It isn’t easy to find information about nicotine patches for cancer (and other serious diseases including autoimmunity, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, Long COVID, and more) unless your doctor happens to recommend this kind of treatment in a clinical setting. And, of course, it’s a pretty rare thing for doctors to know about nicotine patches for cancer and then even rarer for them to prescribe them to patients. In fact, though smoking cigarettes can cause cancer, nicotine patches (which are often used to stop smoking through the administration of calibrated small doses of nicotine) have the ability to stop and even cure cancer or at least in some cases, to reduce pain caused by cancer without drugs like morphine. Once you understand how to use nicotine patches to reduce pain and certain symptoms of disease and why they work, you’ll see how this tool can be used in many contexts.
If you’re reading this article to better understand how nicotine patches can help you overcome a disease or symptoms of disease that are causing you a great deal of distress, we’re going to unpack this topic so that you can better understand how and why you should consider working intentionally with nicotine to reclaim your health. Also, we’re going to talk about nicotine patch alternatives that might surprise you and describe why nicotine in its various forms is so important as a medicinal agent.
Lydian’s and my interest in nicotine dates back to COVID and Long COVID when she and I started really studying the autonomic nervous system in depth. We got sick with COVID ourselves and then we developed Long COVID as a result. But we had already been studying the disease for quite some time, so we had a foothold into the scientific research regarding these two disease processes. We never felt like Long COVID was insurmountable. We approached the problem as an opportunity to figure out, from personal experience, how to overcome it. Both Lydi and I had personal, evolving experiences involving exhaustion, pain, foggy headedness, and other distressing symptoms and we noted that physical pain was often associated with having more focus and a clearer mind. On the other hand, when we were pain-free, our minds were foggy and we generally felt too exhausted to even try to participate in the real world. This pattern in our symptom presentation got our attention and we started charting our own symptoms and paying attention to what medicines helped our bodies rebalance so that, over time, we neither had pain nor exhaustion and foggy-headedness. We’ll explain more about that below.
Branches of the Autonomic Nervous System
To understand these two autonomic nervous system states better, we should talk about the autonomic nervous system in a more general way. Different models of medicine acknowledge different branches of the autonomic nervous system. Conventional medicine basically acknowledges that there are two branches to the autonomic nervous system – this system of medicine gives a brief nod to the autonomic nervous system, but otherwise, this part of the body is ignored in mainstream medicine and most doctors have very little knowledge about it as a result.
The Autonomic Nervous System and the Endocrine System
When we talk about trauma, be it biological trauma, psychological trauma, or some spiritual trauma like existential depression or grief over the loss over a loved one, an understanding of the autonomic nervous system is incredibly grounding. The autonomic nervous system connects directly to the endocrine system such that these two conceptually distinct systems of the body become one. A person who wants, for example, to better understand why they have issues with depression, including postpartum depression, anxiety, bipolar mood states, psychosis including postpartum psychosis, feelings of terror or hopelessness, anger management issues, and more, can begin by developing a very basic understanding of the autonomic nervous system to gain a foothold on how the body is responding to internal and external stimuli.
The endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system make a direct connection at the adrenal glands where sympathetic nerves give the adrenal glands information about stress levels. Normally, cortisol, a hormone that’s produced and released by the adrenal glands, acts like a drum beat in terms of the circadian rhythms of our day-night, monthly, and seasonal cycles. Cortisol release, when it is properly timed at proper doses, helps our bodies sync up with the environment…the sun rising and the sun setting, the different seasons that meld into other throughout the year, lunar and monthly cycles that impact the menstrual cycle, conception patterns, and certain emotional states. When cortisol levels are imbalanced or poorly timed, our body’s “felt sense” (a term I’m boring from Dr. Peter Levine, a leader in trauma-informed therapies) will stop sync-ing with the environment. When this happens, the body and the left-brain, the part of the mind-body that deals with logic and our personal narrative among other things, will go out of sync too. We can say that this situation involving a cortisol imbalance, where the drum beat that normally keeps the left-brain and the body’s felt sense (we also refer to the body’s felt sense as the “right-brain”, the emotionally tuned part of our body-mind that intuits information from the environment) in tempo with each other, is trauma. People experience this type of cortisol mal-timing and mal-dosing as “trauma” and they experience both flash-backs and flash-forwards with the left, rational brain that tries, without success, to re-establish the proper rhythm of things.
This explains, to some extent, why the word “traumatic” is so subjective in the realm of psychology and trauma-informed therapies. What’s traumatic to one person may not be traumatic to another person. One person may have a solid cortisol drum beat going in the song of their lives and be relatively immune to some of the stressors that another person buckles under. But it’s also true that the person with the strong drum beat of cortisol keeping rhythm may be thrown into a state of chaotically timed cortisol release and dosing should that person experience a trauma that impacts powerfully them on an emotional, biological, or spiritual level.
In other words, the autonomic nervous system connects the mind to the body at the adrenal glands which release not just cortisol, as this basic rhythm-producing hormone in our bodies that syncs us in time and space, but also adrenaline, which tells us when to be calm, but awake and aware and when to run for our lives (the so-called fight-or-flight mode). If the fight-or-flight mode does not or cannot save us from the sense that we are being chased down by a predator (so to speak), our bodies will relent and go into a “frozen” state, also known as the “play-dead” state.
When we are in a state of equilibrium, we go into states of rest-and-digest during a normal day. These states are characterized by alpha brainwave states and brief dips into theta brainwave states. Alpha brainwave states involve wakeful, but relaxed states of concentration and engagement. They’re related to and nearly synonymous with a state of balanced cortisol release and timing. Dipping briefly into a theta state is what allow us to remember things during a normal day that we’d forgotten…where a thought “pops into our heads” about something that’s emotionally important to us. If the body goes into a theta state too often or for prolonged periods during a normal day, the emotional content is often overwhelming rather than helpful and people begin to experience the projection of this theta state onto the present-tense reality of their lives. Theta brainwave states are like a light dream state that one might experience while dropping off to sleep.
Experiencing projections of a dreamlike state over the top of a present-tense reality that is likely very different and completely different from the theta material that gets drawn up into the alpha brainwave state (where it becomes conscious and known to our left, logical mind) is yet another definition of trauma. States of dementia and psychosis involve mal-timed theta states that involve this kind of de-synchronization of the body with the external, present-tense environment (which includes other people and social experiences). Lewy Body Dementia is an excellent example of what happens when a person goes into a theta brainwave state at improper times. Parkinson’s disease, which is essentially the same as Lewy Body Dementia, except progressing from the opposite direction in terms of symptoms, also represents a de-synchronization of the body with the environment. Both are rooted in trauma that has not been released from the body such that the trauma (be it biological, emotional, or spiritual), becomes the patient’s “embodied” material that drives physical and mental experience.
Click here for more info on the connection between Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
Most people think of “trauma” as something that’s purely psychological, but trauma can be caused by serious infection or exposure to toxins like organophosphates or bromides that seriously disrupt the autonomic nervous system. Sadly, all of the antidotes to organophosphate toxicity that are currently used by doctors in conventional medicine are drugs that are chemically synthesized as a “salt” in combination with bromide, yet another autonomic nervous system disruptor. So basically, people with organophosphate toxicity and poisoning jump from the pot of boiling water into the frying pan when they’re given treatments at a conventional medicine hospital. Both organophosphates and bromides are bio-accumulative and both disrupt the autonomic nervous system. Both are nearly ubiquitous in the United States, but organophosphates are used throughout the world to control the growth of weeds and also to kill insects by disrupting the insect’s nervous system (which is similar to the human nervous system).
In shamanic medicine as the oldest system of medicine known to mankind, soul loss is one of the most important concepts relating to the chakras, the endocrine glands, and the autonomic nervous system. Shamanic medicine teaches us the methods that have been used for centuries to bring a soul (read: energy that’s been lost as a result of some kind of imbalance) back into a body, but science can teach us how these age-old methods work. For those of us who are trying to live mostly in our scientifically-oriented left-brains, it’s important to make the connection to better understand how the autonomic nervous system and endocrine system informs these methods as well as other unconventional systems of medicine that involve energy work, herbs, and trance-inducing treatments derived from shamanic methods to bring soul parts and energy that’s been lost back into the body.
Time, Space Orientation and the Pineal Gland
The pineal gland is located at the so-called “third-eye”, the Ajna chakra in chakra-based energy systems of healing. This gland receives blood directly from the body while the rest of the brain tissues sit behind the blood-brain barrier. Rene Descartes called the pineal gland the “seat of the soul” because if cortisol levels from the adrenals become mal-timed, or mal-dosed (as a result of some stimuli that overloads or hijacks the autonomic nervous system), the pineal gland immediately notices because of its unprotected status in terms of its interaction with the body’s blood supply (where cortisol courses through the body quickly in response to stimuli from the environment). Most of the brain does not want or need direct interaction with the hormones coursing through the blood vessels, but the pineal gland is one exception. Unfortunately, the pineal gland’s unprotected status means that it is first in line to be exposed to toxins like organophosphates that can lead ultimately to a calcification of the pineal gland. Taking vitamin K2 / Menaquinone-7 / MK-7 and (reducing or getting rid of vitamin D supplementation altogether – only take vitamin D if you live in very far northern or very far southern latitudes) can help decalcify the pineal gland. Click here to read more about vitamin K2 and vitamin D and their role in pineal gland health.
Click here to read about how to decalcify the pineal gland.
Though I agree with Rene Descartes, at least partially, regarding the idea that the pineal gland is the “seat of the soul”, I also acknowledge the other chakras as “seats” of the soul that can become disrupted (or healed and rebalanced) as well to create (or heal) different types of emotional health issues. The pineal gland helps us orient the left-brain, the logical mind, to time and space…the present tense. The ability to come back to the present-tense and take a few breaths is what ultimately allows a person to heal from major disease or illness.
In a variety of different models of health and medicine (not including conventional medicine or psychology) , re-establishing this ability of a patient to bring their consciousness back to the present-tense to at least “check-in” with the body is the whole goal. Modern psychology does not acknowledge present-tense-oriented consciousness (where a person can check-in with their five physical senses and somatic experience, take control of their own breathing, and re-establish a relatively prolonged sense of calm and focus – an alpha brainwave state) as something real or important. Trauma-informed therapies acknowledge the problem of time-space disorientation and they all seek to help the patient, using a wide array of tools, to bring themselves (their souls), back into the body to take their seats in the proper places, namely the pineal gland, the thyroid gland, the heart, the solar plexus (liver, gallbladder, stomach, pancreas, spleen as a whole unit), the gut / abdomen, and the reproductive glands (ovaries or testes). Each of these chakras are associated with an endocrine gland that’s viewed as a physical manifestation of the energetic vortex known as a “chakra”.
Two, Three, and Four Branch Models of the Autonomic Nervous System
The two branches of the autonomic nervous system that are acknowledged to exist in conventional medicine include the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system deals with fight-or-flight states of stress and arousal while the parasympathetic nervous system deals with rest-and-digest states of rest. In conventional medicine, our bodies oscillate from states of wakefulness and “stress” and states of resting and digesting. In the real world though, most of us have a very difficult time getting into a state of rest-and-digest once we’re in our early to mid-twenties. Once rest-and-digest states begin to disappear from our daily lives, we stop being able to heal ourselves. The rest-and-digest state is absolutely mandatory and there are gradations of the rest-and-digest state that might be described using different brainwave states. Nonetheless, other models of the autonomic nervous system have been successful in describing and explaining why some people fall ill and then never fully recover (with diseases like COVID or even a minor bout of the common cold) while other people don’t struggle to recover at all. Some people overcome cancer. Some people are able to cure autoimmune disease. Why can’t everybody heal themselves of a disease naturally?
To better understand at least one of the scenarios that stands in the way to self-healing, you have to understand the autonomic nervous system.
Other models of the autonomic nervous system exist besides the model that’s famous in conventional medicine. A model known as Endobiogeny, for example (which is actually a very poorly known branch of conventional medicine) acknowledges 3 branches of the autonomic nervous system including:
- The sympathetic nervous system ALPHA which deals with states of mild stress with concentration and focus
- The sympathetic nervous system BETA which deals with fight-or-flight states of high stress
- The parasympathetic nervous which deals with rest-and digest states
However, yet another model that’s become famous among trauma-informed therapists and some psychiatrists is Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal model that also includes 3 branches of the autonomic nervous system. Note however, that his 3 branches of the autonomic nervous system are different from the 3 branches acknowledged by Endobiogeny. They include:
- The sympathetic nervous system – fight-or-flight states
- The parasympathetic VENTRAL branch – rest-and-digest states that are triggered particularly by pleasant social interactions
- The parasympathetic DORSAL branch – “play-dead” or “freeze” states that involve extreme exhaustion wherein the body becomes somewhat inert at the cellular level.
Yet another model of the autonomic nervous system actually looks at the various holistic states described above in both Polyvagal Theory and Endobiogeny from the cellular perspective. This model focuses physiologically on the cellular level of the body rather than on nerves and the nervous system itself. Dr. Robert Naviaux developed the theory of the Cell Danger Response to describe autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). His theory of the Cell Danger Response aligns neatly with Dr. Porges’ ideas regarding the “play dead” and “freeze” response that mammals display when they’re faced with extremely stressful, life-threatening situations. But Dr. Naviaux was particularly inspired in his work by something known as “Resignation Syndrome”. Resignation Syndrome is a physical state that develops as a result of an extreme trauma.This diagnosis was given a name after young refugee children in Sweden began to develop the disorder. These children all received the news that their families would have to leave and return to their war-torn country-of-origin. The refugee children (who belonged to different families across Sweden who had no knowledge of each other) then became depressed and went into a comatose state as their cells literally went dormant. Dr. Naviaux has compared this cellular dormancy response (The Cell Danger Response) to what happens when a gazelle is caught by the neck by a large, wild cat. A gazelle that is captured in this way will often go limp and “play dead” in a last-ditch effort to save its own life. In some cases, the wild cat will release the gazelle, thinking that the gazelle is sick. But it doesn’t matter whether we look at Resignation Syndrome as an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system or whether we look at the cellular level and see cells that are going into sleepy, dormant states. Resignation Syndrome symptoms take shape along a continuum that can look like mild to moderate depression, foggy-headedness, exhaustion, or it can look like anorexia, fever, rash, nausea, vomiting or even an inert state or coma. In fact, Resignation Syndrome is something I have seen many times when I worked in long-term care facilities in high school and during my undergraduate degree.
Even as I write this article over the course of several days of work, one of the kittens on my property is attacked by dogs. His body appears dead, but I don’t bury him right away because I’ve seen kittens “come back to life” (so to speak) even when they appear to be dead. You may or may not believe in my “Lazarus-cats”, dear reader, but it is this natural function of the human body to go into the Cell Danger Response (which looks a bit like death, at times, a twilight state, at others, and major illness at other times) that ensures that our bodies don’t feel the most painful aspects of death when death occurs. And it is this function of the body that made it necessary for people to put little bells on graves (so-called “safety graves”) that were attached to bodies buried six feet under because at times, people look dead, but they are not dead, per se.
The autonomic nervous system and the cholinergic system of the body requires us to look closely at death as a situation that might not be as black-and-white as we once thought it was.
In any case, Lydian and I draw from all of the models above and we acknowledge 4 branches of the autonomic nervous system including:
- The sympathetic nervous system ALPHA – states of mild stress with concentration and focus
- The sympathetic nervous system BETA – fight-or-flight states of high stress
- The parasympathetic VENTRAL branch – rest-and-digest states that are triggered particularly by pleasant social interactions
- The parasympathetic DORSAL branch – “play-dead” or “freeze” states that involve extreme exhaustion wherein the body becomes somewhat inert at the cellular level.
We also acknowledge that we can either look at the actual nerves that belong to the autonomic nervous system and autonomic nervous system responses or we can look at cells and how cells are behaving in the body (as either lively or dormant) to talk about holistic states that involve either chronic pain or extreme exhaustion and foggy-headedness.
Acetylcholine
In order to make all this information about branches of the autonomic nervous system useful and apply it to at-home medicine…in order for us to talk about different “gradations of death” (so to speak and the Lazarus effect of being able to come back or be brought back to life after more than 5 minutes without breathing (at normal body temperature), we have to talk about acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that functions in both the autonomic nervous system as well as the motor neurons. It is one of the neurotransmitters that play a role in disease states like Parkinson’s and also Myasthenia Gravis (a nervous system disease). It plays a role in states of arousal and wakefulness, attention, memory, and motivation.
There are two types of acetylcholine receptors in the body:
- Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors
- These are found in the central nervous system and in the peripheral nervous system.
- Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors modulate hunger, satiety, food intake, and the expenditure of energy.
- Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors
- These are G-protein-coupled receptor complexes found in the cellular membrane of certain neurons as well as in other cells.
- Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors are mostly found in the parasympathetic nervous system with the exception of their presence in sweat glands which are innervated by the sympathetic nervous system.
The nicotinic receptors are so-named because they are sensitive to nicotine (which is found in tobacco). Muscarinic receptors are so-named because they are sensitive to muscarine (which is found in the mushroom Amanita muscaria).
A large number of substances found in certain plants can also manipulate the nicotinic or muscarinic receptors of the cholinergic system. A large number of substances that are produced naturally inside the body can also impact the nicotinic or muscarinic receptors besides just acetylcholine. Examples of substances that non-competitively attach to the cholinergic receptors include:
- Fatty acids
- Steroids (endogenous and exogenous)
- Neuropeptide substance P
- 5-HT / serotonin
The above listed endogenous substances can alter the receptor proteins that make up the cholinergic receptors and act as agonists.
Additionally, a large number of drugs have an impact on the cholinergic system including:
- Chlorpromazine
- Triphenylmethylphosphonium
- QX-222 and meproadifen
- Trifluoromethyl-iodophenyldiazirine
- Phencyclidine (PCP)
- Histrionicotoxin
- Quinacrine
- Ethidium
In the scientific literature, some scientists have noted (with dismay) that the cholinergic system has never been studied in a purist sense. Thus, the language used to describe and explain this system of the body is not very clear, but rather geared entirely at serving the interests of Big Pharma. The language of the cholinergic system that’s used in conventional medicine derives from the need to study and describe drug-products in terms of their interaction with this system. There are many serious blind-spots if you study the cholinergic system and begin asking yourself questions about its actual function and behavior – what it does for us and how it works.
My own experience with reading about the cholinergic system seems to indicate that though scientists use the words “agonist” and “antagonist” to describe different substances and drugs that interact with either the nicotinic or muscarinic receptors, in fact, there is no such thing as a nicotinic or muscarinic “agonist” or “antagonist”. Rather, I view the cholinergic receptors (both the nicotinic and muscarinic receptors) as “magnetic” toward substances that are chemically structured to interact with them. Some substances are powerfully attracted to either the nicotinic receptors or the muscarinic receptors, but only acetylcholine can interact with both types of receptors.
Instead of talking about “agonism” or “antagonism” in the acetylcholine / cholinergic system of the body, I think of both the so-called agonists and antagonists as substances that have a particular level of affinity for either the nicotinic or muscarinic receptors of the body. This affinity level could be measured on a spectrum from 0 (which would be zero-affinity) to 10. Acetylcholine would theoretically have an affinity of about 5 when interacting with both nicotinic or muscarinic receptors.
The substance muscarine, derived from Amanita muscaria, for example, might have an affinity level of 8 or 9 in comparison with acetylcholine. Muscarine would thus “kick out” the acetylcholine and also block acetylcholine from interacting with muscarinic receptors for a certain period of time. For example, the Amanita muscaria mushroom (which contains muscarine) tends to produce noticeable effects for 2-4 hours. After a molecule of muscarine is present in a particular muscarinic receptor, it detaches and degrades and then acetylcholine can again occupy the muscarinic receptors again.
But let’s say that a person is exposed to organophosphates, which latch onto the muscarinic receptors specifically. Maybe this person is exposed to small amounts of organophosphates daily over the course of many years. At first, exposure to the organophosphates has no effect on the person. They don’t really notice health effects from the organophosphates. But let’s also say that this hypothetical person is also deficient in vitamin K2 / MK-7 and good nutrient sources of iodine. Read more about these two nutrients in terms of organophosphates here. Over the course of time, this person would slowly experience a buildup of organophosphates in their bone tissues. Exposure to organophosphates would bio-accumulate. With bio-accumulation, the body begins to become overwhelmed by the organophosphates as they start to be ever-present in the body and at the muscarinic receptors. If organophosphates have an affinity level of 8 or 9 or less (let’s say), then this person could use muscarine from the Amanita muscaria mushroom to kick organophosphates out of the muscarinic receptors.
The same concept holds true for the nicotinic receptors, nicotinic receptor disruptors, and the use of nicotine (which is found in a pure form in Nicotiniana rustica, also known as Mapacho) to remove nicotinic receptor disruptors from the body.
Nicotinic and Muscarinic Receptors in Human Health
The muscarinic receptors are named for their affinity to muscarine (which is found in the Amanita muscaria mushrooms). The nicotinic receptors, in contrast, are named for their affinity to nicotine (which is found in Nicotiana rustica / pure Tobacco / Mapacho). Of course nicotine is also found in cigarettes, but cigarettes contain other substances that are not so benign or beneficial as nicotine.
A potential point of confusion that I want to clarify at this point is the idea that the cholinergic system is made up of both nicotinic and muscarinic receptor-types. Yet, there is really just one neurotransmitter that acts biologically within this system. Acetylcholine can interact with either nicotinic receptors or muscarinic receptors. And don’t forget that the diet and certain natural molecules like fatty acids can modify the any of the cholinergic receptors. This creates a paradigm that is utterly confusing and to be honest, no one really understands exactly how this system works. What is known and often stated in the scientific literature is the fact that when working with the cholinergic system (either the nicotinic or muscarinic receptors, or both), its hard to predict exactly what will happen in many cases.
That being said though, the relative lack of predictability when working with the cholinergic system is not the same as saying that we don’t know anything or that we can’t predict without absolute certainty what will happen when we administer a particular cholinergic substance. And before you give up entirely on the cholinergic system of the body to heal disease, remember that this is the system of the body that made me pause before burying my sweet little Lazarus-kitten. The cholinergic substances found in plants can kill you, but they may also bring you back to life if you’ve died.
Can any of us, doctors included, really begin to talk about real medicine unless we contend with this life-death issue and thus the cholinergic system that seems to play one of the most vital roles in life-death-states.
I would argue that many people feel so diseased and imbalanced that they “feel like death” every single day of their lives. I would also argue that many people experience such high levels of anxiety in their daily lives (in one form or another) that they’re almost non-functional. The person who feels like death is in a “play-dead” or “freeze” state according to Polyvagal Theory while the person with super-high levels of near-constant anxiety is in a fight-or-flight state. Both of these people are never getting into a rest-and-digest state that would allow their bodies to naturally heal.
When a person’s own natural acetylcholine is no longer able to attach to the muscarinic or nicotinic receptors in the body, perhaps because of exposure to toxins or even viral infections. Remember the COVID spike protein that was able to attach itself to nicotinic receptors in a manner that was roughly equivalent to what the venom of a krait snake could do? Remember the studies demonstrating that people who smoked cigarettes were less likely to end up with Long COVID? That material demonstrated that COVID and other viruses can hijack the nicotinic as well as the nicotinic receptors.
Using Long COVID as an example of viral disruption through attachment to the nicotinic receptors (though muscarinic receptors can be affected by other types of viruses), it’s easy to imagine what’s going on here. If a person’s nicotinic receptors are overwhelmed by viral attachment such that acetylcholine can’t activate these receptors anymore, the muscles will begin to malfunction in various ways and the autonomic nervous system as a whole will become imbalanced.
What does nicotine do?
Nicotine is a substance that the body was designed to interact with through pure tobacco. To be fair, tobacco is quite poisonous and over the centuries, it has mostly been something used by shaman. Shaman rarely have inhaled the tobacco though at times they have sucked into their mouths to be blown on patient’s bodies. Nicotine can be addictive in high quantities when combined with other substances. At low doses, like those of the 3rd step of nicotine patches, especially as the nicotine is continuously administered such that the body never receives a high dose, it is not addictive. Many people who use nicotine patches for cigarette addiction report that they tend to forget to put on the patch each day (because the patches themselves are simply not addictive).
The nicotinic receptors are located at nerve-muscle junctions and they are the primary type of receptor at the nerve-muscle junction controlling muscle contraction. In the autonomic nervous system, the nicotinic receptors, transmit signals from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system to help keep it balanced between states of high stress and states that may mimic extreme dormancy or death. In the immune system, the nicotinic receptors also play a regulatory process in keeping inflammation balanced.
Insects have a central nervous system that is innervated by cholinergic receptors. Many of the insecticides used on crops today target either the nicotinic or the muscarinic receptors in insects. These insecticides also impact the human immune system by disrupting access of acetylcholine to the cholinergic receptors.
Though acetylcholine can interact with nicotinic receptors and also muscarinic receptors, nicotine and other substances that are known nicotinic receptor “agonists” interact only with the nicotinic receptors and not with the muscarinic receptors.
The nicotinic receptors, when mildly stimulated by nicotine or acetylcholine, have a relaxing effect on the body, but when stimulated more vigorously, they have a stimulating effect that produces a more wakeful, energized state. The nicotinic receptors are involved in producing a rest-and-digest response to social situations that are pleasant and relaxing. Tobacco / Nicotiana rustica / Mapacho is considered by many indigenous societies to be the first of the sacred medicines that taught humans how to work with sacred medicines like Ayahuasca. Tobacco has been used for centuries as an herb that promotes peace (for example, peace pipes of the native American Indians involved the use of Tobacco to promote greater social understanding and more fluent communication) in social situations. It is also used in shamanic medicine to remove negative energies and to help patients overcome particularly challenging material during sacred medicine ceremonies.
A nicotinic receptor “agonist” might be viewed as a substance that interacts with nicotinic receptors for several hours or longer. A nicotinic receptor “antagonist” might be viewed as a substance that interacts with the receptors only briefly, but with a high level of affinity and power to remove other substances from the receptors that may be interfering with nicotinic receptor-induced cholinergic nerve transmission.
When learning about the nicotinic receptor agonists or antagonists, it’s important to note that some of the nicotinic receptor “medicines” that are either agonists or antagonists can cause serious issues in the body. Hexamethonium, for example, is a drug with a high affinity than many other substances that have an affinity for the nicotinic receptor. Hexamethonium can be used to remove substances that are interfering with nicotinic receptor transmission, but because it has powerful effects, it can interfere with the baroreflex that regulates normal changes in blood pressure. The COVID spike protein caused similar health issues in Post-Orthostatic Hypotension (POTS) by occupying the nicotinic receptors to prevent normal transmission of nerve impulses through the nicotinic-receptor nerves. One of the reasons why the nicotine patch is such a useful tool in being able to overcome Long COVID and other diseases with similar symptoms like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, post-cancer-treatment recovery states, and other autoimmune diseases, is because nicotine has a relatively balanced effect on the nicotinic receptors versus the more extreme effects caused by viruses and drugs like Hexamethonium.
Mental health issues associated with nicotinic receptor interference and imbalance include:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Panic Attacks
- Phobias
- Postpartum psychosis
- Psychosis
- Schizophrenia
- Dementia
- More…
How to Use Nicotine Patches for Long COVID, Cancer, and More…
Administer the step 3, low dose nicotine patch (7 mg per 24 hours) daily for 7 days. Consider beginning treatment by putting tape over ½ of the nicotine patch to administer a very low dose of nicotine. As you administer nicotine patches, the nicotine will “kick” viruses and toxins out of the nicotine receptors. There is often an initial detoxification period of 3-5 days involving a Herxheimer reaction / healing crisis. Continue to administer the patch for another 7 days at the full 7 mg dose and then take 1-3 days off from the patch before beginning another 10 days cycle with the nicotine patch. Continue with treatment using nicotine patches for cancer and other diseases until your symptoms resolve completely.
What does muscarine do?
Muscarine is primarily involved in the parasympathetic system (with the exception of sweat gland innervation, highlighting the role of the muscarinic receptors specifically in hot flashes during menopause). Acetylcholine can activate both the nicotinic receptors and the muscarinic receptors.
Muscarinic receptors are named for their affinity for muscarine, a substance found in the Amanita muscaria mushroom. The muscarinic receptors play a vital role in organ function as opposed to skeletal muscle function that’s under the dominion of nicotinic receptors. When muscarinic receptor activity is hijacked by toxins or viruses and become imbalanced, mucus production is prolifically increased, peristalsis of the intestines is also increased leading to diarrhrea, the bronchial tubes constrict and breathing become difficult what with excess mucus production and bronchial tube restriction. A number of the major childhood diseases, involve disruption of the muscarinic or nicotinic receptors by viruses or other pathogens.
Muscarinic receptors are the vital mediators in rest-and-digest states, but if you know that you’re having trouble achieving rest-and-digest states, note that nicotinic receptor activation and “clearing” by nicotine patches is also important. Nicotine is a social substance. It helps us communicate more clearly using facial expressions and gestures. It helps us choose the proper words and also relax even in somewhat stressful communications. Muscarine, in contrast, helps our organs relax deeply. Muscarine, for example, is a powerful healer of peptic ulcers / gastric ulcers through its action on the production of acid in the stomach. Gastic ulcers have long been associated with states of high-stress, in part because muscarinic receptors are either being hijacked or they’re not working properly when a person has an imbalance in their stomach-acid production.
How to Use Amanita muscaria with Nicotine Patches to Heal from Long COVID, Cancer, and Other Serious Diseases…
The Amanita muscaria mushroom can be used to “clear” the muscarinic receptors and rebalance this part of the cholinergic system. Amanita muscaria should usually be taken at bedtime as it is a mushroom that promotes dreaming specifically. Take very small doses of the mushroom for best results and to prevent a Herxheimer reaction / healing crisis. Taking a high dose of Amanita muscaria to cure cancer or another serious disease, including chronic pain, may produce 3-5 days of detoxification symptoms. A dose of 50-100 mg of the WHOLE mushroom is adequate for most people to clear the muscarinic receptors. Take these low doses of Amanita muscaria daily for 10 days and then take a break for 1-3 days. Resume dosing for another 10 days with 1-3 days off until your symptoms are gone.
If you have pain during the day, take very low doses of 10-50 mg of the WHOLE mushroom throughout the day (no sooner than every 4 hours) in addition to working with nicotine patches.