It's been demonized for a century, yet is actually a powerful medicine.

It's anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, cognitive enhancing and even aids in fat loss.

The benefits of NICOTINE will shock you:

Nicotine reverses aging, improves metabolism.

A recent study showed that low dose nicotine:

◇ Enhances mitochondrial function
◇ Increases NAD+ levels (which decline in aging)
◇ Upregulates SIRT1 (an "anti-aging" gene)

mimicking that of youth.

Nicotine also protected telomeres and reduced oxidative stress.

Both hallmarks of aging, nicotine at low doses once again was shown as protective.

All of this culminated in improved cognitive function, which of course normally declines with age too.

In fact, nicotine is a well known cognitive enhancer.

~7 mg:

• Increase brain metabolism by ~30%
• Restore memory
• Enhance learning

in Alzheimer's patients.

The nicotinic cholinergic system in the brain has long been tied to memory and cognitive decline.

Nicotine improves memory, attention and focus.

At 5-10 mg, people have:

◈ Improved scores on cognitive tests
◈ Improved reaction time
◈ Better learning

In these studies, it was administered as a patch.

Nicotine works in the brain by stimulating the cholinergic system.

This system normally uses the neurotransmitter acetylcholine,

and some of its receptors are literally known as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.

The cholinergic system:

◇ Increases dopamine (motivation, reward, performance)
◇ Increases brain metabolism / energy production
◇ Supports long term potentiation - the strengthening of signals (plasticity)

Older studies showed that the more cigarettes people smoked, the lower their risk of Alzheimer's disease.

People smoking more than 21 a day had HALF the risk of developing this dementia.

Nicotine reduces Alzheimer's plaques.

◇ Decreases amyloid peptide secretion
◇ Chelates copper, reducing oxidative stress
◇ Reduces amyloid aggregation / precipitation

probably some of the reasons smoking is sometimes associated with less Alzheimer's

Nicotine has benefits beyond the brain, too.

Nicotine remarkably lowers gut inflammation.

Oral administration of nicotine:

• Reduces digestive symptoms
• Prevents tissue damage
• Blunts release of inflammatory cytokines

Smokers have a lower risk of ulcerative colitis.

Nicotine improves inflammatory bowel disease.

At ~17 mg / day, nicotine patches were shown to improve:

⋆ Stool frequency
⋆ Abdominal pain
⋆ Fecal urgency
⋆ Physical structure of the gut

in people with ulcerative colitis.

The gut also has cholinergic neurons that respond to nicotine.

This:

➥ Reduces inflammation
➥ Improves gut motility
➥ Prevents leaky gut

making it useful for certain digestive disorders.

Nicotine reverses myocarditis.

Nicotine nearly completely cured the inflammation and fibrosis in this heart condition.

Nicotine is well known to have a systemic anti-inflammatory effect by acting on cholinergic cells in the nervous system.

Other studies have shown that nicotine is protective against myocarditis.

◈ Improved survival
◈ Reduced cardiac damage / fibrosis
◈ Reduced inflammatory cytokines

The cholinergic system is powerfully anti-inflammatory,

and nicotine is one important way to activate it.

Nicotine improves survival in sepsis.

A highly lethal condition, sepsis is the bacterial infiltration into the blood and our organs.

This drives massive inflammation, depleting oxygen and energy from tissues, ultimately killing you.

Nicotine halts the inflammatory response.

Nicotine even reduces skin inflammation from UV / sunlight.

Excessive UV is obviously known to drive sunburn, the underlying way that it does that is through inflammation.

Here, transdermal nicotine actually reduces the inflammation from it and from detergents.

How nicotine reduces inflammation:

The vagus nerve is a parasympathetic nerve that connects to various tissues from the central nervous system.

When it connects to the spleen, the resident immune cells there are geared towards an anti-inflammatory phenotype.

It does this by using the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, through the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.

This is why vagus nerve stimulation in general is so powerful and being used for tons of stress and inflammation driven conditions.

Autoimmune disease improved with nicotine.

Some studies have shown that nicotine can reduce the incidence of conditions like MS.

Animal studies show it can reduce the attack on neurons that drive the condition.

Through nicotine's anti-inflammatory effects.

Nicotine can even reduce allergies.

Allergies are another condition characterized by an overactive, inflammation geared immune system.

The nicotinic anti inflammatory system acts on allergy inducing cells (mast cells) and halts this process.

Nicotine reduces fat gain, without changing calories.

Low doses of nicotine (~5 mg human equivalent) can raise metabolism and help shed fat.

It stimulates the metabolism of fat, and seems to have some protective effects on our mitochondria that turn food into energy.

In the brain, nicotine can stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis and fusion.

That means it creates more and bigger mitochondria.

This is good. It means we produce more energy.