Fred Langer - Pipes

Eat Tobacco?

Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, MD

The following article is written by Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, MD, a graduate of the University of Rochester, the Miami School of Medicine, and the Naval School of Aviation and Space Medicine. He has been named the National Health Federation's Doctor of the Year. Here is a copy of his entire article RECOMMENDING cigar smoking FOR your health, published in the Second Opinion newsletter which he edits [July 1995 issue, pp. 4-7]. The entire article is reproduced here so that you can see each statement he makes in the context of the rest of the article.

The American people have been worked into such a frenzy about cigarette smoke that people in Europe think we have gone completely off the deep end.

All of you know that I am absolutely opposed to cigarette smoking. I hate it! Im particularly opposed to smoking in public places as it invades the space of others and not only irritates their eyes and breathing passages (including mine), but makes many of them a little crazy with paranoia.

Having cleared the smoke, I am now going to give you a report that will surprise you and, if you are an antismoking zealot, make your eyes bulge a little and cause black smoke to jet from your nostrils.

It has been reported from some of our best medical journals that cancer and Alzheimers disease are 50 percent less frequent among smokers. It sounds like a man-bites-dog story, but the reported case studies are quite impressive. These reports are not new -- just ignored. The apparent protective effect of smoking was first reported 30 years ago. With their backs to the wall, I am surprised the tobacco industry hasn't promulgated these findings.

The International Journal of Epidemiology reported in 1991 that Alzheimers disease was 50 percent less prevalent among cigarette smokers and the heavier the smoking, the less the risk.

Parkinsons disease, an affliction perhaps worse than Alzheimers because the victim is trapped in a waxen state of semi-paralysis with his mind still functioning, is also 50 percent less common among smokers. (At least with Alzheimers, you are unaware of your progressive deterioration into a new babyhood.)

Articles that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association over 10 years ago, reported a 50 percent less incidence of osteoarthritis. This degenerative disease is five times less common among smokers! This was documented by the federal governments Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the first report of its type.

Prostate cancer, the most common male neoplasm, was found to be 50 percent less common among smokers and, for women, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in 1985 that cancer of the uterus was also 50 percent less common among female smokers.

Even children's diseases, such as Tourettes syndrome (a bizarre neurological disorder) and attention deficit disorder have shown dramatic improvement with nicotine. (Cant you just see little Jane puffing away at the morning break?) The kids with Tourettes usually improved within 24 hours of application of a nicotine patch.

These findings are a striking contradiction to popular notions about the devastating effects of smoking. On the other hand, there can be little doubt that smoking causes emphysema and is related to other cancers such as cancer of the lung and even breast cancer.

What are we to make of all this? Should you start smoking at age 60 to prevent Alzheimers, Parkinsons, prostate cancer, uterine cancer, osteoarthritis, colon cancer, and ulcerative colitis? The idea is, admittedly, preposterous. But, as Forbes magazine pointed out, the lung damage from smoking takes 30 years to develop -- and at 90 you're not going to worry about it.

But perhaps there are alternatives to bad breath and brown-stained fingers. You could smoke a nice aromatic cigar (on the porch, of course) after lunch and supper. You don't have to, and shouldn't, inhale the smoke to get the nicotine effect; it will be absorbed from your mucous membranes. You can drink something cool while smoking your stogie, which will keep the weed from irritating your mucous membranes and you will still get the benefit of swallowing some of the nicotine.

Have I gone mad telling you this? If you think so, read the medical journals yourself. In 30 years of practice, I have noted that my cigar-smoking patients all led a long and healthy life. Churchill died at 90, H.L. Mencken lived to 75, and George Burns is still gong strong at 99. All of them smoked cigars constantly from late childhood to the very end. None of these gentlemen were patients of mine, but I wish they had been, especially my two role models: Mencken and Burns.

There are other possibilities to enable you to get your ration of nicotine (assuming that is the beneficial agent in tobacco). You could smoke a pipe, chew tobacco (NOT recommended, as chewing causes cancer of the mouth and tongue -- and it doesn't take 30 years), or dip snuff like my great-grandmother Lucy Bell (who lived to the age of 99). Snuff-dipping is really messy and you would be an outcast for sure at the garden club and maybe even the pool hall.

You could even snort snuff powder. In the 18th century, it was quite fashionable to snort snuff. Hold your hand out with the palm sideways. Lift your thumb up to a vertical position. You will notice a depression at the base of the thumb. This is where the snuff was placed. Then, with the nose close, one sniffed it into the nasal passages (it was called sniffing, not snorting -- gentlemen don't snort). In anatomy, this depression is called the snuff box.

I know all this sounds a bit ridiculous, but everything I've told you is true. However, I know you're not going to take up smoking in any form. Converting you to the foul weed is about as likely as getting a Muslim to turn Jewish -- or vice versa.

For those of you who think the idea of smoking two cigars a day, or even one, is too much, and it will be for most people, and you wont smoke a pipe, dip or snort snuff, or chew tobacco, I've heard there's another way to get your nicotine -- EAT the tobacco.

It has been reported that the tobacco leaf -- raw, not cured as for cigarettes and cigars -- is an excellent source of niacin and other nutrients and, of course, nicotine. It is said to be tasty in salads, but I haven't tried it. IM not recommending that you eat tobacco-leaf salad as I haven't done enough research on it, yet. All I have at this point is an unsubstantiated rumor.

In the meantime, try the cigars if you can (1) overcome your aversion, (2) promise not to inhale (if Mr. Clinton can resist such temptation, so can you), and (3) take the persecution from your family, your friends, and the smoke police.

[References: International Journal of Epidemiology, 1964; Journal of the American Medical Association, 1981; New England Journal of Medicine, 1983 and 1985; Forbes, July 4, 1994.]

============End of Second Opinion article=========

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That last cited article from Forbes magazine is also attached below in full.

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Thank you for smoking...?

(health benefits from smoking)

Authors: Brimelow, Peter

Citation: Forbes, July 4, 1994 v154 n1 p80(2)

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Subjects: Smoking_Health aspects

Reference #: A15476256

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Abstract: Smoking cigarettes appears to have some physical benefits despite reports to the opposite. It may reduce the risks of developing diseases such as prostate cancer and endometrial cancer, in addition to the behavioral benefits.

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Full Text COPYRIGHT Forbes Inc. 1994

THE HANGPERSONS NOOSE is unmistakably around the tobacco industry's neck. In Florida and Mississippi, state governments are attempting to force tobacco companies to pay some smoking-related health care costs. In Washington, D.C., the Environmental Protection Agency has claimed that secondhand smoke is a significant risk for nonsmokers and the Food & Drug Administration is making noises about regulating nicotine as a drug. And recently the American Medical Association agreed, reasserting that nicotine is addictive. Smokers have already been driven from many workplaces into the street for a furtive puff. But further legal harassment, to the point of what an industry spokesman calls backdoor prohibition, seems unstoppable.

Lost in this lynching frenzy: the fact that smoking might be, in some small ways, good for you.

Hold on now! Lets be clear: The Surgeon General has indeed determined that smoking is dangerous to your health. Lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases are highly correlated with cigarette consumption. Annual smoking-related deaths are commonly said to be over 400,000 (although critics say the number is inflated).

But so is driving automobiles dangerous to your health (over 40,000 deaths a year). Yet people do it, because it has rewards as well as risk. And they judge, as individuals, that the reward outweighs the risk.

This is called freedom.

Well, what are the rewards of cigarette smoking? Apart from intangible pleasure, the most obvious is behavioral. A battery of studies, such as those by British researcher D.M. Warburton, show that cigarettes, whatever their other effects, really do stimulate alertness, dexterity and cognitive capacity.

And alertness, dexterity, etc. can be useful. Such as when driving. Or flying -- as Congress recognized when it exempted airline pilots from the ban on smoking on domestic flights.

These behavioral benefits suggest an answer to the Great Tobacco Mystery: why almost a third of adult Americans continue to do something they are told, incessantly and insistently, is bad for them. (Duke University economist W. Kip Viscusi reported in his 1992 book, Smoking: Making the Risky Decision, that survey data show smokers, if anything, exaggerate the health danger of their habit.).

Smokers, according to numerous studies such as those by University of Michigan researchers Ovide and Cynthia Pomerleau, are different from nonsmokers. They tend toward depression and excitability. Current understanding is that nicotine is amphoteric -- that is, it can act to counter both conditions, depending on how it is consumed. (Quick puffs stimulate, long drags calm.)

The implication is fascinating: A large part of the population seems to be aware of its significant although not pathological personality quirks, and to have discovered a form of self-medication that regulates them.

Of course, this explanation for the stubbornness of smokers is not as satisfying as what Washington prefers to believe: mass seduction by the wicked tobacco companies and their irresistible advertising. Nor would it justify huge rescue operations by heroic politicians and bureaucrats.

Beyond its behavioral effects, smoking seems also to offer subtler health rewards to balance against its undisputed risks:

* Parkinsons disease. The frequency of this degenerative disorder of the nervous system among smokers appears to be half the rate among nonsmokers -- an effect recognized by the Surgeon General as long ago as 1964.

* Alzheimers disease. Similarly, the frequency of this degenerative mental disorder has recently been found to be as much as 50% less among smokers than among nonsmokers -- for example, by the 11 studies reviewed in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 1991.

* Endometrial cancer. There is extensive and long-standing evidence that this disease of the womb occurs as much as 50% less among smokers -- as documented by, for example, a New England Journal of Medicine article back in 1985. The triggering mechanism appears to be a reduction in estrogen levels.

* Prostate cancer. Conversely, smoking seems to raise estrogen levels in men and may be responsible for what appears to be a 50% lower rate of prostate cancer among smokers, although this needs corroboration.

* Osteoarthritis. This degenerative disorder of bone and cartilage is up to five times less likely to occur among heavy smokers -- as documented, for example, by the federal governments first Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

* Colon cancer, ulcerative colitis. These diseases of the bowel seem to be about 30% and 50% less frequent among smokers -- documented, for example, by articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1981 and 1983, respectively.

Other benefits that have been suggested for smoking: lower rates of sarcoidosis and allergic alveolitis, both lung disorders, and possibly even acne. Smokers are also lighter -- ironic, because obesity is a leading cause of the cardiovascular disease that smoking is also supposed to exacerbate. So you could quit smoking and still die of a heart attack because of the weight you put on.

None of these health benefits is enough to persuade doctors to recommend occasional cigarettes, in the way that some now occasionally recommend a glass of wine.

But consider this theoretical possibility: Should 60-year-olds take up smoking because its protection against Alzheimers is more immediate than its potential damage to the lungs, which wont show up for 30 years if at all?

A theoretical possibility -- and likely to remain theoretical. Research into possible benefits of tobacco and nicotine is widely reported to be stymied by the absolutist moral fervor of the antismoking campaign.

Under the Carter Administration, the federal government abandoned its research into safer cigarettes in favor of an attack on all smoking. No effort is made to encourage smokers to switch to pipes and cigars, although their users lung cancer and heart disease rates are five to ten times lower (somewhat offset by minor increases in mouth and throat cancers). There is no current support for studies of the marginal increase in danger for each cigarette smoked, although it appears the human system can clear the effects of three to five of the (much stronger) pre-1960 cigarettes, if dispersed across a day, with relatively little risk.

Instead, the extirpation of smoking has become another moral equivalent of war -- as President Carter called the energy crisis in the 1970s, and as price and wage controls were viewed earlier. There is no role for tradeoffs, risk-reward calculations or free choice.

Why don't tobacco companies point out the potential offsetting rewards of smoking? Besides the usual corporate cowardice and bureaucratic inertia, the answer may be another, typically American, disease--lawyers. Directing the companies defense, they apparently veto any suggestion that smoking has benefits for fear of liability suits and of the possible regulatory implications if nicotine is seen as a drug.

Which leaves smokers defenseless against a second typically American disease: the epidemic of power-hungry puritanical bigots.

=============end of Forbes article===============

MORE ON THE HEALTH BENEFITS FROM SMOKING CIGARS

[The following material is copied, verbatim, from a booklet written by Dr. William Campbell Douglass, MD, entitled, BRAIN BOOSTERS: Healing the Secret Causes of Memory Loss, copyright 1998, published by Second Opinion Publishing, Inc., Atlanta, GA. The quotation is from pp. 35-40. To order the whole booklet, call 1-800-728-2288.]

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Eat Tobacco to Enhance Your Memory and Prevent Alzheimers?

The American people have been worked into such a frenzy about cigarette smoke that people in Europe think we have gone completely off the deep end.

You know I am absolutely opposed to cigarette smoking. I hate it! IM particularly opposed to smoking in public places as it invades the space of others and not only irritates their eyes and breathing passages (including mine), but makes many of them a little crazy with tobacco phobia.

Having cleared the smoke, I am now going to give you a report that will surprise you and, if you are an anti-smoking zealot, make your eyes bulge a little and cause black smoke to jet from your nostrils and ears.

It has been reported from some of our best medical journals that cancer and Alzheimers disease are 50 percent less frequent among smokers. It sound like a man-bites-dog story, but the reported case studies are quite impressive. These reports are not new just ignored. The apparent protective effect of smoking was first reported 30 years ago. With their backs to the wall, I am surprised the tobacco industry hasn't promulgated these findings.

The International Journal of Epidemiology reported in 1991 that Alzheimers disease was 50 percent less prevalent among cigarette smokers and the heavier the smoking, the less the risk.

Articles that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association over 10 years ago, reported a 50 percent less incidence of colon cancer and ulcerative colitis in smokers.

Perhaps the most startling of the findings is that smoking reduces the incidence of osteoarthritis. This degenerative disease is five times less common among smokers! This was documented by the federal governments Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the first report of its type.

Even children's diseases, such as Tourettes syndrome (a bizarre neurological disorder) and attention deficit disorder have shown dramatic improvements with nicotine. (Cant you just see little Jane in grade school puffing away at the morning break?) The kids with Tourettes usually improved within 24 hours of the application of a nicotine patch to the skin.

Have I gone mad telling you this? If you think so, read the medical journals yourself. In 30 years of practice, I have noted that my cigar-smoking patients all led a long and healthy life. Churchill died at 90, H.L. Mencken lived to 75, and George Burns was still going strong at 99. All of them smoked cigars constantly from late childhood to the very end. None of these gentlemen were patients of mine, but I wish they had been, especially my two role models: H.L. Mencken and George Burns.

There are other possibilities to enable you to get your ration of nicotine (assuming that is the beneficial agent in tobacco). You could smoke a pipe, chew tobacco (NOT recommended, as chewing causes cancer of the mouth and tongue and it doesn't take 30 years), or dip snuff like my great-grandmother Lucy Bell (who lived to the age of 99). Snuff-dipping is really messy and you would be an outcast for sure at the garden club and maybe even the pool hall.

You could even snort snuff powder. In the 18th century, it was quite fashionable to snort snuff. Hold your hand out with the palm sideways. Lift your thumb up to a vertical position. You will notice a depression at the base of the thumb. This is where the snuff was placed. Then, with the nose close, one sniffed it into the nasal passages (it was called sniffing, not snorting gentlemen don't snort). In anatomy, this little depression at the base of the thumb is still called the snuff box.

It has been reported that the tobacco leaf raw, not cured as for cigarettes and cigars is an excellent source of niacin and other nutrients and, of course, nicotine. It is said to be tasty in salads, but I haven't tried it. IM not recommending that you eat tobacco-leaf salad as I haven't done enough research on it, yet. All I have at this point is an unsubstantiated rumor.

Nicotine Is Getting New Respect

Where do you suppose the name nicotinic acid (vitamin B3) came from? B3 was discovered in the tobacco plant.

A recent study, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, concludes that nicotine may alleviate the symptoms of Alzheimers disease. Another report, published in the journal Biochemistry, went even further in suggesting that nicotine could actually prevent this brain-destroying disease. The research was partly funded by the Philip Morris Company (I thought you should know.)

At Case Western Reserve University, chemist Michael Zagorski created a laboratory model of the brains chemistry, and found that when nicotine was mixed with key brain chemicals, it stopped early development of sheet-like structures in the brain that indicate deterioration. This deterioration leads to amyloid plaque, which is characteristic of what is seen in the brains of Alzheimers cases. If this inhibition of plaque formation with nicotine proves effective in the living patient, it will be an unprecedented breakthrough in a disease that is now essentially hopeless.

Zagorski says we might prevent the ravages of Alzheimers if we started taking a nicotine-like drug around age 40. And you don't have to smoke cigars or a daily pack of Camel Lights to get the protective effect. Individuals might be able to use smoking cessation patches, which contain nicotine, to slow the loss of memory. The idea is that a continuous dose of nicotine would stimulate key locations in the brain called receptors.

The Georgetown researchers say that the patch has proven very safe in a small study of Alzheimers patients. Since the patch is free of the toxic chemicals found in smoke, and because the nicotine is given in low doses, there is little risk of individuals becoming addicted to the drug.

Action to take: If you have a strong family history of Alzheimers disease, you should consider using the nicotine patch. This therapy is not proven, but it is safe and its always better to prevent something than to attempt a cure later. We don't know if Alzheimers is a hereditary disease or from aluminum poisoning (I suspect the latter). Since we don't know, I would go with the patch if the disease seems to run in your family (i.e., father, mother, or sibling).

[Ref: Journal of the American Chemical Society, October 22, 1996; International Journal of Epidemiology, 1964; Journal of the American Medical Association, 1981; New England Journal of Medicine, 1983 and 1985; Forbes, July 4, 1994.]