Stop Smoking Tip: Understand how nicotine works in your body

Knowledge is an important part of your success. In order for you to come up with a plan and successfully stop smoking, it will help you to understand how nicotine works in your body.

When a person inhales cigarette smoke, nicotine reaches the brain (via the bloodstream) in about eight seconds. It only takes 15-20 seconds for nicotine to make its way throughout the entire body. Nicotine enters your body in the form of thousands of little droplets, which penetrate into the branches of your lungs. From the lungs, it’s a fast trip to the heart, where nicotine is pumped out to every part of your body.

As you know, nicotine is a stimulant. Nicotine mimics the effects of ACH or acetylecholine, which is one of our body’s neurotransmitters. There are certain receptors that respond to ACH. Our adrenal glands have these receptors on them. Our adrenal glands release certain neurotransmitters when we are confronted with a physical threat or ‘fight or flight’ situation. The result is that our heart rate increases, while less blood flows to our extremities.

These same receptors also respond to nicotine. This is why nicotine has a stimulating effect. When we inhale cigarette smoke, the same ‘fight or flight’ response is triggered. With the first cigarette of the day, our heart rate increases and our blood pressure goes up.

On the flip side, smokers will often say that cigarettes help them cope with stress and calm them. In my opinion, there are two reasons for this. First, when nicotine starts to decrease in your blood and you boost the nicotine level in your system, you will avoid withdrawal symptoms, which might calm you. Second, it has also been shown that larger doses of nicotine have a calming effect. Apparently, there was a time many decades ago when nicotine in extremely high doses was used to sedate elephants. It’s obviously impossible to inhale these extremely high doses, but it has been suggested that taking longer and deeper drags of a cigarette could have the ability to calm a smoker.

You can now see why it is important to incorporate stress reduction activities into your daily routine when you stop smoking. I would suggest that you read some of other blog entries for tips to help you adjust to a smoke-free life. Good luck!!

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