My husband has been in hospital for 8 weeks suffering from Low Blood Pressure which means that he cannot stand upright for more than 2 minutes approx without fainting so I am taking the liberty to send out verbatim from Dr Le Fanu from the Daily Telegraph .
"Further to the health benefits of smoking mentioned in this column in December, a reader writes to tell how it inspired her mother to purchase a pack of nicotine patches for her father, whose Parkinson’s has markedly deteriorated over the past year- falling over more frequently & difficulties with his speech. “What a transformation” she writes. “Within a couple of weeks his balance & mobility improved. He is now chatting, and joining in conversations, and racing through piles of books he has not had the energy to read for a long time”
Has anyone on the forum had any experience of this? If so I would love to know.
Mrs CHRISH.
Smoking tobacco is known to decrease the chances of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (good research evidence) so I have sometimes wondered if nicotine patches might help. Interesting. My husband has never smoked & has PD as did his mother. Our son has recently started smoking again & I am less inclined to try to persuade him to stop now.
The same thoughts about nicotine have occurred to me. I was a light smoker for thirty years, but gave up twenty years ago when I was 47.
I considered taking up vaping. That would have the advantage over patches of getting the nicotine into the same places it gets if you smoke a cigarette. That might be important. But, I decided against it because of the inconvenience.
So I tried patches instead. I used the weakest patch I could buy. I think it was 10mg. I kept it up for about 8 months. I never noticed any effect on my symptoms. I stopped because I became concerned about the risk of skin cancer from wearing a patch every day.
I know that Researchers are looking into nicotine in relation to Parkinsons. I can’t remember their names but I contributed to their research.I wonder if there is any data on whether those with Parkinsons had smoked or not. Just a thought.