Tobacco Benefits Extend Beyond Nicotine

You're listening to episode 343 of Mida Life Radio. I'm your host, Matt Blackburn. Last week I did a show pro sodium fluoride topically in toothpaste form. We're gonna continue the triggering episodes here with the health benefits of smoking tobacco, specifically cigars. Most people's first experience with the tobacco plant.

is likely with cigarettes. And you'll hear in almost every health podcast when they're referenced, they'll say there's over four thousand chemicals in a conventional cigarette. And of course there's the filter It's completely different from a cigar, which is just the tobacco leaf and nothing else. No filter, no added chemicals. Although some of my friends opt for certified organic cigars, which I think is unnecessary.

I've actually grown tobacco before when I was starting mitolif and living in an R V in South San Diego, really interesting time of my life. I was growing tobacco outdoors. And it was a carnivorous plant. It was attracting bugs to it and absorbing their nitrogen. I've been in and out of the carnivorous plant hobby for a couple decades now and People often think of the Venus flytrap or the pitcher plant and those mechanisms of action of capturing and consuming bugs.

But a lot of carnivorous plants, actually the majority of them are the sticky type. where the insects actually land on the leaves and get slowly absorbed and act as a fertilizer for the plant. The same thing goes for the tobacco plant. What I'm getting at is they don't need to spray it with anything because that's the mentality that a lot of people have. If it's a proper farm, there's no reason for them to use insecticides on it because the plant is going to do that itself.

the main component of nicotine that is focused on is an insecticide itself. Nicotine paralyzes the nervous system of aphids and mites, and it is used in agriculture as a natural insecticide.

historically in the form of nicotine sulfate. So I was very fortunate to be introduced to tobacco later in life. Because generally when people were introduced to things earlier in life, they are lower quality but in high school in art class, I'm sitting there, a Hispanic kid next to me, tries to hand me a joint under the table and offers me cannabis and I deny it'cause at that time I looked at it like it was crack cocaine. And I put it in the same category as cigarettes.

And then about three or four years into studying natural health I was offered my first cigar. I was skeptical, but I was inspired by the man that offered it to me, and so I took him up on it. met at a cigar shop, smoked and felt incredible. I felt more balanced than I did going in. I didn't feel like it pushed me out of balance in any way. It was a very grounding experience. And part of why I got into natural health in the first place was

for brain fog. I didn't have any serious debilitating condition. I was just tired of my brain not working as well as I knew it could. I've said in the show before I was a B or C student. It wasn't really until several years into attending college taking supplements and eating animal foods and drinking milk and eating enough red meat pretty much every day that my brain actually switched on and I was able to have more creativity, have more focus

be able to connect dots easier in my own life and in natural health and human physiology, see things that other people couldn't. Like many or most of you listening to this, my brain probably didn't develop the way that it should have growing up, because We're in a really rough world right now, obviously, with the medical, pharmaceutical cartel and all the misinformation and then you have supplement companies

confusing people with all of their ridiculous marketing and this creates malnutrition in children because people don't know what to do. If they are supplementing, they're taking the wrong things. whether they're cheap Walmart Costco supplements or whether they're really overpriced expensive supplements that a marketing person sold you on, such as David Wolf and people like that. It's partially what inspired the show. I was listening to an interview with David Wolf.

on nicotine and just laughing at how ignorant he was about the subject. I post daily on social media, Instagram specifically, and on my stories there, I posted a clip of him describing all the nicotine derivatives because nicotine is related to vitamin B three, whether it's niacin, nicotinamide ribicide, But what's funny is nicotinamide is the same thing as niacinamide. If you guys are familiar with my mitolife products, I have a product called NAD Power.

that stands for nigotinamide, adenide, dinucleotide. It's NAD plus, it's what people inject. They have patches now. It's a kind of a biohacking longevity therapy. But vitamin B three is a precursor to it. And you don't have to take nicotinamide ribicide, you don't need to take expensive NAD plus injections, expensive patches. You can if you want and experiment with all that, but it does come with risks.

What's low risk is just supplementing what we find in food, which is that supplement that I sell. called NAD power. that contains niacinamide. But if you search on PubMed or research websites niacinamide, not much will come up because they use the word nicotinamide. What's funny about that David Wolfe rant when he was listing off all these names to sound smart is he said niacinamide and then he said nicotinamide as if they're different things, which is

one thing and then he also put nicotine in the list of nicotine derivatives, which was hilarious. Anyway, there's just a lot of people in the health community that try to extend the big words that they say the list of them, the pronunciation. All it is is a big sales pitch to convince you that they're smart. When most of these people are marketers first, that's why I have so many enemies.

and their educator's second, but they have this smoke shield that their educator first, which is not the case. Back to tobacco though, there was a twenty ten study looking at the insecticidal, fungicidal, and bactericidal properties. of what's called bio oil. So they heated up tobacco in a vacuum at nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit. and it made a concentrate they called bioil, which they tested on a ton of different insects, including what's called the Colorado potato beetle.

which was resistant to a lot of insecticides. It took out that beetle sm as well as a ton of other pests. and also eleven different types of fungus for bacteria. And what's most incredible is even after removing the nicotine, that bio oil still remained a very effective pesticide. meaning there are other compounds in it and a lot of these biohacking companies that are promoting nicotine

that often say, you know, never smoke. Smoking's obviously bad for you, which I'll get into the nuance of that discussion. Tobacco is not just nicotine. That's like saying coffee is just caffeine. There's so many other compounds in there that are beneficial, and some that aren't beneficial, but those can be mitigated with strategic supplementation. During the whole COVID nineteen experience, there were a lot of studies coming out in twenty twenty one on not only nicotine but also caffeine.

as a preventative or beneficial supplement for people that were dealing with that infection. Which is funny because the coffee and cigarettes, like poor man's remedy, was being clinically validated in the research. With nicotine there was question on the mechanism of how it actually helped lower the rate of COVID nineteen infection. One of the theories was that it affected the Renin angiotensin system.

by upregulating the ACE1 receptor and downregulating the ACE2 receptor. Just so happens that on the cell membrane the nicotinic receptors are close proximity to the ACE two receptors. And so the idea is that if the ACE two receptors are dysregulated from COVID nineteen, that triggers a TH one immune response.

and having nicotine on board right there can help prevent that dysregulation. And the third theory is that nicotine and COVID compete for the same receptors called the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. And then I know the focus of this podcast is on tobacco, nicotine, but caffeine is a known anti inflammatory immunomodulator and bronchodilator. That last effect mostly due to it being a phosphodiesterase inhibitor and an aden adenosine receptor agonist as well.

And I bring that up just because a lot of people in the health field demonize caffeine. And there's times to go lower dose, but not being able to handle caffeine to me is a sign that your body is not healthy, especially liver health. In super stressful times of my life when I was in a situation that I shouldn't have been in for months on end, I've taken a break from caffeine and that did help. But that's definitely not a long term solution. Getting off of coffee and caffeine

is not an ideal way to live. And last little side note here on caffeine, supporting the liver with things like taurine, glycine, amino acid supplementation, the fat soluble vitamins like my purely K and Pufa Protect, Midolife products help But there's also the Troscriptions Tromune, which is a cordycepin cordyceps extract. And to me that works like nothing else to calm my nervous system and counteract

the jittery effect that I would get from caffeine. So if I'm traveling and I'm using caffeine therapeutically, higher dose than I normally would, because there's higher risk of infection being around people, then I will often take troomune throughout the day and often more than one of their squares. I'll go through, I mean, same as their methylene blue product.

pretty much a whole box a day and that's extremely helpful for me. So why do I like tobacco more than just straight nicotine supplements? Well, here's a word you'll never hear in any podcast about nicotine. It's called sembrenoid diterpenes. Many people might be familiar with the concept of terpenes. with essential oil therapy or the cannabis realm where it gives people different flavors of the different

strains of cannabis that they smoke that are hybridized to have higher or lower terpenes to give either an earthy or lemony or citrusy flavor. You can have all sorts of different flavor combinations depending on how you alter the terpene content. But when it comes to tobacco, it shares these very unique terpenes that are also present in the pine tree.

And actually in soft coral in the ocean, funny enough, the tobacco plant creates these sembronoid compounds and then while it's curing and aging, those compounds in the tobacco are degraded to solenone, solanofurin. Norso landion and other hard to pronounce compounds. And you would think that by being degraded they have reduced benefit, but they actually have concentrated benefit. They're more potent and pharmacological in their effects.

And in fact, they actually have antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial effects. In nineteen eighty five, there were actually studies looking at the antitumor effects of these sempronoid diterpenes. even looking at it inhibiting Epstein Barr virus. A lot of these people selling nicotine supplements and downplaying the benefits of smoking tobacco

They'll never talk about how these sembronoid diterpenes are actually neuroprotective in and of themselves. That was discovered in two thousand one. And what's really interesting is that the neuroprotective activity is is completely different in the pathway compared to nicotine. They both are neuroprotective. But these sempronoid diterpenes are

never given the attention, all the attention goes to nicotine for being neuroprotective. And the exact mechanism is mainly through the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. preventing apoptosis and excitatory neuron death. One specific sembronoid called beta CBT diol was found to protect the hippocampus of rats from organophosphate insecticide poisoning. for those that live near farms, this is a real issue where it causes neurodevelopment issues and children.

screws with the brain, causing autism, ADHD if mom is pregnant, exposed to these organophosphate pesticides increases pregnancy complications. Now, I'm not insinuating that pregnant moms should smoke a cigar, but I am just bringing up this whole topic of organophosphate pesticides because they're a real issue. There's a website I'll link in the show notes.

earthjustice dot org and it's an organophosphate map of the United States and you can see by state the concentration, the number of pesticides that they use. It's kind of scary to see, and I think we downplay the exposure that we get to these. So tobacco is super protective against these organophosphate insecticide poisons. And there's been several studies on this since at least

twenty eleven. So it's not just one study, but it's several studies showing the protective effects of this sembronoid compound protecting

from these hardcore poisons. One of the first things I ever learned about smoking tobacco and what inspired me to get into cigar smoking regularly is its aromatase inhibition effect. In fact, there's studies looking at alkaloid derivatives from tobacco. Inhibiting breast cancer. Backing up here for a minute, aromatase is the last enzyme in estrogen synthesis.

And while all estrogen is not bad and it's absolutely necessary for health, too much is an issue, especially when it's in the wrong places and the levels are too high, for example, in the breast tissue. And that's what this study found from nineteen ninety-three is that those tobacco compounds blocked estrogen formation in breast tumor cells. The effect is so strong, researchers at the Uppsala University in Sweden found that a Cigarettes worth

of nicotine blocks estrogen production in women's brains. So we're talking really low dose to have that effect. The presence of fibroids, like uterine fibroids in women, endometriosis, these are all conditions of excessive estrogen. There have actually been some studies looking at female smokers and the risk of fibroids being cut in half if they are tobacco consumers. There have been a surprising amount of studies looking at smoking during pregnancy.

Looking at pre-eclampsia and eclampsia being reduced by 30 to 50 percent in smokers. There have been studies. that reported a reduced risk of delivering an infant with Down syndrome. But some of those studies didn't control for the age of the expecting mother to see the difference there. So there is some question to the validity of these studies. Endometrial cancer is another one that's inversely related to cigarette smokers, so the risk.

of developing that kind of cancer is lower among smokers. There's a lot of research looking at the connection between tobacco intake and body weight, and studies have generally seen that when Someone stops smoking. the weight gain comes back and that same thing happens with animals. And the theory is that tobacco smokers have a higher metabolic rate. through the nicotinic cholinergic receptors that are throughout the brain.

when you consume tobacco and specifically nicotine consistently, it increases the density of those receptors, which alters the release of several neurotransmitters that impact the risk for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Therese syndrome. Obviously there's the performance enhancing benefits with nicotine, including improvements in information processing, motor responses, enhancement of memory,

Tobacco does have a profound effect on immune function. It alters the function of T cells, the antibody response. It even alters the prostaglandin pathways and inhibits prostaglandin synthesis. If you've listened to my podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about pufas or polyunsaturated fatty acids. Prosteglandins are derived from those, specifically from one called arachidonic acid.

And there's a debate about the benefits of these. The fish oil people would say that they're really anti-inflammatory and the pro resolving mediators and fish oil's amazing. where the Ray Pete perspective would talk about the cyclooxinase or Cox pathway and the PGE two or Prostic Landon E2 that inhibits glucose metabolism in the brain and could reduce

ATP production and brain function in general. There was actually a twenty twenty-one study in the Nature Journal that found by inhibiting the PGE two signaling they could reverse brain inflammation and cognitive decline that's seen in aging. Well, some research has hypothesized that inhibiting prostaglandin synthesis plays a role in the negative effects of smoking on vascular disease. I think there are other things at play

like vitamin K two status, magnesium status. While we're on the topic of nutrients, a lot of those benefits I mentioned, if you look at the research, they'll say, well, the adverse effects are too much and it's not worth, you know, any potential benefit from smoking. And here's where I disagree, because if you search vitamin C and vitamin E in smokers, you'll find that Non smokers generally have, according to one study, four and a half times more vitamin C than smokers.

and almost seven times more vitamin E than smokers. Obviously smoking increases oxidative stress. There are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that damage DNA. There are nitrosamines. There are a lot of heavy metals because tobacco has an affinity for specific minerals in the soil, namely cadmium. By the way, easy solution to cadmium is mineral. That is the main one that competes for absorption in the intestines and binding sites in the tissues. It's a direct antagonist to cadmium.

but calcium and iron help as well. I have a giant book downstairs on tobacco and the breakdown of each chemical in it. There's an estimated five thousand chemicals in tobacco smoke. It's a really complex mixture and obviously a lot of those are not good, but that's not to say all five thousand are bad, as I mentioned earlier, the sembrenoid diterpenes and all their benefits.

there's a study that looked at mononuclear blood cells, which are a class of cells that include glyphocytes like T cells, B cells, natural killer cells, and found that the oxidative DNA damage was less than with vitamin C and vitamin E supplementation. And that study was only five hundred milligrams of ascorbic acid or vitamin C. Another study used twelve smokers for a week.

and a thousand milligram dose of ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C, and three hundred thirty five milligrams of alpha tocopherol, which is the type of vitamin E that I have in my Pufa Protect product. And they found a protective effect on the lymphocytes and a reduction in DNA damage in the smokers. The main argument against smoking

And people don't differentiate between cigarette smoking and chic smoking a cigar where you're not actually inhaling the smoke. If you've ever fully inhaled cigar smoke You only do it a few times because it is not fun. And obviously some is still getting into your lungs, but it's way less than directly inhaling from ripping on a cigarette. But obviously lung cancer and atherose, sclerosis, those are big concerns.

I believe from everything that I've read and researched that those can be absolutely mitigated, especially the free radical production aspect of smoking cigars. by proper supplementation. And if I had to name the top two, it would be ascorbic acid and mixed tocopharol vitamin E. And if I had to put a third in there, it would be high dose melatonin.

There was one study that looked at melatonin supplementation in rats in regards to passive smoking and lung cancer, and they found that melatonin significantly reduced the expression of lung cancer genes. V E G FYP one A one, CYP one B one in the lung tissue of rats. And melatonin being a really strong and effective antioxidant.

It actually reduced or mitigated alveolar damage, lung tissue inflammation, cell apoptosis. Maybe even more interesting than that, there was a study looking at melatonin and smoking induced Atherosclerosis. And they found that it activates the NRF two pathway. in endothelial cells and mitigates or reduces smoking induced inflammatory vascular injury. One interesting statistic is the effects of smoking on bone health.

There was one meta analysis that found a thirty two percent higher osteoporotic fracture risk in smoking men and women compared to non smokers. And the theory is that it's partly caused by cadmium. Cadmium is known to cause osteoblast dysfunction The oxidative stress and the mitochondrial dysfunction and DNA damage causes the apoptosis to occur if the osteoblasts.

and a decrease in bone formation. Cadmium that's measured in smokers has been seen as four to five times higher than in non smokers. And that increased cadmium can cause lung disease, reduce pulmonary function, cardiovascular disease, arterial diseases, prostate cancer, cervical pancreatic cancers, And as I mentioned earlier, zinc

is antagonistic to cadmium. And there's actually been studies that looked at the cadmium zinc ratio specifically in tobacco smokers and found that ratio was totally flipped. Compared to non smokers. Cadmium has a half life of one to two decades. Once it accumulates in the lungs and then it's distributed to other tissues, it stays in the body for a while. And that's why you have

The supplements that I talk about, not that everybody's gonna smoke tobacco, but it is what I do to stay balanced. I mentioned vitamin C, vitamin E, melatonin, zinc. These are non negotiables that I take every single day. if you look at the research on zinc intake and cadmium, you'll find a lot that there is that seesaw relationship there. specifically in smokers and how many smokers are supplementing the right things, magnesium, vitamin K two, vitamin E, vitamin C

melatonin, systemic enzymes that I talk about all the time to reduce fibrin and scar tissue. And then you could also add in specific therapies like carbon dioxide inhalation. I have my carbogenetics machine here at my computer. Halo therapy, like the Salt Chamber Inc. company that sells

either mobile little salt inhalers, or ideally you bathe the body in it. At the bare minimum you take the proper supplements if you're a c regular consumer of tobacco. But if you start adding Halo therapy or breathing, low concentrations of carbon dioxide, which increases your oxygen utilization, or there's also ozone therapy, which also increases your oxygen utilization.

I truly believe that you can mitigate all of the negative effects of tobacco. And I didn't get into the oral effects, obviously, on the mucosa, your teeth, your gums, which I personally use xylitol gum after I smoke a cigar. And I brush my teeth with sodium fluoride, which I had a whole episode on, three hundred and forty two, if you want to listen to that one.

I'll finish off the show here talking about parasites, which is one of the reasons why I started smoking in the first place beyond just the cognitive benefit of consuming tobacco. Historically, tobacco has been used for intestinal parasites and also external ticks and fleas and lice and as I mentioned agriculturally. I mentioned nicotine sulfate, which is also used to deworm livestock.

And a lot of the commercial antihelmetics, the anti parasites, the way that they kill them is actually through activating that same receptor that I talked about earlier the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, it'll activate that in the parasites and basically overstimulate them and kill them. Whether it's the hookworm, the round worm, the whipworm, tobacco is a broad acting antiparasitic.

but is a one or two milligram nicotine supplement enough to do it? A lot of these indigenous cultures in the world consumed a lot of tobacco. And I think that is one of its biggest benefits. a lot of the anti smoking people that I've seen that sell a nicotine supplement say that the amount of nicotine you would get

in smoking is too much. It's way beyond what you need to get the be uh benefit of nicotine. And in fact they say it's the reverse. It actually causes harm because it's too high a dose. I think it's the exact opposite. When you go super low dose nicotine, you are not getting any of the antiparasitic effect. Obviously, nicotine in certain forms could be deadly if it's consumed all at once, so I'm not recommending that.

like tobacco tea or tobacco enema that's been used all around the world for a long time. Those could be potentially very harmful. and potentially lethal. When I told you that story earlier about how I grew tobacco plants Uh outside my R V in it was Chula Vista, San Diego, I made my own paste out of it called Ambil. It was tr a traditional tobacco paste. And I mixed in shilajit, resin, honey, I extracted it with lemon juice.

And it definitely had an effect, but I'm glad that it was probably lower dose than I expected because that could be a dangerous thing to do, home brewing your own anvil at home, like I did. But I'm still alive. And that was the time when Midolife was being born, so maybe it played a role in that. But tobacco will be a part of my life, I think for a long time. I hope to grow it here on my property at some point, whether it's in the dome or outside.

And this is not a recommendation that everybody take up smoking cigars or hand rolling your own little tobacco cigarettes without the filter and without the nonsense of all the chemicals that companies add to it. But I do think that they are superior to nicotine supplements. As I mentioned, you're getting thousands of compounds that you won't

get in that nicotine supplement, specifically those diterpenes that are really beneficial. A lot of people are probably wondering where I purchase my cigars. I don't have one source. My recommendation to you is don't go cheap. Don't just look for Cuban cigars. I started with Liga Pravada, smoking quite a bit of number nines and T fifty twos, but I believe that company was bought out. I am very partial to foundation cigars. Most of the cigars that they make I really enjoy.

The wise man specifically is my favorite from them. I also like Olmec. That is a really great cigar. And if you follow me on social media, generally I'll post the one that I'm smoking at least a few times a week. But spend about at least ten to fifteen dollars per stick. And if you go less than that, just know the quality is going to go down and obviously buying online will be usually around half the price that you would get in a cigar shop. So I recommend going online and going direct.

If you want to check out my CLF protocol and how the supplements that I talked about fit into that, that's on mattenblackburn.com. And then all my recommended products are up there as well. Zeolite powder on the front page, which is really effective at not only cadmium detox, but all the heavy metals. my f favorite ozone generator machine on their the CO two body stream. That's the full body carbon dioxide suit, but that same company sells

The inhaler that I referred to. Then I'm the founder of Mitolife. You can find that at mitolife.co I have a bunch of supplements. A lot I talked about during the show. The vitamin C, which should be back hopefully by the time this airs, that was out of stock. I mix in polyphenols with that supplement.

Every one of my supplements is third party lab tested, made in FDA registered facility. I'm not messing around. A lot of these supplement companies are fly by night. I've met a lot of these people that have just started a supplement company over the years. and they don't understand how much goes into it. I've been building this thing for about six years now and it's only getting better. I'm refining it.

being really heavy on the information side, teaching people the benefit of using these supplements and without making medical claims, just talking about the research, what's been found with zinc and vitamin E and K two and niacinamide magnesium, how all these things could be used to just make life more enjoyable and maybe allow you to enjoy things like tobacco or the occasional alcohol or whatever your

into if it's not super hard drugs, hopefully that these vitamins and minerals help to keep your body in balance so that you could still live your life to the fullest. And you could still live your life to the fullest without any alcohol or tobacco ever as well. And these will still help keep your brain lit up, your memory strong, and just everything functioning at a high level.

So follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram, Matt Blackburn. Follow Midolife on Instagram. Sign up to the MidoLife newsletter at the bottom of the website there. Really heavy on the information on how to use these products. And why they're beneficial. And I will see you guys next Friday. Stay supercharged.