How does nicotine work?
- Nov 21, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2020
Why is it important to know? As per the Centers for Disease, Control and Prevention (CDC) report, in the list of leading causes for disability, preventable disease and even death, tobacco use is on the top of the list in the United States.
There is a habit of smoking cigarettes in about 40 million U.S. adults. Moreover, approximately 4.7 million high school and middle students have been using at least one tobacco product. It also includes e-cigarettes.
The shocking numbers of approximately 1,600 youth younger than 18 years in the U.S. daily smoke their first cigarette. Premature deaths of about half a million population have also been recorded prematurely of smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. Except for these deaths, there are 16 million living with a serious illness caused by smoking. There is almost an expense of nearly $170 billion each year in the United States on medical care to treat smoking-related diseases in adults.
What happened to Anna?
It was very difficult for Anna to quit smoking. She was so addicted that she smoked morning, noon and night. Anna smoked for whatever reason there was to light up a cigarette. She even smoked the day of her surgery, right up to the front door of the hospital. Anna remembers her surgeon wheeling her in and he said, "Miss Anna, you have smoked your last cigarette. She didn't know how he knew she had smoked.
Anna got out of the hospital, she went home and the automatic thing to do was to go find a cigarette and try to light it up. When she did, she immediately saw herself in the mirror and realized what she was doing? She doesn't want anyone else to go through what she has been going through because of her addiction to tobacco and cigarettes and that's what keeps her going.
Keeping into consideration the above stats and the story of Anna, it is imperative to know the working of nicotine.
Overview
It is very interesting to know about the state of our brain while smoking. There are two chemicals you can call one as nice and the other one as not so nice. The process starts with the first puff. It races into the lungs then travelling from here, it enters the blood and finally it reaches the brain in no time.
There are many cells involved in the making of the brain namely “neurons”. The nicotine affects pathways in the brain called the reward pathway. The longer you smoke, the more and more receptors are created. And each one is craving its nicotine fix. Over time the body learns that it needs nicotine to feel good but it can never get enough. That's why it's so hard to quit. With no nicotine to bind to nicotine receptors, the reward pathway is not stimulated anymore; this means there is less dopamine. With less dopamine, people get withdrawal symptoms.
The good news is that these changes in the brain start returning to normal the longer you go without a cigarette. Getting past the first stage of withdrawal when you quit can be hard with lots of empty nicotine receptors screaming out for their fix. But luckily over time there are fewer and fewer nicotine receptor as your brain goes back to the way it was before you smoked. If you need help kicking the habit you can visit here:
You can also know addiction rehabilitation secrets from here:
You can also read the following books to learn the skill of getting rid of addiction:-
In the end, let’s see this amazing video to save us from Alcohol use disorder.
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