Research Suggests Tobacco Companies Add Weight Loss Drugs 281
smitty777 writes "According to an article from the European Journal of Public Health, the tobacco companies have been implicated in adding a number of drugs to tobacco products (PDF) to enhance their weight-reducing properties. Discovery News explains the neurological process for appetite suppression, which involves activating pro-opiomelanocortin cells in the hypothalamus."
Better summary (Score:5, Informative)
More accurately, research finds that Nicotine is an appetite suppressant. And that tobacco companies have looked at adding other appetite suppressors in the past.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
I know you're just joking, but here's a reply. On the short term, cancer adds to your body weight. But if you survive long enough, you'll lose weight. The reason is that cancer tends to soak up all the body's resources, starving your muscles and internal organs, causing the whole machine to work less efficiently.
Re:Implicated? Yeah, and then what. (Score:1, Informative)
Don't get high and mighty. The walls around you are exuding the same carcinogens. The tasty grill marks on your food? Those same carginogens. Your car? your comute home puts my pack a day habit to shame. Your drinking water? Bottled or tap it doesn't matter. Your underarm deoderant. Your toothpaste. The brown food coloring in your food and drinks, and don't worry its considered organic so you can't avoid it. Right now as you read this a ray of UV light has worked its way past our ailing protective atmosphere and entering you skin. Will it be "The" ray to damage a skin cell and seed melenoma? It just might.
If you live in the modern world you too are slowly killing yourself. You are just oblivious to that fact. Your damaged DNA and shredded cells are no better off than a smoker's. At least I know what I am getting in to. Do you?
Re:Implicated? Yeah, and then what. (Score:4, Informative)
My family got paid a huge amount (by the government) to sell the rights to our tobacco base. Since it's sold, no one else can lease or use the base. In case anyone isn't aware of what tobacco base is, you can only grow tobacco on a small percentage of your farmable land. If you don't wish to grow any, you can lease your base to another farmer. They grow it on their own land but pay you a percentage for allowing them the use of your base. They lease a lot of base so they can have a sizable crop.
Even we we did grow tobacco, we never got any subsidies, at least directly. It was damn profitable on its own.
Re:Implicated? Yeah, and then what. (Score:4, Informative)
I would argue that drugs can be used to good effect or bad effect. The same drug. It often depends on dose.
Take an aspirin for a headache? Sure. Take a dozen? Not so much, as it were.
Just how harmful a drug tends to be is still relevant:
drug danger [wikimedia.org].
Re:Take up smoking today! (Score:4, Informative)
I have personally known many people who smoke because they *think* it helps suppress appetite. In fact they often justify the cost by claiming they save on food. I've always assumed this is one of the many reasons young females choose to smoke.
I haven't heard the part about saving money on food. That's a bit bizarre. It's not unreasonable to think that smoking helps people to lose weight though. Nicotine is a known appetite suppressant and it is also a stimulant. So eat less and burn more.
I have heard from those that tried to quit, gained weight, and used that as an excuse to resume smoking.
If it is found that that most of the weight loss is from the additives and not from the nicotine, then it might convince some of the vanity smokers to give it up. Why smoke if you can get same weight control effect from an over the counter pill that doesn't leave tar if your lungs?
I've just had a lecture from a relative about this same story (it was running in our national press last week). Apparently it's bullshit. I'm told that smoking reduces your ability to process food - when you smoke (tobacco). When addicted smokers stop smoking they quite ofter seek other forms of oral gratification - so not only does their usual amount of food "go further" - they eat more. And it's not just smokers - it's anyone recovering from a (reall) addiction. The key points my cousin has pointed out are "there is little evidence to support the appetite suppressing ability of substances like tartaric acid (it's common in food)", "2-acetylpyridine is naturally found in tobacco (and many other products coffee, beans etc) and it is used to help people give up cigarettes [surechem.org] " "the mice study dosed mice with levels no smoker would ever reach" "the (mice) studies were funded by a group associated with a North American tobacco company" "some (European) cigarettes in the early nineties might have had additives for the purposes of appetite suppression" "nicotine is toxic in fairly small amounts - the bodies reaction to strong toxins is to reduce appetite" "residue from kerosene is the most common post harvest additive to tobacco - it will suppress appetite too".
From the referenced pdf:- Background: Smoking is thought to produce an appetite-suppressing effect by many smokers. Thus, the fear of body weight gain often outweighs the perception of health benefits associated with smoking cessation, particularly in adolescents. We examined whether the tobacco industry played a role in appetite and body weight control related to smoking and smoking cessation. Methods: We performed a systematic search within the archives of six major US and UK tobacco companies (American Tobacco, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson and British American Tobacco) that were Defendants in tobacco litigation settled in 1998. Findings are dated from 1949 to 1999. Results: The documents revealed the strategies planned and used by the industry to enhance effects of smoking on weight and appetite, mostly by chemical modifications of cigar- ettes contents. Appetite-suppressant molecules, such as tartaric acid and 2-acetylpyridine were added to some cigarettes. Conclusion: These tobacco companies played an active and not disclaimed role in the anti-appetite effects of smoking, at least in the past, by adding appetite-suppressant molecules into their cigarettes.
Despite the tantalizing insights into the tobacco industry strategies - they fail to quote any evidence.
Disclaimer:- I have no doubt tobacco companies happily sell slow death - or that smoking would kill you without the companies adding radioactive metal refining waste to the fertilizer - it just wouldn't be death by cancer. I smoked for 30 years. I stopped last year. I deliberately didn't take up sweets, chocolate, deserts, nuts, seeds, nicotine patches etc, or extra sugar. I haven't gained any weight. (YMMV).