
Cigarette smoking: an underused tool in high-performance endurance training - jamesbritt
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001541/
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billswift
This was posted on LessWrong yesterday,
[http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8j1/how_to_prove_anythi...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8j1/how_to_prove_anything_with_a_review_article/)
, short, but interesting, discussion.

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wazoox
This is quite funny, unfortunately this shouldn't have been published on any
other day than April 1st.

In case of doubt see this quote: _With this in mind, smoking should be
commenced at as young an age as is reasonably possible. Children who have not
yet developed a pincer grasp might require modified cigarette holders, safety
lighters or both._

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frankus
The had me until that sentence.

Actually increased hemoglobin levels in smokers wouldn't be surprising. The
problem is that all of the increase (and then some, most likely) is bound to
carbon monoxide and effectively inert.

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tryitnow
This is a good example of the problem with review articles and it's very well
done. Totally straight-faced until the part about children smoking.

However, I think the use of nicotine as a performance enhancer (not smoking
though) is a pretty interesting subject. I've tried chewing nicotine gum and
using a patch just to see if I noticed a difference (just a brief experiment I
would never do it chronically). I did. Much better concentration, focus,
energy etc.

I'm curious to see how the "electric cigarette" phenomenon goes. That would be
a way to deliver nicotine without the other risks of smoking.

From what I understand nicotine is a carcinogen on its on, but I don't know
how strong of one it is.

It would also be fun to see if we could synthesize non-carcinogenic molecules
based on the nicotine molecule with all the positive performance enhancing
effects.

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betterth
The headline definite drives controversy and thus views, but wouldn't a much
better headline have brought up the very real fact that this has nothing to do
with smoking for performance gains and everything to do with exposing
'reviews' as unreliable.

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betterth
Then again, using a misleading headline to direct traffic towards a journal
article that is inherently misleading on purpose has a sort of meta-
awesomeness to it. It's like inception, except with obfuscation.

