289: Big Wellness’s Nicotine Gambit [feat Mallory DeMille]
In 1965, the US passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the reason every pack of cigarettes has a warning label informing you about the potentially harmful effects. Since then, numerous regulations, educational drives, and taxation initiatives have made smoking less appealing and harder to do.
In the contrarian wellness space, nicotine has become the alkaloid du jour. Forget cigs, this special chemical helps your energy, mood, and, at the far end of the influencer spectrum, treat cancer and autism—without that being medical advice, of course. And while nicotine has been shown to be potentially beneficial for a small range of issues, wellness influencers once again are sprinting the cart in front of the horse.
Mallory DeMille returns to break down the latest wellness buzz.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Have you ever wondered why we call French fries french fries or why something is the greatest thing since sliced bread?
There are answers to those questions.
Everything Everywhere Daily is a podcast for curious people who want to learn more about the world around them.
Every day, you'll learn something new about things you never knew you didn't know.
Subjects include history, science, geography, mathematics, and culture.
If you're a curious person and want to learn more about the world you live in, just subscribe to Everything Everywhere Daily wherever you cast your pod.
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
I'm Julian Walker.
And I'm Mallory DeMille.
You can find us on Instagram and threads at conspirituality pod.
You can find Mallory over there at this.is.mallory.
And we are all individually on Blue Sky, although Julian and Mallory don't really partake there.
Yeah.
But I'm there a lot and I see Matthew once in a while.
I'm not.
It's the best network.
I'm going to get you guys.
We're going to get over there, all of us.
You can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon at patreon.com/slash conspirituality, or you can just grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
Conspirituality 289, Big Wellness's Nicotine Gambit.
In 1965, the U.S. passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the reason every pack of cigarettes has a warning label informing you about the potentially harmful effects.
Since then, numerous regulations, educational drives, and taxation initiatives have made smoking less appealing and harder to do.
In the contrarian wellness space, nicotine has become the alkaloid du jour.
Forget SIGS.
This special chemical helps your energy, mood, and at the far end of the influencer spectrum, treats cancer and autism.
Without that being medical advice, of course.
And while nicotine has been shown to be potentially beneficial for a small range of issues, wellness influencers once again are sprinting the cart in front of the horse.
Mallory DeMille returns to break down the latest wellness buzz.
Hello, listeners.
I'm back.
And that's because wellness influencers have decided to add something to their morning routine in between the coffee enemas and parasite cleanses.
And at a time that is popularized by kicking bad habits, these influencers seem to be rolling the dice on adding a historically bad one back in.
This one simple trick could be pretty addicting, literally.
I've been experimenting with nicotine for the last three months, and before I lose you as a follower, hear me out.
So, nicotine is a naturally occurring substance that is found in red tomatoes and eggplants and food that we eat.
This is not tobacco.
This is nicotine that is also in cigarettes, but nicotine is a naturally occurring substance that has a ton of health benefits.
What I would love to do is send you the podcast that I listen to and the brand that I found that has a low dose.
So it starts off at a 1.5 milligram dose, which is very low.
It's an oral pouch you put in your mouth.
They do direct to consumer, which means you can buy the flavors no matter whatever state you're in.
And I want to hear what your feedback is after you listen to this podcast from a doctor.
So in the podcast, he shares the historical medicinal use of nicotine, how it's being used to treat dementia, Alzheimer's, chronic illness.
He talks about the study that was done during COVID for people who were either using nicotine pouches or smoking cigarettes and how COVID did not affect them.
He also talks about Big Pharma and how Big Pharma is trying to get rid of nicotine because of all the health benefits.
It's really, really fascinating and I just want to invite you guys to learn more and make an informed decision.
My personal experience with it has been great.
I have not been sick over the last three months.
I feel like my inflammation is down, my brain fog is down.
My immune system seems stronger.
And in the afternoon, if I were to have an energy dip, instead of drinking another coffee and getting more calories, I put an oral pouch in at a 1.5 milligram dose and it gets me through the afternoon.
So if you comment the word nicotine, I will not only send you the podcast, but I'll send you the brand that I found that is clean, has a low dose, is direct to consumer for flavors, and then just let me know what your thoughts are.
I don't realize until I'm listening to just the audio that they're always like filming in a car or super close to a highway for some reason.
And those edits were not mine, by the way, when I was cropping the audio.
That is her stopping and starting all the time with the car traffic happening.
It's something.
Also, she's making a lot of mistakes and do-overs too, because the audio of the traffic is actually changing wildly between the cuts, right?
So she's piecing it together.
But to the bigger point here, nicotine.
When I first saw nicotine being touted as a wellness hack, I must have assumed it was satire.
And like, I'm someone who like dabbles in satire, you know, my own stuff, but I misread that completely and I scrolled right by.
Then I saw it again and knew I'd probably have to talk about it at some point.
And so here we are.
From COVID and spike proteins to menopause to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, nicotine pouches and patches have fast become the new darling for what ails you.
You see, it's not the nicotine that's addicting, it's actually everything else in the cigarette that is.
And the government has been suppressing the health benefits of nicotine because, of course they would.
But Mallory, it's a naturally occurring substance.
I mean, game over, also she has a doctor on to talk, but I guess Big Pharma still wants to make it seem bad, right?
Yeah, we'll get to the doctor in a second, but when you're a wellness contrarian, you kind of end up having to oppose all health and safety information and guidelines put out by the government.
Though with the current administration in America, that seems to be changing maybe.
And so here we are.
Folks risking a nicotine addiction because they heard about it on a podcast.
I also can't help but laugh at all those promoting it being like, I put the patch on and I felt great.
And I'm like, yeah, I bet you do.
So where did this nicotine is actually healthy obsession actually come from?
Well, there's one chiropractor, if you can believe it, that seems to be the root cause of most, if not all of these claims.
The woman clipped at the top of this episode who said she would send you the podcast episode with a doctor.
She was, of course, talking about this chiropractor.
Nicotine is a published cure for Parkinson's disease, MS, Alzheimer's, ulcerative colitis, all arthritises, all of them.
Psoriatic, gout, osteo, rheumatoid.
Did you know it's also a published cure?
I already mentioned it, myocarditis.
Did you know that during 2021, while we were all locked down at home during COVID-19, that our government in the United States was paying researchers to investigate two of the 36 poisons that were found in all COVID patients, and they injected them into mammals and created within 72 hours, glioblastoma tumors.
And then they were paid by our government to see if they could reverse glioblastoma tumor formation that they created in three days or less.
And do you know what they dissolved within 72 hours glioblastoma tumors with?
Nicotine.
Nicotine.
Brian Artis is, as you flagged, Mallory, a chiropractor and alternative medicine promoter who, like so many that we cover on this podcast, hit it big with his COVID-19 contrarianism.
He previously operated functional medicine practices in Tennessee and Texas and says he specializes in autoimmune disorders, which is totally something chiropractic school qualifies you for.
Crack, crack.
As you said in a recent video on your Instagram, Mallory, not all chiropractors, but always a chiropractor.
Artis is also an author.
In 2024, he published a book called Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Lies, Restoring Health and Hope for Humanity.
And obviously, it relies on a strong anti-establishment narrative.
He claims to expose the truth about COVID-19 vaccines and the dangerous drugs promoted by official health agencies.
It's very deep state coded.
There's a long-standing global conspiracy by government and pharmaceutical organizations to harm the public for profit that predates COVID, but was ramped up once the pandemic started.
That's basically the water he's swimming in in the book.
COVID-19 was really a plan to control the populace.
And surprise, he offers alternative solutions for combating the virus.
So evidence for this global conspiracy?
Nah, nah, that just gets in the way of a good story, but you can be certain that Anthony Fauci is part of it.
And the writing is truly Pulitzer prize-ready material.
Julian, can you read this excerpt from the deeply investigative journalism from chapter one, please?
I'd be happy to.
So again, I pose the question: did a pangolin, bat, or lifeless sea creature at a market cough into the air only for a single human being or a group of people in Wuhan, China to inhale the same air, obviously within a six-foot radius, into their lungs?
Then those same humans coughed on other humans who coughed on the rest of the world and created a global pandemic.
Ironically, the coughing bat or pangolin, whatever that is, also know that just a few months after they coughed on those people in China, the next calendar year, 2020, was a presidential election year in the United States.
Or was that just a coincidence too?
Oh, I don't trust pangolins, especially not the coughing ones.
I know, listeners, you want to hear more of this, but let's skip ahead to chapter 15, which is titled Gifts for Healing.
And Artis promises it's not just for long COVID sufferers of the vaccine injured, because obviously vaccines are in this book too.
He assures us that these gifts are not only for people afraid of being shed on from the vaccinated, nor is it for people who have been bitten by a snake.
Artis devotes a whole chapter to comparing COVID-19 to snake venom with obvious healing remedies for that too.
Yet another amazing thing that you learn in chiropractic school.
Yeah, I want to just interject here, everyone, to say that Brian Artis was on stage at that conscious expo that I reported, Conscious Life Expo I reported from back in March for episode 196, where I got to take that photograph with Del Bigtree and I got to sit and listen to Sasha, what the hell is his name?
Stone.
Yeah, my Zimbabwean countryman, Sasha Stone.
But this guy, Brian Artis, he took over the panel discussion with all of this stuff that was, you know, COVID is deliberately manufactured.
It used a combination of snake venom and other poisonous substances excreted by deep sea creatures.
It was my first time hearing anyone in wellness touting nicotine so passionately.
And so I just kind of sat there with my jaw on the floor recording.
196.
So that was probably March 2023 that you saw him, right?
You know, I looked back at the episode and I couldn't believe that it would, that it was 2025.
So yeah, you're probably right.
I must have just.
Yeah.
But he was, he was touting nicotine then.
So he's been on this for a long time.
Yeah.
And all of this like weird snake venom creatures from the bottom of the sea kind of real incredible confabulation.
And back then, he wasn't clear on what a pangolin was either.
That's still a blank for him.
That's the one thing that they missed in chiropractic school is pangolin.
In his book, Artist Breaks Down the Body's Healing Process, which he qualifies by repeating that he believes in miracles.
He then suggests you get a troponin test.
The heart muscle releases troponin after a cardiac event, like a heart attack, making it a key biomarker for diagnosting heart injury.
So, you know, if you've been shed on by a vaccinated person, you want to know if it broke your heart.
Now, if you do have elevated troponin, time to take a whole bunch of supplements, including his foreign protein cleanse, which he claims detoxes spike proteins.
His big pitch for elevated troponin, however.
Nicotine patches, seven milligram patch, wear new patch daily.
To confidently know how best to use nicotine agents like gum and patches, I recommend that you go to the patient resources section of thedrartistshow.com and download my free document titled nicotine.pdf.
It covers how to use various nicotine agents in various health scenarios.
Daily, I wear a three milligram nicotine patch that I cut and will wear for life because of the many advantageous health reasons.
You can read and watch my three-hour presentation and download my free PowerPoint presentation on the many health benefits of nicotine at www.theartistshow.com.
I love downloading PowerPoint presentations.
If I have one hobby, that's what I look for.
Now, Artis isn't just talking about troponin.
He claims nicotine patches and supplements are miracle treatments for COVID-19, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, hypothyroidism, even aggressive cancers such as, as you heard before, glioblastoma.
Nicotine is not inherently addictive, he says.
The supposed dangers stem from other chemicals added to tobacco products, especially pyrazines.
And it's really pharmaceutical and government interests that have intentionally concealed nicotine's benefits for profit.
There's just a few problems with those claims.
People who actually know what they're talking about, those dreaded experts, realize that nicotine is scientifically recognized as an addictive substance itself.
The only FDA approved use for nicotine patches is for smoking cessation.
Artists' claim that nicotine cures or prevents those aforementioned diseases is not supported by any clinical evidence.
And some findings suggest nicotine may even promote cancer cell growth.
Finally, the notion that nicotine is not addictive, but pyrazines are conflicts with decades of addiction research.
Okay, all that said, I want to make sure we don't only paint nicotine in a completely bad light.
Here's an example of why nuance matters and that nicotine is in fact being tested for a variety of potential uses.
I'm going to play a quick clip here from a 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation into Zin.
And the voice you'll hear second is Ray Nayora, who is a professor of global public health at NYU.
According to the FDA, nicotine is addictive, but by itself, it doesn't cause cancer or lung disease.
Don't really you know 100 know what the long-term effects of nicotine use are.
However, we do have some pretty good indications from evidence that comes from other parts of the world.
So, for example, the country of Sweden is famous for using a product called Swedish snus.
Snus is a moist pasteurized, smokeless oral tobacco product which is placed under the lip to deliver nicotine through the gums.
It's been used by consumers in Sweden since the 1970s.
And this is a product that's in some ways similar to Zin.
It's actually the precursor to Zin, and it's known to be much less toxic compared to other oral tobacco products.
Since snus pouches were first introduced in Sweden in 1973, smoking rates have fallen considerably.
Sweden now has the lowest smoking rate of all of the European Union countries.
They also now have the lowest rates of smoking-related cancer.
So that tells me that people who use clean nicotine products are much less likely to develop serious diseases that we know are related to smoking.
Two quick things here.
It's much better for you than smoking.
Doesn't really translate to it being the ultimate wellness hack.
And this is going to be the first time that a lot of these Maha and MAGA affiliated people are wanting to emulate Sweden, those terrible democratic socialist communists on anything, right?
So as usual, what we see wellness influencers doing and what Mallory is about to get into in the next segment is taking a little bit of science and running ahead, which is not how science actually works.
miss clark is incredibly dangerous especially with this new nicotine episode And I'm going to tell you why.
It is because every single time I listen to an episode of hers of Culture Apothecary, I end up buying stuff.
I end up buying everything.
I end up buying it all.
I have, I have, I realized I had a collection for me.
This is from the Paul Saladino episode.
I bought the skincare.
I bought more skincare.
I bought the red light machine.
And now with this nicotine episode, I bought patches and I'm going to be trying them.
So that's why Alex Clark is dangerous because I spend all of my money on everything she says to buy.
So thanks, Alex.
I love your show, by the way.
It's amazing.
I will keep you guys posted on how my journey with this goes.
With this, she's shaking the nicotine pouches.
Alex Clark is the host of the Culture Apothecary podcast, which has the mandate of, quote, healing a sick culture.
Its parent company is Turning Point USA.
Wow.
And its existence and recent-ish rebrand seem to be entirely rooted in promoting RFK Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement.
I talked about Alex in my Maha Mama's episode almost this time last year.
She and her podcast clearly had a huge influence on how some folks decided to vote in the 2024 American election.
And since then, she has continued to exercise her influence beyond the predictable consumerism of it all.
Yeah, talk about parasocial influence.
I mean, Mallory, that clip is wild because the poster is straight up saying Alex is dangerous and I buy everything she tells me to, but it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, even though it's actually true.
I know when I first saw it, Shin, she said Alex Clark was dangerous, and I know who Alex Clark is.
I'm like, yeah.
And then she's like, I bought the Palo Saladino supplements.
I was like, oh no.
The Culture Apothecary episode that influenced that woman clip to try nicotine patches was released this May and is titled Nicotine is Not the Villain, What Big Pharma Hides from Parents.
Dr. Brian Ardis, DC, of course, the DC standing for Doctor of Chiropractic.
Like I said, most of these claims come back to this particular chiropractor.
The show notes for that episode read, we're diving into one of the most misunderstood substances out there, nicotine.
It might actually hold powerful healing potential from neurological conditions to chronic pain and beyond.
Dr. Artis unpacks the history, the science, and the cover-ups, exposing the cracks in a system that's kept real remedies in the shadows.
If you keep reading after the five discount codes for supplements, seed oil-free tortilla chips, and all-natural makeup, you will see next to a star emoji, the top tip, which reads, wear a seven milligram nicotine patch daily.
Oh my God, isn't this always the way?
The list of diversified affiliate marketing and wellness tips, it's like a life-changing product and hack for every aspect of your lifestyle.
Yeah, I just love the idea of, you know, whatever floats your boat, slap that nicotine patch on before or after your non-toxic makeup routine.
Totally.
I really can't think of a better example, like you said, Julian, than this to talk about parasocial relationships in the wellness influencer space specifically and what that can mean for your health.
It's clear that Alex Clark's job is to influence you to buy what she's advertising.
There are discount codes, galore, in her show notes, and on her Instagram.
This is, of course, how being an influencer works.
And she will also make space in each episode to promote what her guests have to sell.
But when your show really only has contrarian health and wellness guests and the topics of discussion are really only controversial health claim after controversial health claim, where is the line drawn of when your listeners should be influenced by what you're saying or you would like them to be influenced by what you're saying?
And maybe they shouldn't be influenced by what you're sharing.
Because as that listener said in that clip, she was influenced by listening to Culture Apothecary to start wearing nicotine patches.
And she's not the only one.
There are comments on Alex's Instagram suggesting the same from others.
What's interesting is that Alex shared that this listener's TikTok to her Instagram stories.
So she's fully aware that folks are taking medical advice from her show.
Even though if you were to ask her, hey, is this medical advice?
She'd probably legally say no.
The power of parasocial relationships in someone taking controversial health advice from podcasters who they've never met, who don't know who they are, and who don't know anything about their health.
And in my opinion, podcasters who actually don't care about your health.
Alex herself has stated point blank that she doesn't fact check her guests because guys, she doesn't have the time.
Ultimately, this is an example of an adult woman who was influenced to buy everything Alex has to sell, including the belief that nicotine patches are a suppressed health hack.
But if you've been listening to this podcast long enough or followed me for any length of time, you know that these contrarian wellness tips rarely end up being recommended for just adults.
Mallory, I just want to pick up on this aspect of the person that we just clipped talking about how they've bought everything from Alex's site.
There seems to be, it's like the customer wants some sort of completeness in their parasocial relationship.
And it almost makes me think that they're talking about assembling, I don't know, like a look, a look.
Like an Avengers cast of health products.
Well, there's that.
There's that.
But a look with accessories.
And do you think that Alex does this sort of thing where it's like, you know, if you have all of these things together, you've got an ensemble and you're all set.
Is that the feeling?
I mean, like, there's a range, like I said, in how Alex promotes products or beliefs that could lead to products.
Like she obviously has products that she has a partnership with that she, there's like a financial obligation or a contractual obligation that she talk about and promote certain products.
But then this episode was more about having this controversial guest on.
And there wasn't a specific pouch or patch nicotine company.
It was just this belief that nicotine is some sort of health hack.
And so I think it really runs the range, like I said, of places where she would like for you to be influenced by her and parts where she's maybe a bit neutral or doesn't care because there is no kickback for her in any way.
As long as you listen to the episode, I guess, then that's all she really cares about.
But like I said, she point blank doesn't fact check because she doesn't have time.
And like many of these other podcast hosts or wellness influencers, she will say, you need to do your own research.
I'm only having on the most contrarian cliffbait guests.
And then you need to do your own research.
But like, I don't think she really cares if you take it all because even sometimes her guests contradict each other.
So I don't think she really cares.
Yeah.
I reviewed a lot of videos for this episode, not even so much on the wellness side because you took care of all that work, Mallory.
I was watching some by Andrew Huberman on this topic as he is someone who uses Zen and tries to balance out his skepticism around it with his usual grifting of selling something.
There's Peter Atia, our old friend, the carnivore MD himself, Paul Saladino, who I will live, I'll own up to this.
He made some decent points about nicotine patches being not that great before he swerved into his usual pseudo-scientific lane.
Most of the videos brought up how nicotine pouches have become part of a culture war.
We've covered RFK Jr. popping Zen pouches during a congressional hearing just a couple of weeks ago.
Kennedy said that nicotine pouches are the safest way to consume nicotine, which all public health officials dispute.
Yeah.
And, you know, Derek, the last time we discussed this on the air, I dug into how having a Zin pouch tucked into your mouth has also become a kind of cultural signifier for conservative masculinity.
Like now here in America, it codes for being a gym bro who's also focused and working hard and optimizing health in this edgy way that liberal cucks would be too wimpy to try.
And it's also huge on TikTok with what journalist Max Reid calls Zinfluencers.
And then there's that classic quote I dug up from State Freedom Caucus comms director Greg Price, who says, a man with nicotine, caffeine, protein, and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force.
You know, the funny thing is, I'm not sure that they're aware that they're transing themselves here, though, because after your piece, Julian, we got a very helpful email from listener Ilva Soderfeld, who's a historian of medicine at Uppsala University in Sweden.
And quote, a heavy user of nicotine pouches myself.
In the 70s, the pouches were introduced and made it less messy to use, but the loose kind is still available today.
The popularity boomed and social connotations massively changed when the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants was introduced in the early 2000s.
I'm in my 40s.
And when I was a teenager, it was still considered scandalous for a woman to use snooze, but this very rapidly shifted and the association with working class men all but disappeared.
Products like Zin that don't contain tobacco but nicotine-infused fibers Came around 10 years ago.
The funny thing is, they are often more feminine-coated, often called girl snooze.
This might be because of the sweetness and flavoring, and the fact that they don't discolor the teeth or generate brown spit the way that real snooze does.
So, that was really helpful.
Maybe Erica Kirk can get in on this in a few years' time, right?
Exactly, yeah.
Well, they're they're, yeah, I think I don't, I think they would, I think her teeth would be fine with because the pouches are very white and gleaming, and uh, they look like they clean.
Yeah, well, a moment ago, I mentioned the culture wars, but the reality is the most hype that you hear about nicotine is coming from the right, which brings us to Tucker Carlson, who was featured in a Forbes puff piece that was basically a marketing vehicle for his own brand of nicotine pouches called Alp.
He did it to compete against Zinn, which he previously consumed.
When he was talking about it on air, Carlson was contacted by Zinn's owner, Philip Morris International, who asked him to stop promoting their pouches because he was spreading misinformation about nicotine's health effects.
Carlson said it cured erectile dysfunction on Theo Vaughan's podcast.
This is like a corkboard here of everything going on, but yeah, Carlson later claimed that this was a joke.
And if you watch it, he does seem to be joking about it.
But Philip Morris contacts influencers regularly, asking them to not talk about their product, which isn't so much an act of benevolence as much as what a few regulations the U.S. government still enforces.
And Philip Morris does not want the grief from the FDA.
Doubtful he'll get it right now, considering Kennedy is a fan of Zinn.
But Carlson decided to make a non-political pouch that still seems pretty political to me.
And I just want to be clear: I'm not making a political pitch on behalf of Alp.
I'm not saying if you vote for this candidate, this is the product for you.
I'm saying if you don't want politics in your mouth in the first place, you don't want to lecture from somebody in the HR department.
You don't want to buy a product that's like super connect some political party, either one.
In the case of Zen, it's the Democratic Party, but it could be the Republican Party.
I'm not into it.
I just, how about a non-political nicotine pouch?
And you can consume that with your non-political beer and then get your non-political car and drive to your non-political house and just like live a normal life and like laugh at boner jokes once in a while.
It's okay.
That's what I want.
I find it exceptionally rich that a man who's built his career in partisan politics is pretending to want non-partisan anything.
Plus, he's boosted some of the worst pseudoscience grifters and is partly responsible for getting RFK Jr. to go MAGA along with Callie Means, who he let spread so much misinformation on his podcast about a year and a half ago.
Isn't the real sort of cure for erectile dysfunction for Tucker Carlson not getting attacked by demon wolves in his sleep though?
Like when that, when that stops, isn't don't things just come back to normal?
I don't know.
Yeah, totally.
And this is, I have to say, one of my favorite of Tucker's multiple personalities.
Like he's just a sincere, like his voice goes up a little bit, right?
He's just a sincere normal guy.
He wants to laugh at boner jokes and he wants to not be forced by liberals to make everything political.
Meanwhile, one of the reasons he turned against Zin is that apparently they endorsed Kamala in the last election.
And he says you can have it with your non non-political beer as if like that whole thing with the shooting of whole cases of beers didn't happen because of the trans influencer that was used in a commercial, right?
This morning, Mallory, we're recording on Tuesday, you posted something by Paul Saladino, who we mentioned a moment ago.
And I've noticed this is a trend in Maha.
And he's basically saying health is not political.
Airport gyms are good.
They're for the everyman.
Like, let's not make this political.
And he even said something, what, to the effect of like children are bipartisan.
Yeah, he said, no, he said, there is no such thing as Democratic or Republican children.
And then he went on to talk about access to certain things, but it was all prompted by this idea of putting gyms in airports.
I posted it to threads and somebody responded as probably my favorite response.
Do they think chronically ill kids are frequent flyers?
And I'm just, yeah, it's bananas.
Right, because I've made the point before that how few Americans even have passports.
And some people have replied, being like, yeah, a lot of us can't travel.
We can't afford to.
So, which is a fair point.
And so, for Saladino to say that, to not address the fact that as of Thursday, the day we're releasing this, the U.S. is no longer cooperating with the WHO, the World Health Organization, talking about access, international access, which Saladino was saying, considering that millions of Americans are either losing health insurance or paying ridiculously more starting this week.
Those are access issues.
A fucking pull-up bars in an airport is not.
And we're seeing this with the nicotine, where, you know, Tucker's basically saying you don't need to be left, right, or center to consume them, which is true, but that's not what this is about.
Right now, one party has latched onto health misinformation more than the other.
Nicotine, like beef and cars, is an inherently political symbol due to its relationship with tobacco.
And the main marketing vehicle for that product was for generations, a cowboy.
As you mentioned, Mallory, the artist clip that we ran is from Alex Clark's show.
As you mentioned, she's on TPUSA.
She also recently spoke at the Turning Point Amfest 2025 conference that Julian and I covered this past weekend for our brief.
She opens her speech by saying that she's the top health and wellness podcaster from a conservative angle, which is just bullshit.
The Maha movement isn't a conservative movement.
It's an activist one.
Their activism just happens to align with pro-capitalist deregulatory agenda that Heritage Foundation baked into Project 2025, which wants to see as few regulations as possible and as many healthcare services be thrust into the private market.
Maha is just a Trojan horse for that agenda.
And you can plainly see it when they market products as being indicative of individual liberty, which is very much the nicotine message that Tucker was promoted.
And then on the flip side, they all have products to sell.
Carlson has cleaner nicotine.
Clark, the dozens of products she shills after hosting anti-vaxxers, anti-seed oil stands, and of course, pro-nicotine influencers.
Because no matter what they're trying to say, I mean, look at it this way: they are in power right now, meaning the right, meaning Maha, meaning Kennedy, but they're not actually accomplishing anything for actual public health or for people who need it the most.
So they have to do marketing like this.
Health is always going to be political.
We can separate nicotine, the potential therapeutic effects that have a track record of helping people with smoking cessations from the sorts of bullshit health claims and symbols of personal freedom that MAGA and Maha represent.
I just don't think they can do it.
I have never felt so much clarity in my life.
Mental clarity, mental sharpness.
I do not feel any type of dependency.
I cycle these.
I don't use them every single day.
But when I do use them, like I said, I use a very low dose and I wear them during the day.
I don't even wear them at night.
And I personally notice such a difference, not only in mental clarity, but even in like my joints as well.
I wouldn't say I have joint issues, but I definitely have like a knee that gives me problems when I work out.
I have not had any issues since.
You know, we heard from, I think the first clip that we listened to, Mallory, that I think the woman said something like, you know, if I feel low in the afternoon, it sort of gets me through the rest of the day.
I mean, people, they're talking about having a buzz.
And, you know, what I find is that there's always this contradiction playing out in Maha over pleasure versus taboo.
Like their enemies are the nerdy hall monitor killjoy real scientists.
And then on their team, they have the free, liberated, and pleasure-seeking optimization bros who know how to break all the rules.
They know how to transgress or disrupt norms and systems.
They are hackers, right?
And for them, the result of breaking rules is fitness and vitality and freedom.
But that's all, of course, tied up with the exhilaration of saying fuck you to, you know, slobs like Peter Hotez and his stupid little bow tie.
There was a really interesting word she used in there too, which is that she cycles them.
And I've only ever heard bodybuilders who take performance enhancing drugs talking about cycling on and off of different substances that give them an edge, right?
I thought that was really interesting.
I've never heard that from a wellness person.
Yeah, what I hear going on here is that if nicotine becomes a kind of vitality enhancer, they are taking something taboo and they're making it into a virtue.
And this is happening in many different sort of zones with various levels of ick involved.
Like we see it happen with raw milk.
We see it happen with urine therapy.
We see it with RFK swimming in shitty water.
And he himself, he's like the embodiment of all of it because he's the, you know, probably not recovered addict who breaks every moral and hygiene and epistemological rule in pursuit of something that he presents as being common sense, but actually he is also performing as a common sense.
I was trying to cutting it in half, the seven milligrams, and then cutting that little piece in four and then starting with that dose.
But yes, children could do it also.
However, we know that children have less possibility of being affected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, right?
So this is my thought and others.
It's not really been shown clinically or studied.
So maybe they should get tested.
We have several patients who are, I guess they're still kids.
They're, you know, 18, 20 year olds, and they have a high level of spike protein and they're very symptomatic.
And the nicotine patch has helped them significantly.
Listeners, you just heard from Carly Shankman, a wellness influencer who I actually covered in a previous episode this year about Kangen water and cancer claims.
She's interviewing Dr. Tony Jimenez, who is the founder of Hope for Cancer, an integrative cancer clinic in Mexico.
The episode is titled A Root Cause Approach to Cancer.
But near the end, they drift into a COVID and vaccine conversation that sparks a bit of a nicotine interlude.
The conversation mostly focuses on COVID and nicotine's alleged ability to dislodge and detox spike proteins.
Oh my God, it's so meta.
It's the cure not only for the illnesses, but also for the actual medicines that treat and prevent the illnesses.
This is genius.
And then also, I have to say, hearing the clip, that whole thing about cutting up the patches to get kids started young is wild to me because I just kept feeling like I was hearing a drug dealer.
So spike proteins are like another version of turbo cancer.
It's not a thing.
Well, turbo cancer actually isn't a thing.
That's completely invented.
Spike proteins, if you don't have COVID-19, if you don't have influenza, you don't have spike proteins in your body unless you have something like HIV, which then they will circulate.
But the general person does not have spike proteins floating around in their fucking bodies.
Well, I'd love to hear you debate Carly on that because she thinks otherwise.
Dr. Tony does recommend a specific brand of nicotine patches.
And while Carly says she'll link it, it doesn't appear to be in the show notes.
So I looked it up.
And the brand that he recommends does describe itself on the front of the box as a stop smoking aid.
So why the fuck is he recommending it for children?
I also found it funny that in the Facebook post promoting the episode where the audio has actually since been muted, the caption describes these brands as clean versions, no chemical additives, which guys, they're talking about nicotine.
So while Dr. Tony's nicotine for kids mention focused on elements of COVID, you can bet there are nicotine for kids claims that go far beyond that.
Chiropractor Brian Artis.
Yes, we're going to talk about him again because like I said, he really seems to be the root cause of all of this.
He has claimed that nicotine can be used in some fashion to treat autism and separately has also claimed he'd be perfectly comfortable putting a nicotine patch on a kid.
So I'm about to teach something else you may not know.
Sure, I'm open.
So I just mentioned a whole bunch of medical conditions that are improved with nicotine or prevented or cured and published to do so.
Did you know that autism traits?
Yeah.
They've already investigated nicotine patches between the shoulder blades of all children and adults and within seven days they see improvements in all their symptoms.
This past August in the Autism Awareness for Parents and Family Support Facebook group, a member posted, hi, I have a 10-year-old daughter with a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and learning disorder.
Lately, especially since school has started, she has been eloping, self-harming, been aggressive.
She also has been very fixated on me and not wanting anyone near me.
Her moods go from okay to extremely bad quickly and often without warnings.
A friend recommended nicotine patches and that they helped her autistic grandson.
Has anyone else heard of this?
Any insight?
As a parent of an autistic kid, I want to pick out a couple of things here.
The commenter says, especially since school has started and then very fixated on me and not wanting anyone near me.
Now, to my eye, if I can just play the whisperer a little bit, this is the description of a kid who doesn't feel socially safe.
There might be sensory issues, social cue overwhelm, a general and persistent feeling that tolerating what might seem like a normal environment or an environment you assume the kid could adapt to is just too much.
And, you know, the autistic kid might be doing something called masking or making their best guess as to how to orient their bodies and affects and facial expressions and speech in socially acceptable ways.
And that can be exhausting beyond belief.
And from what I've seen in the literature and the communities we look to for support, the depression and anxiety and learning challenges are often seen as downstream effects from that social and sensory stress.
So the hopeful part about this comment, and this is why I find it so tragic that it shows up in this dialogue and then the person gets, you know, it's a discourse about nicotine patches, is that the kid is glued to the parent.
And to me, this suggests that the kid knows where they will find relief, at least now.
And the kicker is that the parent is also indicating that that's part of the problem.
And it can be a problem based on the expectations we have for kids having to attend school so that parents can work.
Like it could be that this parent can't even consider the financial burden of staying home.
Now, and we're quoting this to see how folks respond to the nicotine question, but this parent, I think, could be asking about anything that we cover on this podcast, hydrotherapy, essential oils, cupping, because they're looking for anything to resolve a contradiction.
The kid needs them, at least for now, as their safe person.
And the parent probably doesn't live in a society in which they can go to someone and say, I need to stay home now and care for this dependent.
And I'd like to apply for that caregiving income supplement.
Because, I mean, the culture knows enough about autism to diagnose, but at this point, but not enough about how to accommodate what autism means for and demands of kids and their families.
So it's just really shitty that this parent is reaching out for wellness grift advice.
I do have to note that if the primary motivation is to get the kid back to school so that the household can return to normal, that that impulse is going to be parallel to the common pediatric priority of getting kids back to school.
And so, you know, here's this panicked comment coming in.
And I think a lot of these comments from the parents of autistic kids really are rooted in this time and economic pressure issue of considering staying home.
And the irony is, is that any touted miracle fix or like a patch that this person's going to get advised on might just displace this deeper need for personal care and then kick the stress can down the road.
And that's super weird because this is a movement that is always talking about, you know, root causes and getting down to the foundations and really building, you know, health from the bottom up.
And, you know, now we're going to be talking about nicotine patches for something as complex as autism.
Yes.
And on that post, just to talk about the comments that were left, while there were comments of support and folks encouraging her to actually just talk to a doctor, there were also comments like this.
Yes, I have heard about it from Dr. Brian Artis.
Related nicotine patch placed between shoulder blades on autistic children for seven days all showed improvement.
I don't know the dose yet, but I follow Dr. Artis and have his book.
Nicotine is not addictive.
No worry there.
It is the additive pyrazines that make tobacco products addictive.
Listen to Dr. Artis podcast to learn more about this miracle substance.
That sounds like it was written by Dr. Artis's AI bot.
Also, just to play off what wellness influencers always like to say, autism is not a nicotine deficiency.
Derek, you're just playing in their game now.
Totally.
There's also this comment.
And I might edit it just to make it readable.
Doctors do not have the answers.
In fact, all they want to do is sell drugs, drugs with serious side effects, and the cycle goes on and on.
Diet is very important.
Kindness and love is everything.
Nicotine patches have great reviews.
You know, it's almost there, right?
Like that middle part, kindness and love is everything, but also get the nicotine patches.
But then they went into nicotine territory.
Yeah.
So a more dissenting comment read, nicotine patches, question mark, exclamation mark.
That's what happens when you listen to grandma.
She'll get you felony charges.
Ask your pediatrician, which whether the commenter realized it or not is actually already a heartbreakingly true story.
El Paso County grandmother who tried to use nicotine patches to cure her grandson's autism.
Looks like she will avoid jail time after making a plea agreement.
Tammy Eddings Dion was arrested in April after police, deputies, I should say, say she put multiple nicotine patches on her four-year-old grandson to try and cure his autism.
Those patches made him sick, sending him to the hospital and triggering an investigation into possible child abuse.
Eddings Dion pleaded guilty to those charges.
She is now sentenced to three years probation and 40 hours of community service.
Now I feel terrible that I was laughing at that last comment.
This is awful.
And it underlines the understandable, dangerous logic that can emerge from medical misinformation.
I mean, if it's a seven-day cure, perhaps she thought increasing the dose would fix the autism in a shorter amount of time.
Who's to say?
And who's to say where she even got that information?
But my apologies once again for ending this on the shittiest note.
I just want to be sure I'm still invited back next year.