The Rise of Nicotine Gum
Nicotine, the primary psychoactive ingredient in tobacco, enhances brain and body communication. However, The effects of nicotine on the brain and body vary depending on weight, age, sex, food, medication, hormones, time of day, physical exercise, genes, and use. Someone with a single CYP2A6 null allele (15% of us have this enzyme variation) is less likely to be seriously addicted. However, if you are currently stressed, depressed, or suffer from other emotional dysregulations, nicotine addiction may be heightened. Recognizing your current state and susceptibility to addiction before use is important.
Biochemistry of Nicotine Gum
The absorption of nicotine is much slower when chewing as opposed to smoking. Smoke from cigarettes immediately goes to the lungs and readily gets into the heart through the pulmonary veins. Inversely, chewing nicotine passes through the mouth, down the throat, into the stomach, down the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine), and into the jejunum and ileum, where it gets absorbed by the villi. These extra steps in digestion increase the point of peak blood concentration of nicotine from 10 minutes, as seen in smoking, to 30 minutes. This difference in absorption (and dose) causes a more gradual and subtle affinity to nicotinic receptors making it less prone to provoke addiction, especially in nonsmokers. A study found that nonsmokers who chew nicotine gum are much less likely to get addicted.
If that’s the case, why is chewing tobacco more addictive? That is because nicotine gum, unlike tobacco products, doesn’t have other chemicals that make the product more addictive. These products contain chemicals such as acetaldehyde and formaldehyde. Tobacco products contain sugar, glycerols, and sorbitols that produce acetaldehyde when burned or processed. This chemical indirectly increases tobacco addiction by increasing nicotine cravings. Moreover, formaldehyde in tobacco products causes neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and GABA to stay around a while longer, mimicking anti-depressive effects and encouraging continuous use behavior. Combine these two chemicals with a higher blood concentration of nicotine, as seen when taking tobacco products, and it becomes clearer why tobacco tends to be more addictive.
Why Nonsmokers Use Nicotine Gum
Nicotine and tobacco are not synonymous with one another. Indeed, there is nicotine in tobacco, but there are also over 70 carcinogens or cancer-promoting compounds in tobacco that are not found in nicotine gum. Who knows how these carcinogens react with each other and other chemicals found in tobacco to make it more addictive? It is unlikely a coincidence that smokers who try nicotine gum generally prefer smoking. Maybe nicotine is not as addictive as earlier believed.
After all, many nonsmokers have used nicotine gum but find that they could comfortably go without it, while these reverberations are not echoed as clearly in tobacco use. This inconsistency would have to be explained if addiction manifests solely from nicotine. Nevertheless, caution is advised for all nicotine products. That being said, what is it about nicotine that has many nonsmokers inclined toward nicotine gums?
Observationally nicotine has a broad range of effects. These effects seem more pronounced in fluid activities such as driving, communicating, writing, and thinking. These effects may result from heightened concentration and connection across a broader framework of acquisition. In other words, nicotine might excel or make writing appear easier because you can see the same possibilities quicker with heightened engagement. However, this intensified engagement doesn’t seem to affect singular concentration tasks such as throwing a basketball through a hoop. Let's look at the science to understand why this might be.
Nicotine and the Brain
A meta-analysis of 41 double-blind, placebo-controlled studies was conducted on nonsmokers and smokers who were not tobacco deprived (meaning if you were a smoker, the study didn’t have you stop smoking for some time before the nicotine administration). This was likely considered necessary since quitting smoking a day before can affect craving and concentration, making the conclusion of the cognitive experiment less robust. Considering this confounder, the meta-analysis proceeded with nine performance domains, such as motor ability, attention, and episodic memory, and examined whether nicotine influences any of these cognitive/performance tasks. At the end of their analysis, they concluded that nicotine positively affects six of the nine domains. The six were:
1) Fine motor (finger tapping speed)
2) Alerting attention accuracy (rapid visual information processing by memorizing a series of numbers and continuous performance tests, assessing visual vigilance)
3) Response time (a computer-based test designed to test alertness, orientation, and executive attention within a single task)
4) Orienting attention—response time (letter search and spatial attention)
5) Short-term episodic memory—accuracy (word recall and prose recall such as details of a story)
6) Working memory (digit recall and n-back testing or sequence and position pairing)
It is not entirely understood how nicotine can exclusively influence such a vast range of outcomes. However, it may have much to do with a specific receptor type. When nicotine enters the bloodstream, it binds to nicotinic cholinergic receptors in the brain and body, usually activated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Eggs are recommended across many diets because they contain choline, an essential nutrient and precursor to acetylcholine. Eventually, the choline you take through your diet converts to acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that plays a vital role in mood, memory, brain function, and muscle movement. Too much exposure to nicotine can reduce the number of active receptors, potentially affecting poor acetylcholine metabolism. This is one reason nicotine shouldn’t be taken daily, even if there is no susceptibility to addiction.
Assuming that nicotine is taken responsibly (about 15x a month or less), when it binds to the nicotinic receptor, it activates the release of many neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, glutamate, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
1) Dopamine is associated with reward circuitry and motivation.
2) Norepinephrine is associated with arousal, alertness, and attention.
3) Serotonin is commonly attributed as a mood stabilizer.
4) Glutamate is associated with learning and memory.
5) GABA reduces neuronal excitability and controls aspects of anxiety and stress.
And the augmentation of all these hormones is why someone might feel emotionally relaxed or lightened when taking nicotine gum yet alert. Just about everyone desires this feeling. To be able to work hard, be engaged, and not be overwhelmed by daily stressful events or activities. This idea is partly why many start using nicotine gum.
Nicotine and Weight Loss
Besides nicotine gum's neurological effects, nicotine has also been associated with weight loss. Nicotine, similar to some anti-obesity drugs, increases thermogenesis in adipose tissue (fat tissue). It has been shown that nicotine increases the release of stored fat, known as lipolysis, and increases 24-hour energy expenditure by 10%. This increase in energy expenditure is even more pronounced when eating or exercising. In other words, nicotine gum may burn an extra 200-300 kcal daily or 1400-2100 kcal weekly with no added effort.
Conversely, smoking and nicotine gum has been associated with insulin resistance in observational studies. The hormone insulin regulates the amount of sugar in your blood by carrying them to different areas of the body (muscles and fat cells). When insulin signaling is degraded, it makes it much harder for the cells of the body to respond to insulin, eventually leading to higher glucose levels and, potentially, diabetes depending on what level the insulin resistance manifests.
All in all, nicotine appears to reduce weight. However, more clinical studies need to be conducted to determine the correlation between insulin resistance and nicotine gum more strongly.
Bottom Line
For the reasons mentioned, heed caution. Nicotine might not suit you if you have a tendency or inclination for addiction or get nauseated easily. If you have an underlying disease, do your research and see whether nicotine is right for you. If it is, also heed caution. It is common to want to take something more frequently that offers a perceived beneficial effect. However, If you're going to preserve this beneficial effect, take nicotine occasionally and avoid daily usage.
Do you have a test, a public speaking event, or want to be more engaged at a particular moment and want to know whether nicotine may help? Indeed, it might. But it won’t be the deciding factor. And so, nicotine should not be used repeatedly as the deciding factor but instead as an occasional aid or tool.
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