Urban-myth: “Nicotine (as long as you don’t smoke it!) is a safe way to get thinner and smarter and maybe even improve athletic performance!”
FALSE. #mythbusting
Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is that gum/patch/spray that you can get to help you quit smoking. Many great studies have been done to show that it is a safe way to quit smoking. Used short term, ideally with professional support, in non-pregnant patients over the age of 18. I recommend it and prescribe it myself to my own patients who are quitting smoking.
But it’s not a safe substance for adolescents or non-smokers to misuse long term.
As smoking becomes less popular, the industry behind Big Tobacco has had to diversify. (For example, vape-giant Juul is 35% owned by the tobacco-giant formerly known as Philip Morris) It shouldn’t surpise you that the industry that put out the infamous Frank Statement in 1954 has pivoted quite quickly in recent years to peddle the benefits of nicotine and vaping- including targeting teens (bubblegum flavoured vape, anyone?) Vaping has a number of health risks as I’ve covered before – and more data still emerging.
But I’m going focus on just on NRT misuse. That is, the use of NRT not to quit smoking but to boost academic performance or weight loss.
“nicotinic cholinergic receptors” are in your brain, heart, adrenal glands and are activated by nicotine. So when you take it, it goes everywhere – not just what you want to target. It increases heart rate and the work your heart is doing when it beats. It affects mood and can cause anxiety. It can also cause reflux, nausea, and loss of appetite. It can cause sleep problems and insomnia. It can cause local irritation (so throat, mouth, breathing depending on how you take it.) It can also cause headache and palpitations. Long term can cause problems like increasing insulin resistance.
These side effects usually aren’t a problem for smokers who are quitting because smokers are already exposed regularly to nicotine, so we are replacing and stepping down – with a view to totally stopping. And the health benefits of quitting smoking are huge.
This isn’t a new thought by experts by the way: tracing the source of funding of smoking and nicotine studies has been less than straightforward to unpack:
“Our findings also revealed that authors generally did not disclose their industry affiliations. Only one study in our systematic review reported tobacco industry sponsorship, although review of tobacco industry documents revealed that 10 additional studies had past tobacco industry affiliations. There is no consistent standard among journals regarding the time period for which authors must disclose support from organizations with a conflict of interest; required reporting may range from only support of the published manuscript to support over multiple years.”
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