So - are we getting it or are we not - nicotine

[DVap]

Thanks, Dvap. I've been following your posts, but still wasn't quite clear. This sums it better for me. I also fall in line with your findings. The more of your posts I read the more confused I became. It makes sense, now. Thanks for all your work and bringing it down to a level I can understand.

Thanks TV,

That thread can be a horror to read, if anything's come of it all aside from the purely practical (being able to accurately determine nicotine in e-liquid concentrates without needing a lab), then the ~40% efficiency of vaping is the finding that stands out.

I consider the finding fairly significant for a couple reasons, 1) it puts a number on the amount of nicotine we're getting from e-cigs, and 2) it closely falls in line with the nicotine consumption vapers gravitate to (self-titration) compared against their former analog habit. It has what we scientists like to call "predictive power".

[telsie]

I've put up a blog post about my experience with e-liquid strength and quantity versus former analog consumption. What I've found in my own case, and in a surprising majority of vapers I've talked to is that when we "find our own level" for e-liquid, that is the combination of mg and mL vaped per day, the total mg of nicotine used per day is awfully close to 2.5X the nicotine we used to get from analogs.

Any theory on why people seem to require about 2.5x the amount of nicotine from vaping than we used to require from smoking? I'm finding it's true of me too and I'm curious about that. I used to smoke 40 ultra lights per day (.4mg each) giving me about 16mg nicotine. Now I'm vaping about 2ml or so of 18mg per day (plus a few drops throughout the day of 24mg). So I'm probably getting about 40mg nicotine per day. I haven't tracked it all that well yet, but that seems to be what I've settled in to.

[vapomike]

I know I'm definitely getting it. I vaped my girlfriends e-cig with no nic. It didn't satisfy me, I took a few puffs off of my e-cig with 24mg juice and felt the nic edge go away. The other day I really had a bad day. I woke up late for work, on the way too work a dog decided it wanted to run out in front of my car I ran off into a ditch (it was a big dog, figured the ditch would do less damage) hit the drain pipe busted the frack out of my rim and tire. Put the spare on, drove back home had my girlfriend take me to work. Showed up an hour late, and we had a load of work to get done that particular day to get the store caught up. Was totally stressing at work because right now money is super tight. Girlfriend who is pregnant, just got fired from the same company I work at for some total bs reason. I think it had too do something with her upcoming maternity leave during the biggest part of the year for the company. Though anyways enough of my venting/whining. I got too work and really wanted a "CIGARETTE" not my 510, I wanted to go out back and have a marlboro maybe 2. Though I just sat at the back desk with my 510 and toked it for a good 30 min and I got over the hardest crave I have had since quitting analogs. So I am pretty confident that nicotine is getting too us vapors just fine or me at least.

Though what spikes my interest is if different people absorb the nicotine from the vapor as well as others. I would imagine so with all the differing viewpoints. One person that smokes 1 pack a day full flavors can get away with 18mg and then another can't get away with 26 mg and has to go to 36 mg and sometimes higher to get off the analogs. Then some people will get queasy from vaping anything higher than 18mg. I think some people's bodies are more adept to adsorb the nicotine from vapor than others.

[Heed]

Since my name has come up a few times in this thread, a quick summary of what I've discovered might be useful.

Nicotine delivery: Actually, e-cigs are more efficient than analogs in delivering nicotine. How so? An analog might contain around a gram of tobacco at 1% nicotine. Of the ~10 mg of nicotine present in a full flavor analog, only 1 mg typically gets absorbed, that's 10%. With e-liquid, both my testing (vaping into a cryogenic trap) and empirical evidence (polling vapers on their former analog habits vs their current vaping habits), the percentage is much greater, approximately 40%.

I've put up a blog post about my experience with e-liquid strength and quantity versus former analog consumption. What I've found in my own case, and in a surprising majority of vapers I've talked to is that when we "find our own level" for e-liquid, that is the combination of mg and mL vaped per day, the total mg of nicotine used per day is awfully close to 2.5X the nicotine we used to get from analogs. Example, a vaper used to smoke 30 full flavor (1mg) analogs down to the butt. Analogs provided 30 mg/day of nicotine. The total mg of nicotine vaped per day would need to be 2.5X greater, or 75 mg. This could be gotten from ~4 mL of 18 mg, ~3 mL of 24 mg, or ~2 mL of 36 mg. This empirical 40% lines up well with the trapping test which demonstrated that approximately 40% of the nicotine vaped ended up being found in the trap. You might do the math yourself for your former analog habit vs your current vaping habit. I expect many of you will be surprised.

All that aside, one thing is certain: The oft quoted "only 10% of the vaped nicotine gets absorbed" figure is plain wrong. E-cigs are not placebos.

Doesn't that then put absorption of nicotine via the vapour around 100%? That is, if around 60% of the nicotine in the liquid is lost and doesn't make it into the vapour, then to achieve a 40% absorption rate of the liquid's rated strength the vapour must be delivering 100% of the nicotine it carries into the bloodstream.

The blood levels people have had done don't seem to indicate that level of efficiency since results showed nicotine levels well below what would have been expected from smoking. The people were not maintaining their nicotine levels via vaping at the same level they would have been at from smoking.

I believe you weren't measuring absorption with your trap experiment, but just the amount of nicotine that survives from liquid to vapour. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The polling data could well be an "acceptable level" of nicotine that users find -- that is, when "finding their level" vapers don't find their old smoking level of nicotine at the 2.5x point, but a lesser percentage of that level that is still enough to satisfy when coupled with mimicry of the smoking action itself.

[DVap]

Any theory on why people seem to require about 2.5x the amount of nicotine from vaping than we used to require from smoking? I'm finding it's true of me too and I'm curious about that. I used to smoke 40 ultra lights per day (.4mg each) giving me about 16mg nicotine. Now I'm vaping about 2ml or so of 18mg per day (plus a few drops throughout the day of 24mg). So I'm probably getting about 40mg nicotine per day. I haven't tracked it all that well yet, but that seems to be what I've settled in to.

If I smoke 20 analogs rated at 1 mg, the tobacco company has already done the testing as mandated by the government, and I know I'm getting ~20 mg of nicotine. It doesn't matter that those 20 analogs contained ~200 mg of nicotine. Smoking delivers about 10% of the nicotine present to the inhaled smoke.

A point that I should make here is that I believe we all have a "setpoint" for our nicotine addiction, unique to our individual brain chemistry, and it resists being changed. If an ultra-light smoker starts smoking full flavor analogs, consumption will generally go down to compensate for the over-dosing of nicotine. If a full flavor smoker starts smoking ultra-lights, consumption will generally go up to compensate for the under-dosing of nicotine. I do not particularly believe that higher nicotine consumption than normal will result in a greater level of nicotine addiction, or that tolerance leads to increased usage. Very simply, I believe we all have our unique "addiction level", and we quite unconsciously and expertly maintain it.

Back to the analog/vaping comparison. We had 20 full flavor analogs per day delivering 20 mg of nicotine per day. I've found that we need to vape 2.5X the nicotine, or 50 mg/day, so we might vape ~2.5 mL of 20 mg or ~1.5 mg of 36 mg. We're putting ~ 50 mg of nicotine onto the atomizer coil because of that 50 mg, only 40% or 20 mg of nicotine makes it into the vapor and into our bodies. So by vaping 50 mg of nicotine per day, we are delivering 20 mg of nicotine per day to our bodies.

Hope this helps!

[DVap]

Though what spikes my interest is if different people absorb the nicotine from the vapor as well as others. I would imagine so with all the differing viewpoints. One person that smokes 1 pack a day full flavors can get away with 18mg and then another can't get away with 26 mg and has to go to 36 mg and sometimes higher to get off the analogs. Then some people will get queasy from vaping anything higher than 18mg. I think some people's bodies are more adept to adsorb the nicotine from vapor than others.

You might consider the level of nicotine addiction in the individual. If a vaper's analog habit was 2.5 packs of full flavor (1 mg) per day, then 50 mg is that person's addiction setpoint. For vaping to balance a 50 mg analog habit, then 50 mg x 2.5 or 125 mg of nicotine must be vaped. That's about 3.5 mL of 36 mg juice needed.

On a per puff basis, it gets interesting. If an 1 mg analog smoker takes 10 good solid puffs from an analog, then 0.1 mg per puff of nicotine is being delivered. I've done some testing (precise before/after weighing of e-cigs) and a good solid puff (5 sec) from an e-cig can vaporize 5 micoliters of liquid. For a 36 mg liquid, this represents 0.18 mg of nicotine. But we have to divide it by 2.5 to account for efficiency, so that 0.18 mg vaped only delivers 0.072 mg to the body. This suggests that on a puff per puff basis,
a full flavor smoker would need a 50 mg liquid to get the same nicotine as with an analog, and would still have to take long 5 sec puffs to get it.

The idea that 50 mg liquid is appropriate for some vapers flies in the face of "conventional wisdom" about vaping, but the more I test, and the more vapers I talk to, the more convinced I become that "conventional wisdom" is wrong. Puff per puff, former full flavor smokers desire a 50 mg liquid, former light smokers desire a 36 mg liquid, and former ultralight smokers desire a 24 mg liquid.

[DVap]

Doesn't that then put absorption of nicotine via the vapour around 100%? That is, if around 60% of the nicotine in the liquid is lost and doesn't make it into the vapour, then to achieve a 40% absorption rate of the liquid's rated strength the vapour must be delivering 100% of the nicotine it carries into the bloodstream.

The blood levels people have had done don't seem to indicate that level of efficiency since results showed nicotine levels well below what would have been expected from smoking. The people were not maintaining their nicotine levels via vaping at the same level they would have been at from smoking.

I believe you weren't measuring absorption with your trap experiment, but just the amount of nicotine that survives from liquid to vapour. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The polling data could well be an "acceptable level" of nicotine that users find -- that is, when "finding their level" vapers don't find their old smoking level of nicotine at the 2.5x point, but a lesser percentage of that level that is still enough to satisfy when coupled with mimicry of the smoking action itself.

Yes.. that would put the vapor absorption of nicotine very high. The surface area of the interior of our lungs is on the order of ~100 square meters according to a quick search. That's a lot of surface area.

As far as maintaining levels versus analogs, please see my previous post detailing the e-liquid strength I believe is required to maintain a puff per puff balance between smoking and vaping. It is surprisingly high (24 mg for ultralights, 36 mg for lights, and 50 mg for full flavor).

[Heed]

Yes.. that would put the vapor absorption of nicotine very high. The surface area of the interior of our lungs is on the order of ~100 square meters according to a quick search. That's a lot of surface area.

As far as maintaining levels versus analogs, please see my previous post detailing the e-liquid strength I believe is required to maintain a puff per puff balance between smoking and vaping. It is surprisingly high (24 mg for ultralights, 36 mg for lights, and 50 mg for full flavor).

Surface area of the lungs notwithstanding, the blood work we have seen so far seems to indicate much lower levels of nicotine than a smoker would have. Those who have "found their level" (presumably around the 2.5x point) are not seeing that translate into actual blood levels, so I just don't see how this can be if the absorption level of nicotine from the vapour is near 100%.

[Sevenchan]

I'll chime in to say that I KNOW I'm getting nicotine from my e-cig. When I chain-vape too much, I get the exact same "gritty, tight" feeling in the bottom of my throat that I used to get from smoking cigarettes that were too strong for me.

I was an ultra-light smoker -- about 25-30 0.3 mg cigarettes a day -- which would be 8-9 mg of nicotine. I've settled on vaping 15 mg or 18 mg, about 4 ml a day. That should be 60 mg of nicotine. I figure I'm absorbing about 20% of it, if that. Still, like I said, I still overdose sometimes, and when I get a craving and vape, I feel relaxed and cheered up. It's there, it's working

I have NO intention of quitting nicotine, ever, by the way. Why would I want to quit something that helps me cope with life? The whole point of e-cigs for me is that I can carry on smoking without feeling like ****.

[TropicalBob]

Dvap, your posts are terrific. I've followed you in the other threads. Chemistry aside for a moment, the only bottom line for me is blood nicotine level and per puff nicotine delivery.

When e-smoking can move my blood nicotine level to what I had as a former 30-a-day cigarette smoker .. whoopee. Until then, I'm nicotine deprived as an e-smoker and get what I need from snus, nasal snuff, and disssolvables used at the same time as I vape 36mg liquid.