http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxi...
It's possible that the inherent toxicity will preclude use as a treatment. On the other hand, it would be ironic if one of the most toxic substances known turns out to treat COVID-19.
If I wanted to mimic the benefits of smoking, I would take a nicotinic acid pill (flushing niacin)
I've found they mellow out me after a long, hard day. Maybe it's the atmosphere in which I immerse myself... on my patio, listening to music, reclining in a chair, but they seem to help me unwind.
This theory was popularised by Allen Carr in his Easy Way to Stop Smoking (or at least that's where I heard it, and the book was published in the early 80s).
Thank you for this comment. It seems like every episode has a moment where they say, "Sarcoidosis? Porphyria? Lupus?"
I assume they put smokers on nicotine patches when they are in the ICU for COVID, yeah? Otherwise that's a double whammy of inflammation.
All in all she did not recommend that I start smoking.
Anecdotally, I have not found snus, gum or lozenges to have any impact on symptoms, ie ideally as an emergency measure during flare-ups. Next time I will try smoking and track my symptoms.
PS: I'm not sure if there is any overlap between vape and cigarette smoke, but THC edibles never helped me, while vaped THC is a godsend. I especially like Delta-8, as it gives less of the negative subjective effects.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison
As a precautionary measure though I do agree with avoiding BPA among other things.
It so happens that BPA and pthalates as part of the plastics made with these substances are persistent - they contain a high total and release the dosage extremely slowly into the environment.
A good example for that is also a slow toxic spill (of e.g. azo dyes) from a factory giving many bladder cancer. (See Pakistan.) The release is persistent due to persistent manufacture of clothing using the toxic substance.
Chronic exposures have a way of overwhelming or slipping by our internal detoxification - even though single dosage may be low and substance might not bioaccumulate, the damage does or probabilities get skewed towards certainty.
> a slow toxic spill (of e.g. azo dyes) from a factory giving many bladder cancer.
But what we've discovered is classes of chemicals that cause more damage at small doses, because they interfere with subtler communication pathways in the body such as hormones, and those effects diminish at higher accumulations. There are other categories, like 'no dose is safe', which GP is implying may be the case for this compound, in which case 'the dose is the poison' is a divide by zero error.
You can't assume that the model works just because it worked (or we ignored the data that didn't fit the model) for 450 years. But the original quote is:
"All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison."
In the full quote it's clear we aren't talking about pesticides or arsenic. You can poison yourself with enough iron, or vitamin E. Somewhere along the way it became about how much perchlorate you can have in water before half the fish die.
That's fascinating. Would you please give an example of a chemical whose toxicity decreases with increased dosage?
> In the full quote it's clear we aren't talking about pesticides or arsenic.
"All things" makes it pretty clear what we're talking about. I feel comfortable asserting that both pesticides and arsenic are members of the set of all things, along with vitamins, iron, and perchlorates. I think one might go so far as to say that an organism can be poisoned by any substance its body is capable of absorbing in sufficient quantity. Water poisoning is a fun example. Despite our bodies largely being composed of it, ingest too much and your cells swell up to the point it can cause brain failure. Even the non-reactive noble gasses can cause narcotic effects.