smoking and tcm

[affenbrot]

hey bums,

 

i startet smoking a cigarette every other day and I wondered what it does

to me in terns of tcm terminology. expelling dampness?, slightly warm, hot , toxic? channels entered? these kind of things...

anybody?

 

I remember reading in one of the daskalos books that one of his pupils would smoke sometimes to burn excessive subtle energy accumulations he had aquired in his training and healing work...or similar. That of course would make for the ultimate new age excuse for smoking: "well, you know I just have to smoke because i need to burn my excessive spiritual energy.."

 

 

 

affenbrot

[Starjumper]

Not to change the subject or anything, but that reminds me of a story I heard about some guru or master who was expounding the dangers of smoking to a Western audience, all the while smoking cigarettes. Some terribly observant and brave fellow asked him how he could say those things while he was himself smoking. In answer he took a drag off the cig and then held his hand out and blew smoke out his fingers and said: "When you can do this then you can smoke"

 

Actually, although smoking may be harmful in some ways nicotine itself is an essential nutrient. Nicotine is Nicotinic acid, is Niacin, and Niacin is one of the B vitamins. It could be that humans adapted to need nicotine via millinea of the consumption of it or it could just be a natural chemical in plants and animals.

 

All that being said, I don't have a clue as to how it relates to TCM, but I do know this: if you're going to smoke then it's best to use organic naturally grown Native American tabacco and not the industrial grade kind with 2000 toxic chemicals added.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Starjumper

[QiDr]

Tobacco was not introduced to China until the fifteen hundreds and is not listed in any of the twelve volumes of Chinese materia medica I own.

I had one teacher years ago in TCM school who said that smoking could probably be usefull short term to clear damp from the lungs but, in long term use, the hot smoke would surely injure the lungs.

We can extrapolate that, used internally, tobacco that has not been sugar cured is bitter and enters the heart and small intestine. It is most certainly toxic and has been used in the Americas as a purgative for tape worms so it would probably fall under the catagory of "herbs that expel parasites". Since most of the herbs in this catagory that have this action are cold, we can again presume that tobacco is bitter cold and toxic, entering the heart and large intestine.

[affenbrot]

...

Actually, although smoking may be harmful in some ways nicotine itself is an essential nutrient. Nicotine is Nicotinic acid, is Niacin, and Niacin is one of the B vitamins. It could be that humans adapted to need nicotine via millinea of the consumption of it or it could just be a natural chemical in plants and animals.

 

hu!? - I'm not educated in this field but to suggest that nicotine could become a nutrient to the body sounds outlandish.

Chemistry is not Biochemistry!

 

All that being said, I don't have a clue as to how it relates to TCM, but I do know this: if you're going to smoke then it's best to use organic naturally grown Native American tabacco and not the industrial grade kind with 2000 toxic chemicals added. I learned this from Taomeow.

yeah, makes sense. I smoked nothing but some cloves . Rumours have it the indonesian kreteks

use mostly tobacco without chemicals - apart from the "sauce" that flavours it.

I googled these and interesting enough the man who invented them intended to heal his asthma with it. The story goes he was successfull. Probably a short term effect in a way QiDr mentioned (and the rest nice propaganda to create a positive image)?

 

 

@ QiDr: thanks a lot for your very interesting info!! (it had not occurred to me to eat tobacco so far though )

 

 

 

affenbrot

Edited January 9, 2007 by affenbrot

[Starjumper]

[Simon V.]

hey bums,

 

i startet smoking a cigarette every other day and I wondered what it does

to me in terns of tcm terminology. expelling dampness?, slightly warm, hot , toxic? channels entered? these kind of things...

anybody?

 

I remember reading in one of the daskalos books that one of his pupils would smoke sometimes to burn excessive subtle energy accumulations he had aquired in his training and healing work...or similar. That of course would make for the ultimate new age excuse for smoking: "well, you know I just have to smoke because i need to burn my excessive spiritual energy.."

affenbrot

 

 

I don't know about TCM lore re smoking, but I used to smoke cigars on a moderate basis (this is without inhaling, but they are strong and scorch the throat, upper bronchial area, mouth, and nose). I did enjoy them and they seemed to sometimes provide a certain purifying effect--but generally it was their negative effects that required extensive qigong to purify, rather than them benefiting me in that way; these negative effects I find are more serious and long term, more problematic than, say, over indulging in some wine of an evening.

 

While doing them I would take periodic breaks from them. Finally I realised by comparison that my qigong level was clearly much better when I was not induling in the cigars, and that my dreaming practice also quickly improved in their absence. The ability to enter deep relaxation was also better minus the cigars--particularly important for deeper meditative work. From a practicioners point of view, I would recommend not smoking.

 

Simon

[Taomeow]

Well, from my studies of Native American shamanic cultures (i.e. all of them before the white conquest, and the precious few still surviving in South America), it transpires that across the Americas it was the only sacred plant that was sacred to ALL of them, much as the rest of their traditions (invariably centered around a bunch of sacred plants) were widely different. Ayahuaska was the close second in South America, but tobacco has always been the number one for all of them without a single exception. Typically, children were introduced to smoking it in a rite of passage at age eight. Lung cancer was nonexistent. Medicinal preparations of the plant, in addition to smokables (which were sometimes up to three feet long) included decoctions, extracts, ointments, salves, and teas. The salves cured skin cancer, the ointments healed wounds, the decoctions were used for communicating with spirits, and so on. Anticancer properties of tobacco were known to Western physicians -- I have an 1850 medical encyclopedia that lists a few. It is more efficient for depression than all SSRIs combined. Current research has determined that tobacco smoking is the single most efficient prevention of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS and a bunch of other neuromuscular disorders known to date. If it didn't compete with pharmaceutical drugs, it would never have been vilified the way it has been (with pharmaceutical companies launching the infinitely monied, the way they themselves are, "character assassination" campain that was so successful on all levels because it was so powerfully financed), and if it wasn't for chemical companies dumping two thousand toxic additives into everything smokable on the market, it would never have been harmful. The history of tobacco smoking by homo sapiens dates back at least 25,000 years, according to archeological findings, and there's researchers who think it is THE factor that has set us apart from other primates by rewiring our brain. The nicotine receptors in the brain are evolutionary proof that we have used it long enough to have incorporated it into who we are, and their close metabolic interactions with dopaminergic pathways seem to suggest that humans can't have a fully functional brain without it. I didn't make it all up, references available on request.

[mbanu]

Cured tobacco is hot and acrid, if i remember correctly.

[Lozen]

I smoke cigars occasionally. Not the whole cigar, but I'll share one with somebody and take a few drags occasionally.

 

Ken Cohen wrote a chapter on tobacco in his book Honoring the Medicine. It is a sacred plant, and problems come up when it's not approached that way. There is also some interesting writing on it in one of the back issues of Sacred Fire magazine.

[Taomeow]

One may not find this in any classic TCM books of course, but I think I can analyze its action in TCM's terms, it's a rather simple energy pattern to discern.

 

Thermal nature: hot, dry

Flavor: bitter, pungent

Directions: ascending, yang, Fire Phase of Wuxing, Li of bagua, Li and Tian of the I Ching

Organ affinity: Lungs, Heart, Triple Burner

Action: dispels Dampness, moves Stagnation, tonifies Yang, replenishes Yang Deficiency

Contraindicated in Dryness conditions, acute Hot conditions, Yin deficiency with False/surface Yang symptoms

[Todd]

Niacin (Nicotinic Acid)

 

Nicotinic acid and nicotine are not the same thing. They just have similar sounding names.

[Yoda]

It is more efficient for depression than all SSRIs combined.

 

interesting post. I'd love to see some links on the benefits of tobacco.

[Taomeow]

interesting post. I'd love to see some links on the benefits of tobacco.

 

Thanks for asking!

 

For a thorougly documented and rather unbiased take, check out this book:

 

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

by Iain Gately

 

I seem to remember it had some thirty plus pages of scientific references...

 

For a rather comprehensive site patiently dismantling a lot of mis- and dis-information:

 

http://www.forces.org/evidence/money/introph.htm

 

For some research papers online, you might just randomly google up "tobacco smoke as an MAO inhibitor," "tobacco protective effects in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, MS," "tobacco prevents brain cell death," "tobacco protects dopamine receptors," and so on... although getting to them from under a mountain of party-line noise may be hard. I've been researching the issue since my sixteenth birthday, i.e. since the day a brain surgeon (friend of my parents' and the most prominent one in a city of over a million) made me a shocking present. He took me aside and discreetly whispered a secret medical advice into my ear: take up smoking, and keep it light (under ten cigarettes per day). I goggled my eyes at him, and that's when he slapped me hard with the kind of info I'd never, ever heard from anybody anywhere before. The arrogance, the confidence, the sheer 'cause I tell you so impact of his whole personality were a start... the rest, I researched for years. So... not even sure by now where to tell people to look first... dinosaurs? trilobites? 'cause that's about as long as it's been all wrong...

[affenbrot]

taomeow, thanks for the further info. Before your previous post I never ever heard ideas about tobacco like that! will probably check out the book you recommend.

[gendao]

Interesting info, Taomeow...

 

I now would be interested to see a study examining the effects of smoking ONLY pure, natural, organic tobacco. To see if it's actually the burning tobacco that causes cancer...or just all the modern additives?

 

Although personally, I'm not going to risk it either way. I do fine without it. And after seeing one of my Taijiquan/qigong masters emaciated on his deathbed with cancer (I'm guessing caused by his smoking), maannn, that is just NOT the way to go!

Edited October 28, 2007 by vortex

[karen]

Right, the toxic substances added to cigarettes are a big part of the problem. But the tobacco itself, even the most pure tobacco, causes a significant disturbance in the body, like a trauma. The first time a person takes a drag of a cigarette, even the most natural kind, there's a revulsion. Then if the person keeps smoking, the body gets acclimated to it. But that first nasty experience tells the story.

 

There are many "beneficial" effects of tobacco just like there are many "beneficial" effects of sugar, ice cream, and alcohol . If studies were done on sugar, they could find that it eased symptoms of this and that disease. Doesn't make it healthy.

 

-Karen

[Mal]

I now would be interested to see a study examining the effects of smoking ONLY pure, natural, organic tobacco. To see if it's actually the burning tobacco that causes cancer...or just all the modern additives?

 

Don't know much about tobacco but I always wondered if I would get cancer from burning incense sticks

 

Anyhow FWIW it does seem that setting things on fire is the big problem.

 

I like Volcano's

www.healthysmoking.com.au

[LDiR]

There have been a few studies showing that incense can be harmful to one's health, though I think it largely depends on the additives that are used for the incense as well as how much incense is used.

 

Being an ex-smoker I can tell you first hand that the negatives vastly outweigh the positives, at least with pre-packaged, non-organic cigarettes. What little benefits I had been receiving were suddenly outweighed by the feeling of breathing through a wet dishrag at 5am one morning. It took me another year and a half to successfully quit even after having a few of those experiences, but I finally kicked the habit. Thank goodness, too, because I feel so much better.

 

-LDiR