Use smoking to blow away sadness

Asking smokers what they can get from cigarettes, they can talk about joy, satisfaction, and overall good feelings. Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is a stimulant. Stimulants, when used in low doses, such as flammable cigarettes, activate the nervous system and increase arousal and arousal. Nicotine binding in the limbic system (the part of the brain that houses the centers of pleasure and reward) releases dopamine, resulting in euphoria. These effects combine to make smokers feel better.

In this context, research from a Harvard team who found that when smokers feel sad, they reach for cigarettes and inhale longer and deeper is not surprising. Tobacco is the “solution” to the “problem” of sorrow that smokers seem to be learning to use effectively. This new study shows that grief induces much more nicotine use than other negative emotions, and that sad emotions are not only associated with smoking, but can actually cause it. This is the first study.

Smoking is adaptive and can blunt necessary emotions

Sadness is a basic emotion and is usually felt in response to loss. Sadness and the underlying experience of neurobiology are universal. Sadness that is too strong or too long, or depression, is a disorder that causes dysfunction. However, normal grief has an adaptive function. People who are experiencing grief are internally focused and become better problem solvers.

The expression of sadness is physiologically determined. Humans can reliably read the sadness of each other’s faces regardless of cultural clues, and these signals provoke empathy from others. This is another advantage for sad people. In this respect, sadness is unpleasant, but it has its advantages. Its universality demonstrates the benefits of its survival.

Smokers are quickly relieved of sadness with tobacco, but the loss of these adaptive effects can be costly. Just as treatment of chronic pain with opioids results in many patients experiencing hyperalgesia, a pathologically enhanced response to painful stimuli, so is the “treatment” of sad emotional states with nicotine. It can impair the natural recovery response. Indeed, this may help explain the link between smoking and depression.

Part of maturity is learning to manage emotions

Compared to adults Adolescents experience more emotionsAs they mature, they shift from the emotional responses typical of this age group to the more relaxed expression of adults. When it comes to sadness, responsiveness and responsiveness are age-dependent. The content that triggers grief is less closely associated with the physiological response of young people than in mature adults. Experience seems to be an important element of the maturation process.

What happens when a young man uses nicotine to dull his grief?

Does smoking interfere with emotional maturity and make young smokers more susceptible to depression? Does the emotional maturity disruption increase the likelihood that adolescent smokers will use other medications? The simple answer to all these questions is that we don’t know that smoking is associated with increased risk of depression, marijuana use, drinking drinking, and the use of other drugs, including opioids. There is a reason to worry because you know. These questions are really prominent, as most smokers start using cigarettes during their teens.

After a dramatic decline in high school smoking rates for 20 years and a gradual decline in adult smoking rates Electronic cigarettes and vaping devices We have begun to reverse these trends. New discoveries that show the link between sadness and smoking should give us all a pause. Although the health effects of smoking have been well documented over the last 50 years, we are still learning about the effects of nicotine.

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