Health Benefits of Cigars - Cigar Tobacco Used As Medicine to Benefit Health

Two members of Columbus's crew, Luis de Torres and Rodrigo de Jerez, were the first Europeans to encounter tobacco smoking. Bartolome' de las Casas, a Spanish Dominican priest, wrote about this in his book ‘Historia de las Indias’ in 1527. The book was the personal journal of Christopher Columbus. "These two Christians met many people on the road, men and women, and the men always with a firebrand in their hands, and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, dry also, after the fashion of a musket made of paper, such as boys make on the feast of the Holy Ghost. These are lit at one end, and at the other they chew or suck and take in with their breath that smoke which dulls their flesh and as it were intoxicates and so they say that they do not feel weariness. Those muskets, or whatever we call them, they call tobacos."

Four species of tobacco have been important to the Indians of the Americas. Nicotiana rustica, which mentioned earlier in this article, is a hybrid species believed to have originated in the Andean highlands of Ecuador, Peru, or Bolivia, and arrived in North America possibly through Mexican and Caribbean routes. At the time of Columbus, this highly potent tobacco plant was already being cultivated all throughout South America and North America. The nicotine content of this species is the highest of all tobaccos. Nicotiana tabacum also a hybrid species and believed to have originated in the Bolivian Andes. It was widely cultivated pre-Columbus in eastern South America from Brazil northward and in Colombia, Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies. It was introduced to Virginia in the early 1600’s from the Spanish West Indies. Except for a few instances of ceremonial use, this species eventually replaced the older tobaccos used by Native Americans. It is not known whether it was Nicotiana tabacum or Nicotiana rustica which Columbus and his expedition first saw being used by the Indians.

Nicotiana tabacum is the main species of commercially grown tobacco today. Nicotiana quadrivalvis is a native species of the western North America. It grows wild from southern Oregon to southern California. It was also cultivated by Native North Americans. Lewis and Clark on their expedition up the Missouri River (1804-1805) found this tobacco being grown by the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa Indians of South Dakota and North Dakota. Nicotiana multivalvis is another native tobacco of western North America cultivated by Native Americans. It was an important ceremonial and ritual smoke plant. Its distribution extended from the Pacific coast eastward. Here is a short list of various historical uses of tobacco. Most of these uses were taught to Europeans by the indigenous peoples all around the world that cultivated and used tobacco. Analgesic to alleviate pain, to treat parasitic worms, anticonvulsive, diaphoretic, diuretic, poultice for boils and insect bites, as an emetic, for various dermatological conditions like rashes, to treat colic, for kidney problems, to treat apoplexy, snakebite, toothaches, dizziness, fainting, as an antidote against other type of poisonings, to curb insanity and it was even used to try to cure tuberculosis.

Nicotine is one of the most studied of all drugs. At the beginning of the century, the earliest research into neurotransmitters involved the effects of nicotine. The nicotinic receptor was the first neurotransmitter receptor to be identified. Nicotine mimics the actions of acetylcholine and has been shown to effect many other neurotransmitters. There has been considerable research into the role of nicotine receptors in the central nervous system in human cognitive functioning. The research has revealed an important connection to nicotine and increased brain function. Most medical researchers will not want us to know this obscure fact. Such an example of how tobacco might just help us is to look at Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer’s is characterized by a loss of cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain with an associated loss of nicotinic receptors. This group of cells is critical both for the regulation of cerebral blood flow and cognitive performance. Clinical studies have shown that intravenous administration of nicotine to non-smoking Alzheimer's patients produces significant improvements in long-term recall and attention span. With this type of positive medical research many companies are excited by the idea of using tobacco to produce pharmaceutical drugs.

This article was just a small bit of information about how tobacco has had a positive effect on our society. I am not saying that smoking a cigar is good for your health. What I am trying to say is that the tobacco plant has much more to offer us than just a cigar.