An interesting study for all smokers who believe that toasting one can reduce stress. French researchers have shown that activation of nicotine receptors in mice increases their sensitivity to stress. A mechanism that could be found in humans.
TOBACCO, NICOTINE AND STRESS
If the vox populi is convinced that smoking can reduce stress, a study, carried out on mice, contradicts the idea that cigarettes relax. Researchers from the Paris-Seine Neurosciences laboratory (CNRS / Inserm / UPMC) and the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (CNRS / University of Nice Sophia Antipolis) attempted to assess the impact of social stress in mice by activating or by blocking nicotinic receptors in animals. Result: signs of social stress are magnified when mice are exposed to nicotine and suppressed when the receptors are turned off.
« If we add nicotine, it only takes one day, instead of ten, and we get the same effects in terms of social stress in mice, details Philippe Faure, director of research at the CNRS. This suggests that nicotine can potentiate the effects of stress.« A social stress that, in this rodent, normally occurs after ten days when confronted with aggressive congeners. It is characterized by an avoidance of his fellow and a less attraction to sugars.
« All this allows us to ascend that the stress pathways are not independent of the nicotinic receptor", explains the Pr Faure. Applied to humans, this would mean that smoking increases the effects of stress. According to the researcher, he is not « not easy« that the mechanisms described with the mouse are identical in humans. If nicotine came to act in the same way in our brain, it could explain our reactions in situations of stress related to social relations, especially at work. For this social stress is not manifested in the human race by the direct aggression of our fellow men, nor by the establishment of a hierarchy with the dominant ones, but rather by a negative look at our place in society.
AND THE SENSATION OF LACK IN ALL CA?
The solution to feel good about yourself? Throw your cigarettes in the trash, you could answer. Problem, the lack of nicotine also creates stress, and smoking gives the impression of relaxing, when it would be rather the opposite according to the study. The vicious circle will then be self-sustaining, since the withdrawal makes it very difficult to quit and nicotine increases the stress that smoking is supposed to alleviate. In people who use tobacco to manage their anxieties, it will then be necessary to treat the stress generated by nicotine and the effects of withdrawal in parallel.
The researchers do not know for the moment that social stress, which is just one of the stress paths among others, is influenced by nicotine. They will try to understand, in mice always, how much the nicotinic receptor acts on the dopaminergic system. Which is at the origin of many of the attitudes of animals and humans. A source of tension in our relationships with others, smoking could also be the cause of other behavioral disorders.
Source : Francetvinfo.fr/
