Dr. Andrew Huberman

So the consumption of nicotine, let's just say, I don't know about down here, but in Europe it's becoming fairly common.

And in the Middle East, also for people to take little pouches of nicotine, it can be absorbed sublingually or through the gum, gets into the bloodstream.

And it is truly a cognitive enhancer.

It's a cognitive enhancer.

I'm not going to lie to you.

It will raise attention, focus, cognitive performance.

This is well established.

The problem is it also raises blood pressure and causes vasoconstriction.

This is well established.

So, you know, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it?

Do I do it sometimes?

Do I do it often?

Do I choose to not do it at all?

I don't think the young brain should be consuming nicotine even in these non-cancer-causing forms like pouches for a variety of reasons, but mostly because the brain is so plastic at a young age anyway.

But I actually am familiar with the use of nicotine for offsetting certain neurologic diseases.

When I was visiting Columbia Medical University in New York City some years ago, I was in the office of a Nobel Prize winner

won't tell you who it was necessarily, and he proceeded to consume no fewer than six pieces of Nicorette gum in our half-hour meeting.

I was like, whoa.

At the time, he was in his late 70s, he's now in his 80s, and I was like, hey, listen, what's the deal with the nicotine?

And he said, oh, well, it offsets Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.