because of the distasteful and anti-social habit many smokers have of dumping their filtered butts –with a half-life of thousands of years– in both the most public and sacred places. In that sense, smokers are their own worst enemies….

        Enough of that. A Blessed Christmas to all!

  9. James van Oosterom  December 24, 2014

    To what extent carcinogens, whether from pollutants produced by fallout, environmental factors or, for that matter, smoking, are responsible for the death-by-cancer spike during the past 50 or so years will be the subject of fruitless debates for many years to come. Denial will, as always, play a prominent role in these debates.

    One plausible cause rarely mentioned is the fear factor and the role it plays in immobilizing an otherwise healthy and active immune system. How many cancer sufferers are unable to deal with what is a natural and universal “event” normally dealt with equally naturally by a robust immune system because they have been frightened out of their wits by fear mongering? The immune system is paralysed and the cancer grows unchecked, irrespective of any other contributing factors. Can we put a number to the victims of a immune system compromised by fear? No, but the question stands: Does fear cause cancer?

    I’ll get my coat.

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    • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 25, 2014

      Since I can’t really grow my own, I buy organic leaves at leafonly.com. I’m very pleased with their products. I believe commercial tobacco is about 60% real stuff and the other 40% is not worth the risk. But there is truth behind fear-based diseases. Being in the dark when it comes to our emotions and fears will only produce disease. It has little to do with the scapegoat. I think Gabor Maté’s book “When the Body Says No” is a great case to that.

      Merry Christmas!

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      • James van Oosterom  December 25, 2014

        Cancer as a psychosomatic disease then. Well, well. Numbers? 5%? 10%? 50%? Let’s have some quantitative studies….:-)

        New Year’s resolution: Nurture your sense of humour, y’all!

      • Steve B.  December 25, 2014

        Richard Alan Miller, who was a physics prodigy, was at SRI at Stanford (with Delgado and others, though in another room on other ventures) developing psi techniques, and thereafter taught the Navy SEALS how to be “super soldiers”), says fear is THE primary cause of cancer by interfering with the nervous system which then triggers other responses. If you look at him today, you might think he’s a fruitcake, but I wouldn’t sell him short. Which does not mean what he says is inevitably correct, but his take is relevant to the thread. That fear is causal in heart attacks (dysfunctional over-activation of the sympathetic nervous system by down-regulating the parasympathetic nervous system), seems solid enough (no, it’s not the cholesterol, saturated fat and clogged arteries):

        http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/17/real-cause-heart-attacks.aspx

        Physicist Chris Busby, who specializes in radiation, has said that the open air testing of A-bombs is THE principal cause of the lung cancer we are seeing now. Fukushima, which is occupying much of his time now, will surely add to the problem. That American cigarettes may contain implanted carcinogens I take as probable, but not sourced in tobacco as such. After all, the deliberate inclusion of cancer virus (SV 40) in the polio vaccine, is now crystal clear. I’ve also read that tobacco leaves uptake polonium which came from these tests. But then you’re breathing it in directly from the air as well. Which may be why many non-smokers get lung cancer.

        My sidebar on religion seems to have offended. This was not my purpose. As always, people need to make up their own minds, and are not stupid for not believing what I do. Evidence is all we’ve got, and what counts as evidence and how conclusive evidence is, is rarely settled. SOTT is very close to my own view, which is why I (gratuitously) tossed it in.

      • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 25, 2014

        Great points! That article on parasympathetic system dysfunction needs to be read by everyone.

  10. James van Oosterom  December 25, 2014

    No offense taken, Steve. As Segura said, “Great points!”

    The myth of arteries as the smoking gun in heart attacks is on-going and considered by most to be right whether it is right or not. Your reference to the article on the dichotomous role of the sympathetic/parasympathetic systems was very helpful.

    I grew up in the age of the internal combustion engine with its precise bore/stroke calibrations and compression readings. What perked my interest in matters under discussion were the efforts of the peripatetic Dr Deepak Chopra to influence the state of the total human from his understanding of quantum physics. Basically, can we influence our health through thought? Perhaps we still need ouabain (g-strophanthin) to be manufactured in our adrenal glands in order to balance the sympathetic parasympathetic systems, but perhaps we can use thoughts at will to increase quantity of ouabain to the benefit of heart health.

    It’s only the tip of the iceberg but at least it’s now visible.

    Still, nothing will exonerate smokers in the public mind. You may a well be smoking the flag.

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    • Steve B.  December 25, 2014

      I suspect that mind over matter will prove out one day in all respects, James. Reminds me of physicist James Jeans remarking that quantum physics proved that the Universe was a Great Thought. Rather like the old Mystery Schools. The Source is Consciousness and “emanates” everything including “matter’, perhaps matter being a standing wave of these energetic emanations. Richard Alan Miller, who I mentioned before and who was in charge of psi at SRI (read: DARPA), until he became a “hippie” of sorts when his morality got compromised, recently expounded on how any allergy could basically be cured by a mental exercise. That he came up with important results is beyond question. I saw an interview of General Stubblebine, now retired, but who was the Director of Intelligence for the US Army. He said psi/remote viewing was completely factual and incredibly successful though he couldn’t divulge any specifics. Ingo Swann and all that, guys who Miller knew. Quantum physics seems headed by many towards a holographic theory, with “information” as fundamental. And you know what that means “matter” is. More like an “illusion” that the Eastern religions posit. But “illusion” in the sense of non-material energy, possibly not fundamentally EM either. Modern quantum physics is reluctant to declare that the zero point field (the Kaballah calls it the Ein Sof and Hegel the Geist and the other traditions by many other names) is conscious, but I figure that’s the actual fact. A Great Thought. Max Planck declared the same thing. Not directly accessible by us land lubbers, but that’s the deal when you’re human. Gariaev, a Russian trained biophysicist, says the DNA is linked by “wormholes” to this very dimension. Of course, the mainstream will have none of him, though he persists.

      Meanwhile, smoke that weed, eat that fat and protein, and take in those nutrients!

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      • James van Oosterom  December 25, 2014

        What a waste! Two thousand years of Aristotelian and Thomistic cosmological dualism and what has it come to? A fragmented existentialism that denies, in short, practically everything, yet perforce retains the ancient model. And still people’s faith in a failed system remains unshakeable.

        Mercy.

        Thanks Steve. Back to my evil weed, protein shakes, fish oil and Dalwhinnie….

      • Steve B.  December 25, 2014

        Forgot the Dalwhinnie in my litany, James. Mea maxima culpa!!! (As St. Thomas might have said.)

  11. James van Oosterom  December 25, 2014

    Segura, who’s probably monitoring this entre-nous may by now have decided we need serious help, Steve. Perhaps we’re straining the limits of credibility. Silly buggers. But it’s Christmas, wot? Or, in your case perhaps, Saturnalia.

    At any rate, we’re pretty much on the same page. Rare for me.

    And, knowing something about the dissolute, decadent early life of Tom Aquino, he would assuredly not have forgotten about Dalwhinnie, or whatever passed as the most beguiling of beverages in his time.

    Greetings from Canada.

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    • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 25, 2014

      You all keep going, it is a fascinating discussion!! ;)

      Greetings!

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    • Steve B.  December 25, 2014

      I strain the limits of my own credibility, James. Though I no longer feel the need to pinch myself!

      This planet is run by predators, imo, so, yes, Saturnalia it is. Rather like the old pre-Christian Gnostics had it with the Demiurge and the Archons. (Reptilians?) It’s clear enough that the so-called Illuminati are summoning nasty entities that seem to go far back in time, at least to Babylon (the Church of Rome being the church of Babylon relocated). And indulging in pedophilia and human sacrifice to this day, now suddenly blown wide open in the news. That said, I respect the Christ take of people like Steiner and others in the Mystery School tradition (as the materialization point in the evolution of Consciousness represented by the Christ figure). But this is far from the Sun of God/Son of God that figures in official religion, as in dying for our sins, and whose body and blood we consume. Say what? Seems like ritual sacrifice to me.Call the chief buggerer Satan, but the Gnostics had this guy figured for Yahweh in the Old Testament. Not saying I take the Gnostic vision as literally true, but it serves its conceptual purpose. David Icke entitled his latest book, The Perception Deception, as “…or it’s all bollocks; yes, ALL of it.” Earth is a penal colony and farm, and the only way out/off is to get knowledge of all the bollocks.

      In the event, I went over to my single malt and am having a couple of fingers right now. I guess I’m still suggestible. :-)

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  12. Samia  November 15, 2015

    Good article for the most part. I’ve heard your ideas expressed in a non-scientific sense decades ago. I’ve been forced to quit my small tobacco intake because non-additive tobacco is not available in my country anymore and I can’t stand the regular cigarettes. They are ghastly.

    However, the information I read 35 years ago does mention that high intake of tobacco will reduce vitamin c – which is not automatically a bad thing for all people all of the time. Also, all that cadmium is not good for us.

    Tobacco is a herb, either a medicine or a tonic depending on the individual, and as such is good for some folks but not good for all.

    Thanks.

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  13. Paul M  December 7, 2015

    Absolutely fantastic original article and superb discussion afterwards! This is the best online reading I have had for months!
    I found this page when researching the idea of growing my own tobacco. I am stuck. I have tried and tried giving up smoking. The stress and depression I go though every time, really has had me wondering for many years whether to believe the hype. I should point out that I am not someone who finds it hard to doubt the authorities and their propaganda machines. I opted out of many things like commercial water, vaccinations, non-organic food etc etc many years ago. But I was still something of a victim to the misinformation about tobacco. I have to say, I am not convinced 100% (even after reading the excellent information above) that tobacco is safe to use, I certainly don’t think I would encourage my kids to take it up as some sort of health benefit to them. But for me, the utter misery and incredible amount of stress (palpitations, halucinations, MONTHS after giving up) which I suffer, definitely make me want to find a way to be a more sensible smoker. Being a non smoker for ME certainly seems painful and dangerous to my health.

    This leads me to my point/question here which is regarding a topic I am surprised to find hasn’t come up already as yet. That being electronic cigarettes. I have toyed with the idea for weeks now. Friends of mine rave about them and say they feel much better than when they were smoking commercial tobacco, but I am inherently sceptical and concerned about inhaling PG and other chemicals courtesy of a cheap Chinese lab! I think I would feel safer with commercial tobacco, almost anyway! But my question is this….

    Do people here agree with my gut feeling that says organic or better still, home grown organic tobacco would be a safer bet than e-cigarettes? I have tried to do research online about ecigarettes and nothing I read seems to be reliable or trustworthy. I found this article about the side effects of e-cigarettes: http://www.e-cigarettereviewcentre.co.uk/electronic-cigarette-side-effects/ and i have to say, that’s not exactly encouraging considering how many people say these devices are better for you than tobacco!

    I did try a puff of a friend’s e-cigarette once and it made my throat tickle and itch, horrible, i was coughing for a good few minutes. Yet my nice virginia tobacco never induced that response from my throat!

    I suppose the choice is between no nicotine of any kind (not sure I can actually live through that!) versus a tobacco source of nicotine (healthiest form of tobacco), versus an allegedly “safe” source in E-cigs, the latter which I harbour serious concerns about, perhaps irrationally so.
    I wonder if some of the immense brains engaged above could comment?! Much appreciated to all for views or comments.
    Thanks

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    • Gabriela Segura, MD  December 7, 2015

      Very interesting observations! Thank you for sharing, they’re priceless. I have a friend who got very sick after smoking e-cigs. Considering the info available, I would say that an organic herbal plant (tobacco) is definitely much safer! If you are interested to read more on nicotine, you can use the search function at sott.net. It contains a huge database on the subject. Best!

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  14. Arthur Williams  May 28, 2016

    I have read that people (non-smokers) are now wearing nicotine patches to university exams in place of Nodose (caffeine supplements). In my family I am the eldest (66) of 7 kids yet I am the only one who smokes and has nothing wrong health wise. My brother developed kidney problems when he gave up his job as technical manager of a tobacco company because he also gave up smoking then. He has since had a kidney transplant and hip replacement. My youngest brother started to get epilepsy after he gave up. He died at 43 yet they could not find anything other than his heart stopped. I tend to think people start to eat the wrong things especially lollies when they give up and this causes more issues than when they smoke. The Kitivan people are a good example. The smokers there live a long healthy life.

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  15. Liz  October 13, 2016

    Wow, this is truly an interesting conversation. A few months ago, I attempted to debate a self righteous anti-smoking person about why she believes that cigarettes cause lung cancer. I wasn’t disputing her claim but I also knew that the studies that I had reviewed did not show any causation- only correlation – which of course could be disputed since correlation is NOT causation and I wanted her to examine her belief system. Her response was so utterly typical of mindless sheeples, ‘ The American Cancer Society states that cigarettes cause lung cancer”. I didn’t know how to respond to such an ignorant comment. The ACS is one of the most corrupt organizations on earth! When I’m researching something I always look at many factors like who were the participants in a study, where did they work, live and what year was it? Were they living in an industrialized city or rural mountainous region? Did they work in factories? People living in mountains are exposed to high levels of radon in many cases. People who live in brick or stone houses are also being expsosed to Radon. People with basements are being exposed to higher levels of radon.

    Repressed anger and resentment cause lung cancer.

    What really really really boggles and annoys me is that I have friends who are die hard self righteous anti-smoking people who are NASA engineers and marathon runners and I’ve seen them run next to rush hour traffic on the roads and behind mosquito spray trucks AND they eat fast food almost every night. I laugh and I wonder if that education they received really made them more intelligent or just more arrogant.

    WebMD reports that marijuana doesn’t cause lung cancer. Hmmmm So, then, why do cigarettes?

    Something funny that I read a few years ago in an online ‘ freestuff’ sight where people give things away in their local district. A woman was giving away her children’s underwear and it said, ‘ from a non-smoking home’. I died laughing. The smell of smoke is the last thing I would be concerned about when wearing someone else’s underwear!!!!

    Lastly, I, like Arthur above, rarely ever get sick ( except for my current tick born infection) and I’ve smoked for many years and yet every non-smoker I know gets sick at least every other month with some type of flu or cold or stomach virus. I once joked that the cigarette smoke was killing all the viruses and bacteria. I’ve also read studies that say that quitting smoking can be more dangerous to a person’s health than continuing to smoke.

    The only thing I don’t like about smoking is the stale stench that it leaves behind and I do think it’s a very expensive habit that mostly supports a corrupt government If someone wants to smoke, they should be allowed to without judgment. I hate it when doctors and other people assume that smokers have a lower IQ, come from a low class family. I know a doctor who is a marathon cyclist, has hiked the El Camino de Santiago every year with his wife for the last 30 years and he smokes while he rides his bike.

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  16. Susan  July 30, 2017

    Nicotine gum also works just fine. For some reason I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke but I have noticed that nicotine makes me more energetic and smarter, so I use nicotine gum.

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