http://mindhacks.com/2009/02/18/why-smokers-blunt-their-caffeine-hit/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Fri, 24 May 2013 17:03:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2009/02/18/why-smokers-blunt-their-caffeine-hit/#comment-5984 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:22:38 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/why-smokers-blunt-their-caffeine-hit/#comment-5984 As a much larger proportion of people with schizophrenia are smokers compared to the normal population, the interaction between cigarette smoking and antipsychotic medication is an important one.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/156/11/1751
The suggestion is that nicotine helps to alleviate the negative symptoms by binding to nicotinic receptors.
In fact though, if nicotine were an illegal drug, there might well be many researchers or clinicians arguing that it was a cause of the condition and not just an association. What if Nicotine actually does break down endogenous antipsychotic compounds in the smokers body?

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2009/02/18/why-smokers-blunt-their-caffeine-hit/#comment-5983 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:15:23 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/why-smokers-blunt-their-caffeine-hit/#comment-5983 I found the same thing when I was being treated with Tegretol for my Trigeminal Neuralgia. The larger the dose of Tegretol I was on, the more I smoked. I was told it was down to the nicotine (or whatever) in cigarettes inducing the same enzyme in the liver as the Tegretol. (I’m no longer on it, it only has a limited usefulness for TN, and once you’re past a certain dose it just gets ridiculous. I’m down to less than ten cigarettes a day now …)

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