Nicotine

Here we go again with another blog post about why smoking is bad for you. But how many times have you actually read about the chemicals that are in a cigarette.  Nicotine seems to always be in the spot light, as majority of the population knows it’s a toxic ingredient in tobacco. We have all heard over and over about how bad smoking really is, but do we really know what nicotine is. Nicotine comes from a tobacco plant, which is bitter and highly toxic, not only for humans but for animals as well. It comes from the nightshade family, which also includes vegetables such as tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and red peppers. Go figure, a toxic chemical in vegetables. You can now have a proper excuse for not eating vegetables at dinner tonight. All jokes aside, Nicotine itself is actually made by soaking the stems and the leaves of the tobacco plant in water for a long time and the nicotine that is dissolved into the water is extracted in various ways.

Nicotine activates your brain mechanism by attaching itself to the receptors on your nerve cells, thus transmitting chemical messages to release certain hormones such as dopamine; the “feel good” hormones that make you want more of it. As you have more exposure to nicotine, such as when you smoke a cigarette, you end up building a tolerance to the chemical, therefore needing more of it to feel the same pleasure. So technically, the chemical is bad because it gets you addicted to smoking quite easily. Although there are many alternatives to smoking, such as nicotine patches and nicotine based gums to suppress cravings, the best way to stop an addiction is how you feel about it; the motivation that got you to start smoking, is the same one that’ll get you out of it; at least a good start in my opinion. So before we know why smoking is bad, let's learn about what the actual chemicals we put in our bodies are.