People have long turned to smoking to help curb weight. I know: I was one of them. I didn't know it was the nicotine that did the trick, I just knew I ate less when I smoked. The scientific community now understands how nicotine does this. The discovery may open the flood gates to successful new weight-loss drugs in the future.
Science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) published Friday the results of research into the mechanism of nicotine in the brain, written by Yann S. Mineur, et al.
NPR reports that the insight into the effect of nicotine on appetite happened by accident. Mineur was performing a research study on chemicals for the treatment of depression, part of which was to give mice a chemical similar to nicotine. Mineur noted that the mice who were receiving the nicotine-like chemical ate less than the mice who were not receiving it. Mineur shared this observation with other scientists and the quest was on to determine how nicotine affected appetite.
Nicotine's Appetite Suppressant Effect Now Understood - Yahoo! News
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