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Nicotine might be one of the most misunderstood compounds in modern health.
In this episode, we break down the science behind nicotine—separating it from the stigma of smoking—and explore whether it can actually function as a cognitive enhancer. We dive into the potential benefits, real risks, proper dosing, and what current research says (and doesn’t say).
Is nicotine dangerous on its own? Could it support brain function or even play a role in neurodegenerative conditions? Or is the risk not worth the reward?
If you’ve seen the headlines and wondered whether nicotine belongs in a “biohacker’s stack,” this episode gives you the clarity you need.
. . .
DISCLAIMER
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Barrett Deubert and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to replace medical advice or treatment from a physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding health questions and concerns. Neither Dr. Deubert nor the Real Health Co. takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All audience members, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle program.
Creators and Guests
What is The Real Health Podcast?
On a mission to share practical solutions to improve your wellbeing, The Real Health Podcast will equip you with evidence-based recommendations essential to achieving a healthy lifestyle. Join Dr. Barrett Deubert as he shares his passion for educating, inspiring, and empowering individuals to achieve “real health for real people”. Breaking down health topics such as: immunity, stress, real food, natural living, and much more to provide you with actionable steps to improving your family’s health.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. And today is every bit in the news. The topic is wildly being spread. It is something where health enthusiasts are processing whether or not they should add it into the routine is none other than the chemical nicotine. We are diving in-depth on what nicotine is, the benefits, the risks, how to dose it, what does science say, what does science not say.
Dr. Barrett:And so this will help create a lot of clarity for you as we look at nicotine through the lens of a biohacking world versus a condemning association with smoking. Know, nicotine, it might be one of the most misunderstood compounds in modern health today, and it's been labeled as addictive and dangerous and tied to lung disease. Well, what if I told you that nicotine itself is not what actually caused these problems? So today we're gonna break down, is nicotine a cognitive enhancer? Can it help with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's?
Dr. Barrett:Does it actually support the immune system? What are what are the real risks associated with it? How to take it? What does the what is the dosing? And even, hey, should you even take it?
Dr. Barrett:So let's just go ahead and dive in. This is Real Health for Real People. We try to get this done in fifteen minutes or less. So what is nicotine? Nicotine is a plant alkaloid.
Dr. Barrett:Think of it this way. Caffeine is a plant alkaloid. So caffeine and most alkaloids have a bitter flavor profile to them. Most alkaloids are very bitter in flavor. And so nicotine is found in obviously tobacco, That's where we know it, but it's also found in like eggplant, it's found in tomatoes, in small amounts.
Dr. Barrett:So nicotine is in a vast majority of plants as a plant alkaloid is obviously most abundant in tobacco. And so nicotine specifically, what that chemical does, just like caffeine binds to a specific receptor, nicotine binds to a receptor, and it's the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Now that acetylcholine, that name is important because we're gonna talk about that, and in research with Parkinson's. But when it binds to that receptor, it directly increases dopamine. This is your motivation, this is your reward system.
Dr. Barrett:It directly affects acetylcholine And this is where learning and memory come into play and it specifically increases norepinephrine. And norepinephrine is great for focus and alert. So imagine if you had motivation reward improvement, learning and memory improvement, and focus and alert ness improvement, well we're talking about a pretty powerful chemical. Now obviously it's been bastardized because of its association with smoking, but if nicotine can do all of that, maybe there's a benefit for you, maybe. So the key concept is that nicotine is not smoking.
Dr. Barrett:Nicotine is a chemical compound, specifically an alkaloid found in plants. And when we look at the big research out there, it comes down to cognitive enhancement and brain health. Research shows acute cognitive benefits with nicotine, improved attention, faster reaction time and increased working memory. Those are all things that most of us are looking to enhance on a daily basis. And it's been used historically in military pilots.
Dr. Barrett:So they used it to enhance their ability to be quick, decisive, actionable individuals with an improved cognitive function. When we look at neurodegenerative conditions specifically to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, what we noticed was Alzheimer's involves the loss of cholinergic signaling. Now remember that fancy word I talked about before, those choline receptors, nicotine stimulates these same receptors. So in neurodegenerative conditions specifically associated with Alzheimer's, as we're getting loss of cholinergic signaling, if we can enhance that signaling, it can provide some possible benefit. This is where the research is coming into nicotine and Alzheimer's.
Dr. Barrett:As it increases cholinergic signaling, we can see lower rates, and there's been studies that show lower rates of Parkinson's in smokers. Isn't that interesting? So smoking cigarettes or other tobacco containing other forms of tobacco, when you look at that patient population, although they're potentially getting a ton of chemicals, there was lower rates of Parkinson's in smokers. And so why? Well, we can create a hypothesis and say that the nicotine is signaling the dopamine and cholinergic system.
Dr. Barrett:So, you know, when we look at nicotine patches, well, we saw that it was studied in helping people with mild cognitive impairment, that nicotine patches was really helpful for these individuals. And so what does research observations show us? And what it's showing us is nicotine is neuroprotective. Fundamentally, we're looking at is it protects the brain. And it does through what we call reduced beta amyloid toxicity.
Dr. Barrett:When you look at patients with Alzheimer's, there's a high level of beta amyloid plaquing in the brain, and the reduced toxicity of that particular protein structure can be associated with nicotine supplementation. It also, nicotine has an anti inflammatory signaling in the brain and it improves synaptic plasticity. So this is just gonna help the brain learn and we know that novel ty is essential at healthy brains. If you wanna have a healthy brain, you gotta keep learning. Novelty is an essential stressor in a good way, a hormetic stressor to the brain.
Dr. Barrett:And so, nicotine may have therapeutic potential but obviously it's not the first line of prevention, right? I mean, when we're really talking about nicotine, you have to have a pretty dialed in lifestyle to even be considering adding nicotine to your regimen because most people, their brains are dumb and numb because there are foods they're eating. They're not training. They're not exercising. They're not sleeping well.
Dr. Barrett:Their hormones are jacked. Mean, let's focus on the pillars of health first. Let's get adjusted. Let's sleep well. Let's modify stress.
Dr. Barrett:Let's eat an anti inflammatory diet. Let's do some of these first and then we can have a conversation of biohacking. We don't go to biohacking first. That's the brain. What about the immune system?
Dr. Barrett:This is where there's some interesting data out there and nicotine specifically activates, again, what we talked about the cholinergic anti inflammatory pathway. This has been shown to reduce cytokine over activation. What do you remember about that term? Cytokine overactivation. You heard it a ton of times through what?
Dr. Barrett:2020, 2021. When we learned about COVID, this was cytokine overactivation. Nicotine can reduce cytokine or what we would term immune inflammatory signaling, the overproduction or overreaction of that. And during early COVID research, some data suggested smokers had lower hospitalization rates. That's amazing, right?
Dr. Barrett:Again, this goes to show you that nicotine had a potential effect in down regulating the overreaction of the cytokine storm. And this cytokine storm modulation is the hypothesis that nicotine had an impact on that. Nicotine does not prevent infection though, right? So let me just be super clear, is nicotine is not having any effect on the virus itself or the bacterial load. And it doesn't mean smoking is preventative.
Dr. Barrett:So don't take me for that. What we're saying is nicotine has the possibility of down regulating the overactive immune response to a virus. This can be protective to the lung tissue. And so in essence, it modulates the immune response. It doesn't necessarily enhance immune function.
Dr. Barrett:Like it's not astragalus, it's not beta glucans, it's not elderberry, it's not echinacea, which those enhance immune defense. This is more of a modulator. It's going to modulate the immune inflammatory system. Let's get into dosing. There's a lot of different ways to take it.
Dr. Barrett:The two main ways would be transdermal and the other one would be in like a pouch form. The transdermal or the nicotine pouch is just steady state delivery of nicotine throughout the day. It definitely has a less addictive potential to it because it doesn't spike in you're not really getting the dopamine spike. Addiction to nicotine, people are I've heard some people say that nicotine isn't addictive. Well, what I think they need to say is nicotine as a chemical probably isn't addictive, but the effects of nicotine are addictive.
Dr. Barrett:So what's addictive about it? Well, anytime you mess with dopamine, it's going to create an addiction cycle. And when you look at the brain, it's always trying to seek reward. So if it's getting reward from a pouch or a patch and it's releasing dopamine, the brain's gonna want that again and again and again. The dopamine is what's addictive, but the means to the dopamine is what it's gonna associate with.
Dr. Barrett:Welcome to iPads and kids, right? Welcome to Instagram and adults. The dopamine hit is the reward and the association is the brain is now associating the Instagram to dopamine or the nicotine to dopamine and that's where we get into addiction. So the patch can definitely help modulate that to a degree. The cons with transdermals is it's slower onset and there's potential for skin irritation.
Dr. Barrett:But its best use case is definitely cognitive support throughout the day And there's some experimentation obviously with neurodegenerative conditions. When it comes to pouches, gums, lozenges, anything oral, right, we get faster onset. I mean, it just hits the brain harder, stronger, higher addiction risk because of that dopamine spike. And it's definitely gonna be more in that habit forming loop, that habit forming behavior loop because of that dopamine system. And when you look at dosing, if you're doing more than a couple milligrams a day, we're probably addictive, right?
Dr. Barrett:So, most people need to, if you're gonna start, it's gonna be more in that point five to one milligram dosing and the typical functional range is anywhere between one and three milligrams and you wanna avoid chronic escalation where three turns into six, turns into nine, turns into twelve and sooner or later you're doing twelve, fifteen milligrams a day. And that's typical with pouches and lozenges versus the patch. That's gonna be more effective at reducing the need for more. But when we look at nicotine, brain enhancement possibilities, immune modulation, and there's some mild cardiovascular effects too. It increases in a negative way, increases heart rate, increases vasoconstriction, so blood vessel constriction.
Dr. Barrett:And there's potential concerns here for hypertension. Nicotine may be associated with sympathetic activation. So if you're on the fight or flight side of things, nicotine may not be beneficial for the one with anxiety, right? So there is some concerns there and you want to obviously work with your primary care physician who's gonna help educate you on whether it's right for you. When it comes to nicotine, I would just suggest like caffeine.
Dr. Barrett:Be mindful, it's addictive forming. It does have benefit. You can go from a hundred milligrams to a thousand milligrams of caffeine a day very quickly. You gotta be mindful of that. You wanna make sure you titrate nicotine in and out if you're gonna use it.
Dr. Barrett:Don't always be dependent upon it. And I think there can be some promising benefit. But again, that's why you work with a practitioner, a practitioner advise you. That's everything that I know that's practical for you in regards to nicotine. If you're in Knoxville, you're getting you know, you're listening to this on a Friday.
Dr. Barrett:If you're in Knoxville, Monday, we are doing our gut check workshop. Make sure you go to our Instagram, sign up, and we'll see you there. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.