# Former smokers with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis? Medicinal Nicotine?



## Django5 (Mar 19, 2015)

Hi! I'm new as if 2 minutes ago. I posted this on the inspire website but no one responded. I'm wonder thoughts of other people with Hashimotos....

Just wondering how many of us with autoimmune thyroiditis used to smoke? I quit about 10 years ago and I've never felt good since. I was diagnosed with Hashi's about three years ago. I am not on thyroid meds yet. Have high TPO antibodies and TSH has slowly creeped up over the years as well as T4 slowly going down. That's my thyroid slowly dying as my body slowly kills it, I guess.

I took Anatabloc for about a year and saw vast improvement in my antibodies (from over 1300 to 421) and improvement in my TSH and T4, but then they took it off the market. And, I started slowly feeling bad again.

I'm thinking of starting to chew nicotine gum. Nicotine is an alkaloid just like anatabine ( the active ingredient in Anatabloc). If you google "medicinal nicotine" or "nicotine as therapy" you will see nicotine is a powerful anti-inflammatory and immune modulator! It's just that nicotine gets a bad rap because it's so highly assoicated with smoking, and smoking is bad because of the toxins in cigarette tobacco and inhaling smoke on the lungs.

I figure if anatabine worked so well, nicotine might too. And it will be a heck of a lot cheaper! Anatabloc was about $100 for a month's supply which was SUCH a racket.. but I paid it because it was working.

My theory is that I would really like to find something that will consistently stop my body from attacking and killing my thyroid, even if it's long term, rather than watch it die and take replacement hormones the rest of my life.

I'm curious about others' thoughts...

Here are some articles I found:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC526783/
http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/features/addicted-to-nicorette(about safety of long term nicotine gum use) 
There are plenty more if you research nicotine and inflammation...


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## Octavia (Aug 1, 2011)

Hi, and welcome!

Interesting. I'm not at all familiar with Anatabloc or using nicotine for medicinal purposes. (I will admit it sounds a bit counterintuitive to me, but again, I'm not familiar. I've got to be honest...the thought of it makes me a little nervous because my grandfather died of emphysema in his mid-60s and I have no doubt that my mother has undiagnosed emphysema. Both were/are lifelong smokers. But I realize you're talking about chewing the gum rather than picking up smoking again.)

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people who used to smoke have Hashi's...and a lot of people with Hashi's used to smoke. I say this simply because a lot of people used to smoke. And a lot of people have Hashi's. Probably coincidence, but I wonder if any peer-reviewed studies have ever been done.

I do wonder, though, if you'd benefit from actual thyroid medication instead of "skirting the issue" so to speak. Do you have any recent TSH, Free T3, and Free T4 labs you could share with us?


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## Andros (Aug 26, 2009)

Smoking and antibodies
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/4/1324

You might be interested in the above.........

Actually; this is brilliant and I wish I had thought of it when I was in the throes of Graves' as I was a very heavy smoker! It indeed helped.

But not my lungs. Smoke free for almost 15 years now.


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## sivies (Feb 11, 2015)

I had symptoms both when I smoked and after I quit. I've heard that it's the tobacco plant that has the chemicals that can help. I don't know that a nicotine supplement would offer that.


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## Django5 (Mar 19, 2015)

No, research clearly indicates that nicotine, when separated from cigarettes / tobacco is a powerful anti-inflammatory and powerful immunosuppressant in neurological diseases such as Parkinson's, MS, and also ulcerative colitis. There was a large study involving thyroid antithyroglobulin antibodies being reduced significantly with anatabine supplementation, which is an alkaloid similar to nicotine. Thoughts are that with nicotine being readily available to the public that there's no money to be made, no patents. So a company called Rock Creek something or other is trying to do this with Nicotine's relative, anatabine. Otherwise, there would be more publicity around nicotine's medicinal uses. There's also the problem of nicotine being demonized due its association with smoking.

I've also done some reading that suggests cigarette smoking can influence autoimmune issues because the body has to work overtime to protect and heal the effects of smoking, but at the same time smoking keeps the autoimmune disease at bay due to the anti inflammatory effects of alkaloids in tobacco. When a person stops smoking a surge in inflammation occurs due to alkaloid withdrawal. A cascade of inflammation turns into autoimmune disease. Just theories...

So as for labs, I have only a handful:

April 2012
TPO antibodies >1300 (0 - 60) this lab stops counting at 1300.....
Antithyroglobulin antibodies 322 (0-60)

July 2012
TSH 2.25
T4 .77 (.78 - 2.14)

Went Gluten Free for about one year, anti-inflammatory diet. Periodically had TSH checked with T4 and they largely remained the same as above.

April 2013
TPO antibodies >1300
Antithyroglobulin 297 (0 - 60)
TSH 2.57
T4 1.0 (.8 - 1.8)
T3 2.1 (2.3 - 4.2)
Scrapped gluten-free (I know many will have a prob with this)
Started anatabine supplement from 4/13 - 5/14 (then stopped due to expense)

July 2014
TPO antibodies 462
Antithyroglobulin <20 (0-20)
TSH 3.13 (.4 -4.5)
T4 1.0
T3 2.3

Tried to buy more anatabine supplements but they took them off the market. My theory for higher TSH is that I had been off my supplement for two months when I had theses labs done and my body was probably fighting off early hypothyroidism again.

So NOW I am going to try nicotine. I go back to my doctor for a check up on 3/24...


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## Django5 (Mar 19, 2015)

I think I was referred to as a euthyroid patient??? And I was told I would eventually develop hypothyroidism once my body sufficiently destroyed my thyroid and then I could go on hormones. That's when I started a quest to keep my body from killing my thyroid.


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