After 20 years of research, a group of scientists from State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a novel tea filter to treat cigarette addiction and have discovered the molecular mechanism behind the smoking cessation effect. They discovered that theanine is the active ingredient in the tea filter that inhibits nicotine addiction. They concluded that when a person smokes using the tea filter, the inhibitors of the nicotine receptor in the filter are absorbed through the respiratory system and travel to the brain where they exert cessation effects. The smoker gets progressively less dependent on nicotine in each smoking cycle, and eventually exits the cycle and quits smoking.

The researchers’ work, entitled “The Cessation and Detoxification Effect of Tea Filters on Cigarette Smoke”, was published in the X. edition Science of China in 2010. This research project was partially supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Department of Science and Technology of China.

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