MAO Inhibitors

[dragonpuff]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but don't MAO inhibitors occur naturally in tobacco?

I quit smoking less than a week ago, but i've always thought that if time proves it to be difficult, taking a low-dose MAOI would be worth a try.

[tiffytiff]

if i am reading this right . this may explain the bout of depression i am currently coming out of. my last smoke was aug. 3rd. and i think i cried for an the entire week of the 10th. maybe it was completely unrelated, maybe not, i do feel fine now, but was a bit depressed for a couple of weeks.........hmmmm

[Casey C]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but don't MAO inhibitors occur naturally in tobacco?

yeah that's part of what I was pointing out

On a grander scale, its not like tobacco companies are some evil corporate giant out to kill people. Tobacco has been smoked since 5000B.C., they're just providing the service of growing and rolling it for people, they didn't invent the cigarette..

[breno]

That's the best thing you can do. I'm a heavy nicotine addict and cannot rely on e-cigs to satisfy my needs. For that, I use snus, dissolvables, nasal snuff and a pipe.

Just those 4?
I find I need ...... ....... and crack to get the same effect

[breno]

Below is taken from the New Zealand study of the Ruyan carts. Am I reading this correct in that it seems to be saying that cigarettes contain inhibitors that enhance the effect of nicotine??? If so, just how addictive IS Nicotine? Like caffeine, maybe a bit worse?

2.3 Monoamine oxidase

.

Rationale.

MAO, an enzyme naturally found in blood platelets and the brain, metabolises
dopamine, also known as the pleasure drug. When this process is inhibited by known
MAO inhibitors in tobacco smoke, dopamine tends to accumulate, reinforcing the effect
of nicotine. The question is whether e-cigarette cartridge liquid also acts to inhibit MAO
and reinforce the addictive effect of nicotine, or whether it acts like pure nicotine.

Method.

Samples of the liquid contained in the Ruyan e-cigarette cartridges were tested
with a monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzyme activity assay which employs the fluorescent
MAO substrate kynuramine, and the effect compared with that from tobacco extracts
including a nicotine-free tobacco.

Laboratory.

ESR Porirua NZ, a Crown Research Institute.

Results.

Monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzymes both A and B, were strongly inhibited by
tobacco smoke extracts but the cartridge liquid alone had no such effect15.

Conclusion.

The Ruyan E-cigarette cartridge liquid does not behave like a tobacco
extract. The absence of a MAO inhibitor effect means the e-cigarette has no detectable

addictive potential beyond that of nicotine.

Interesting... I had looked up the effects of cigarettes before on wiki and was very surprised not only does it act like a MAOI inhibitor, which is and antidepressent it also enhances the effects of serotonin, now there is another class of anti-depressants called SSRI's specific seretonin re-uptake inhibitors, effective they also enhance the effects of serotonin just like a cigarette!! They also enhance opiate activity and act like amphetamine!!

So basically you have got the whole doctors cabinet in a cigarette, and their was me, reluctant to take anti-depressants for anxiety perscribed by my doctor because "I didn't want all those chemicals 'taking my mind' away"!

It's also weird that you have to get all that stuff on a perscription yet you can walk into a newsagent and buy a packet of cigarettes no problem as long as you hand over the cash. Also you don't get a leaflet with a list of side effects as long as your arm, it was amusing so see 'death' listed casually alooongside 'dry mouth'

On a side note you mention caffine as if it is not very addictive, but have your every tried giving it up?

[breno]

Erowid Nicotine Vault : Dosage

Research actually looking at the blood plasma of Cigarette smokers has shown that up to 3.0mg of nicotine may be received from a single cigarette. (Benowitz 1998)

"the average from using the historical method was 0.90mg/cigarette while the average from the Massachusetts method was 1.89mg/cigarette."

[ladyraj]

Rationale.
MAO, an enzyme naturally found in blood platelets and the brain, metabolises dopamine, also known as the pleasure drug. When this process is inhibited by known MAO inhibitors in tobacco smoke, dopamine tends to accumulate, reinforcing the effect of nicotine. The question is whether e-cigarette cartridge liquid also acts to inhibit MAO and reinforce the addictive effect of nicotine, or whether it acts like pure nicotine.

My response:

If an MAO is what metabolizes dopamine...wouldn't an inhibitor prevent the dopamine being metabolized?

Once an accumulation occurred what triggers the release? Cessation of the inhibitor.

If tobacco prevented dopamine metabolization woulded you feel the pleasure once the effects were removed and dopamine stabilized?

[breno]

Rationale.
MAO, an enzyme naturally found in blood platelets and the brain, metabolises dopamine, also known as the pleasure drug. When this process is inhibited by known MAO inhibitors in tobacco smoke, dopamine tends to accumulate, reinforcing the effect of nicotine. The question is whether e-cigarette cartridge liquid also acts to inhibit MAO and reinforce the addictive effect of nicotine, or whether it acts like pure nicotine.

My response:

If an MAO is what metabolizes dopamine...wouldn't an inhibitor prevent the dopamine being metabolized?

Once an accumulation occurred what triggers the release? Cessation of the inhibitor.

If tobacco prevented dopamine metabolization woulded you feel the pleasure once the effects were removed and dopamine stabilized?

This is how I see it, sort of, dopamine is the pleasure chemical, when something makes you happy you produce dopamine, now it is not normal to be permantly happy so MAO breaks it down so you feel normal again.

Thats what happens, you get paid or whatever or win a prize and you feel happy, eventually it wears off as the dopamine wears off, thats why money alone or whatever won't make you happier than anyone else, the initial effect wears off. Now even when nothing special happens your brain produces some dopamine to give you a reasonale level of 'contentness', now if you smoke the chemicals inhibit the metabolism of dopamine so it builds ups much in the same was as if the brain released it because you were happy.
When you stop smoking the dopamine is metabolised again so you feel less happy, further more as your brain has got used to high levels of dopamine you might not feel as happy as if you had never smoked.
Infact you might feel like you had lost your job!!

Sort of analogy say unhappyess if the hight of your arm, pres your arms against as wall for a while so you are now happy, however take the wall away (the cigarette) and you notice you arm will rise up ie you become very unhappy!!

Thats the addictive nature of drugs I think, your body adapts to the prop
and when you take it away you feel worse than when you first started!! (unfortunbately).
Thats why drugs in general don't work in the long term, what works best for such things is CBT, cognative behaviour therapy, apparently. However it is easier to smoke or for the doctor to give you a pill.

[gatsby]

Rationale.
MAO, an enzyme naturally found in blood platelets and the brain, metabolises dopamine, also known as the pleasure drug. When this process is inhibited by known MAO inhibitors in tobacco smoke, dopamine tends to accumulate, reinforcing the effect of nicotine. The question is whether e-cigarette cartridge liquid also acts to inhibit MAO and reinforce the addictive effect of nicotine, or whether it acts like pure nicotine.

My response:

If an MAO is what metabolizes dopamine...wouldn't an inhibitor prevent the dopamine being metabolized?

Once an accumulation occurred what triggers the release? Cessation of the inhibitor.

If tobacco prevented dopamine metabolization woulded you feel the pleasure once the effects were removed and dopamine stabilized?

Basically dopamine is released in your brain at various levels all the time and when it contacts a receptor you feel happy (thats a really really gross over simplification but it does the job). What doesn't attach to the receptors is slurped up by other receptors or metabolized. The goal of most of these chemicals (nicotine, some anti-depressants, .......) is to keep the receptors unnaturally washed in dopamine in one of three ways; excite the release of more dopamine, inhibit the re-up-take, or inhibit the metabolizing enzymes. Its al the same to your brain. Of course this is a natural process throughout the day in response to things like good food, sex, sky diving etc. and if you continue to over do it unnaturally you cause damage and need your fix in other ways. Hence addicts like us.

[Mister]

I've been reading a fair bit about the biochemical aspects of cigarette addiction.

In what I've read two things stand out to me so far:

Speed of effect:

Nicotine can enter the body in two chemical forms: free-base, or as a salt. Many modern cigarettes deliver a fair bit of free-base nicotine. All current non-burning forms of delivery (patch, snus, vaping, etc.) deliver only the salt form. Free-base nicotine reaches the brain receptors much more quickly.

The maximum effect from a puff on a cigarette occurs in 10 to 20 seconds.

The maximum effect from a puff on an e-cig occurs in about a minute.

I suspect that this difference is a large part of the "what's missing" question.

I hope that someone who understands these things may one day (soon!) find a way for e-juice to deliver free-base nicotine to our systems, without adding anything harmful to accomplish this. That might result in super-vapor which has less or nothing missing.

Spectrum of addiction:

It seems that the processing of nicotine may physically change the brain in such a way that it creates physical addiction to activities associated with the nicotine consumption. This could partially explain the success of vaping as an alternative to smoking.

Vaping allows us to continue numerous associated actions - the throat hit, seeing the vapor, the hand and oral activity, etc. Smokers may have developed a physical need (addiction) for some of these things as much as their need for nicotine.

A note regarding the addiction mechanisms involved:

This is so complex that it is only partially understood.

Nicotine is definitely central to the mechanism, and nicotine's direct action on neural receptors is well understood. Uptake rates, metabolism of nicotine, half-life, and storage in other cells is all also fairly well understood.

The consequences of blocking the receptors involved are very complex and not at all well understood. It is currently considered probable, but not certain, that dopamine is a strong player in the next stage of the mechanism.