Nicotine safety

[Kate]

Important information about nicotine

Do not use nicotine if you are pregnant. It could cause harm to the unborn baby. Use an effective form of birth control, and tell your doctor if you become pregnant during treatment. Nicotine can pass into breast milk and may harm a nursing baby. Do not use this medication without telling your doctor if you are breast-feeding a baby.

Do not smoke while you are using nicotine. Stop smoking as soon as your treatment begins. Smoking while using this medication can be dangerous.


Before using nicotine, tell your doctor if you have:

• heart disease, an irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure or chest pain;
• a jaw condition called TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disease;
• an overactive thyroid;
• diabetes;
• pheochromocytoma (tumor of the adrenal gland);
• liver or kidney disease;
• a stomach ulcer; or
• asthma or chronic pulmonary disease.

What happens if I overdose?

Seek emergency medical attention if you think you have used too much of this medicine, or if anyone has accidentally swallowed it. Overdose symptoms may include nausea; vomiting; diarrhea; stomach pain; cold sweat; headache; dizziness; problems with hearing or vision; confusion; uneven heartbeats; chest pain; seizures; and death.

Do not smoke while you are using nicotine. Stop smoking as soon as your treatment begins. Smoking while using this medication can be dangerous.

Nicotine side effects

Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat. Stop using nicotine and call your doctor at once if you have any of these serious side effects:

• seizures; or
• chest pain or uneven heartbeats.

Less serious side effects may include:

• dizziness;
• belching or hiccups;
• stomach upset or nausea;
• mouth or throat soreness;
• dry or watering mouth;
• watering eyes;
• headache;
• runny or stuffy nose (when using the nasal spray);
• white patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips (when using the inhaler);
• constipation;
• sneezing and coughing;
• changes in taste; or
• redness, itching, or burning where the patch is worn.

This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur. Tell your doctor about any unusual or bothersome side effect.



What other drugs will affect nicotine?

Before using nicotine, tell your doctor if you are using any of the following drugs:

• imipramine (Tofranil);
• oxazepam (Serax);
• propranolol (Inderal), labetalol (Normodyne, Trandate), or prazosin (Minipress);
• theophylline (Theo-Dur, Theochron, Theolair);
• pentazocine (Talwin), or
• insulin.

This list is not complete and there may be other drugs that can interact with nicotine. Tell your doctor about all the prescription and over-the-counter medications you use. This includes vitamins, minerals, herbal products, and drugs prescribed by other doctors. Do not start using a new medication without telling your doctor.


Nicotine Information from Drugs.com

[Kate]

Pharmacodynamic studies indicate a complex dose response relationship, due both to complexity of intrinsic pharmacological actions and to rapid development of tolerance.

Toxicity - Human data:
Adults - The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg).
Children - The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine.

Nicotine (PIM)

Inhalation
In humans, acute exposure to nicotine even in low doses
(similar to the amounts consumed by tobacco users)
elicits autonomic and somatic reflex effects. Dizziness,
nausea and/or vomiting are commonly experienced by
nonsmokers after low doses of nicotine, such as when
people try their first cigarette. However cigarette
smokers rapidly become tolerant to these effects.

Nicotine (PIM)


Nicotine (PIM)

[Kate]

"We've all heard that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and death, but can smoking also lead to a nicotine overdose? No, but it is possible to overdose on nicotine by using combinations of nicotine patches or nicotine gum and cigarettes at the same time. This combination puts much more nicotine into the body than smoking alone. Sometimes, nicotine can reach levels high enough to paralyze the muscles that control breathing or cause a heart attack."

How Drugs Can Kill

[e-pipeman]

My grandfather was taken to hospital with nicotine poisoning in the early 1930s. He was a very heavy cigarette smoker (untipped) and routinely took five cigarettes and a cold cup of tea to bed at night. The cigarettes were for smoking in bed at night - the tea to keep his throat dry. As vapers we run the risk of consuming more nicotine than we wish or even imagine unless we measure our consumption with care.

[Kate]

... As vapers we run the risk of consuming more nicotine than we wish or even imagine unless we measure our consumption with care.

That's absolutely right, it's important to keep track of approximately how many ml and mg of juice we dose ourselves with.

As a general guide:

Cigarettes usually give us 0.5 - 1.2mg nic per cig with 1mg being an average.

Eliquid potency is measured in mg per ml, eg 16mg eliquid contains 16mg nic per 1ml (approximately 16 cigs worth).

The exception to this measurement is Johnson Creek who use mg per 1.2ml (so their 24mg juice equals about 18mg per 1ml).

The average amount of eliquid members of the forum use is 2ml per day.

If you were trying to replace a 20 x 1mg cig per day habit you would need to vape 2ml of 10mg juice.

Small amounts of nicotine might be beneficial but higher doses can cause long term physical damage. Tolerance is quickly built up to higher doses and more nic is needed to gain the same effect.

[scrubadub]

If you were trying to replace a 20 x 1mg cig per day habit you would need to vape 2ml of 10mg juice.

I agree that we need to be careful how much we're taking in but doesn't the ammonia content in cigarettes skew these figures a bit? I was under the impression that it increases the effect of the nicotine entering the system. So while those figures may be correct on paper the reality could be that we need more nicotine from e-cigs to replicate the dose we got from fags.

[Kate]

That's a very good point Scrub, we don't know about different rates of absorption. PH is a factor in how nicotine is taken into our bloodstreams, the more alkaline the more we absorb apparently.

As far as I know cigarettes are acidic, cigars and pipe tobacco are alkaline. Our vapour is alkaline so it's possible that we are absorbing more nic with esmoking than with cigs.

Questions about Nicotine..

[scrubadub]

I thought the main factor was that the reaction with the ammonia converts the nicotine to it's base form. Do you think we are being sold base nicotine?

[Kate]

I really don't know how freebase nicotine works or what it is that we're using.

A few people here have reported symptoms of nicotine overdose (including myself). Some of these reports were before even 36mg juice became available and were from seasoned smokers who were used to nic levels from cigs.

It's possible that we are absorbing more nic than we were used to with cigs and in some cases overdosing or significantly raising tolerance.

[scrubadub]

My understanding of it and I could very well be wrong, is that nicotine in tobacco smoke enters the lungs as particles in the smoke. Freebase nicotine on the other hand enters the lungs as a gas which enables it to pass in to the blood stream much more quickly, giving you an instant hit.

I'm not denying that many people are taking in more nicotine than before and I have read the stories about the overdose problems people have had. It would be interesting to know what form of nicotine we are taking in. With cigarettes we really maximise the hit from a dose. If we aren't using freebase nicotine then it's possible we are needing higher doses to achieve similar effects we got from fags. If we are freebasing then I suppose that also explains why doses are creeping up, we're all junkies.