But recently a friend of mine started smoking roll-ups and I didn't feel ill at all.

It's very bizarre. There must be something they add to pre-rolled cigarettes that affect me, and presumably other amalgam sufferers too.


You have stumbled onto something there. I smoke only pure, additive free tobacco leaf and make my own cigarettes, the way it was meant to be done. It is a perceptible difference from the junk supermarket cigarettes (which are largely not made from real tobacco leaf but use instead reconstituted "tobacco" sheets i.e. a cheap colored and flavored tobacco scraps & wood pulp). There was an earlier thread which describes the health benefits of tobacco smoking (see all posts by "nightlight" there for a more complete story; tell your smoker friend as well, particlularly the post on "witch doctor effect"), especially for mercury sensitive people. In particular, tobacco smoking nearly doubles levels of glutathione in smokers (after few years of smoking, not instantly), which is the main internal antioxidant and metals detox enzyme in human body, vital in mercury detox. Smoking also more than doubles neutrophiles whose function is essential in controlling inflammations & yeast during mercury detox (neutrophiles are one of white blood cell types diminished as a side-effect of DMSA, leading occasionally to runaway yeast problems and gum infections during detox).

Tobacco smoke (not nicotine) also inhibts MAO enzymes in a fairly unique way, via still unknown biochemical pathways. MAO enzymes increase with age, especially in brain, where they cause oxidation and depletion of key neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, leading to mental decline and general loss of life energy. Hence, MAO levels are a like clock -- their rise is a measure of your aging and decline. Tobacco smoking rewinds back (lowers) MAO, to almost half the levels in non-smokers. It also rewinds back (raises) DHEA, testosterone to more youthful levels.

Pharmaceutical industry has recently found a MAO inhibitor, deprenyl (also under brand name selegiline), that mimicks the unique pattern of MAO inhibition induced by tobacco smoking and it is being used for smoking cessation (in combination with nicotine, which produces numerous but different beneficial effects). It turns out that deprenyl (selegiline) is the closest thing to youth elixir that pharmaceutical industry has ever stumbled onto and it has become all the rage in life-extension and smart-drug circles (in addition to being used to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other types of age related dementias for which smoking is also known to be therapeutic & protective against). Of course, deprenyl lacks numerous other rejuvenationg and neuro-protective mechanisms of tobacco smoke, including endocrine (testosterone, DHEA), antioxidant (glutathione), anti-inflammatory (neutrophil),... effects.

Curiously, the principal sponsor of antismoking "science" and of the "grass roots" antismoking organizations is none other than pharmaceutical industry (which also attacks all other natural or non-patented remedies, but none as viciously as tobacco, the oldest and the most potent traditional medicine of them all).