Nic absorption with snus

[Mordred]

Good stuff, a compilation of a lot of known material.

I find that I don't care whether I have a General Mini Mint or a Claq Qui in place. Both stay in the same amount of time and neither knocks me out or seems to effect me in any way, although the nicotine strength is very different.

True, it's the same for me, but I DO find that I feel drawn to higher nicotine Snus, like Thunder. And I DO alternate between stronger and weaker Snus depending on what I feel like.

On the whole, a back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that my nicotine intake via Snus is very similar to what I used to get from smoking.

 

[Mister]

Day 1, 24 to 48 hrs with no snus, wasn't bad really but by day 3 I was failing fast. At the end of day 4 I broke down and popped 2 snus portions within an hour or so of each other. After the second snus had been in place for a very short time, all was right with the world.

No issues for almost 2 days without. Is that relevant to the delayed release consideration?

Perhaps it is something with a very long half-life in the body.

 

[olderthandirt]

Perhaps it is something with a very long half-life in the body.

I just can't seem to keep track of anything these days. Isn't the half-life of nicotine s'posed to be 8hrs?

DVap, Exo, Vaporer...

hehe, for that matter, anyone care to define the term half-life as it's being used here?

 

[exogenesis]

2 hours I believe, body breaks down nic to cotanine & excretes that &
unaltered nic. in waste fluids.

I can now keep a std Thunder Frosted in for more than 2 minutes,
I think I'm becoming aclimatised !

Make the afternoon at work go a lot smoother

 

[Mister]

I just can't seem to keep track of anything these days. Isn't the half-life of nicotine s'posed to be 8hrs?

DVap, Exo, Vaporer...

hehe, for that matter, anyone care to define the term half-life as it's being used here?

"Half-life" as being used here is the time it takes for the amount of a substance in your body to reduce to 1/2. If the half-life of something is 5 hours, and you start out by having 2mg of it in your body, after 5 hours you'll have 1mg, after 10 hours .5mg, after 15 hours .25mg, and so on.

Nicotine half-life in the body is often said to be 2 hours but I've seen some studies which suggest it is a fair bit shorter again, at least for some people.

Since you started craving "something" on the 3rd day without snus, I'm thinking it very unlikely that you were craving nicotine. Regardless of how much nicotine you had in your system when you stopped the snus, the amount after even one day would be negligible.

So I'm wondering if something else we get from snus and which some of need has a much longer half-life in our bodies than nicotine.

Another possibility is that there's a something else which our body is happy to have just a very small amount of (relative to what we take in from snus), but when that small amount gets too small the body complains.

 

[olderthandirt]

...since you started craving "something" on the 3rd day without snus, I'm thinking it very unlikely that you were craving nicotine. Regardless of how much nicotine you had in your system when you stopped the snus, the amount after even one day would be negligible.

So I'm wondering if something else we get from snus and which some of need has a much longer half-life in our bodies than nicotine.

Another possibility is that there's a something else which our body is happy to have just a very small amount of (relative to what we take in from snus), but when that small amount gets too small the body complains.

Thanks for the refresher on the term half-life. Old, need refreshers...

So to take it all full circle, the alkaloids other than nicotine is what was being considered in the testing of the WTA liquid. So yes, the supposition is that snus is supplying me with with the alkaloids I used to get from smoking that I do not get from vaping alone.

 

[exogenesis]

re-posted this here as well cos it fits better (I think):


Seems snus have more nicotine than possible for tobacco, per portion ???


I'm confused by the total amount of nicotine quoted for snus,
a wet 1 g strong snus portion is stated as containing up to say 16 or 17 mg nic.
(e.g. Odens Original Extra Stark Strong Portion, Thunder Frosted,)

But DVap's tobacco alkaloid extraction was initially getting about 400mg from
25 dry grams tobacco which = 16 mg per dry gram.

In later (very efficient) runs, he got up to 200 mg per 10 dry g = 20 mg per dry gram.

Wet snus must have a least 50% water, so how come (strong) wet snus seem to
have almost double the nic content (per dry gram) than NAS rolling baccy ?
which is a top quality, high alkaloid tobacco apparently.

Testing the 50% moisture guess, a wet Nick & Johnny Strong portion = 1.02 g,
when dried weight was 0.52 g , so it was 51% water.

Where do snus get the extra nicotine content from ?
.
.
.

 

[Stubby]

exo: That question came up on the snus forum. Never really got a definitive answer from the manufactures, but it's likely done by using more leaf then stem of the tobacco plant which has more nicotine. Also some types of tobacco have higher nicotine content. Some potent snus can be made by using just the leaf of some high nicotine plants.

 

[olderthandirt]

I have seen similar discussions about the effects the stem compared to leaves have on the flavor and nic in snuff as well Stubby.

 

[exogenesis]

Ah OK, so it depends on the stalk / leaf content of the baccy as to how strong it is.

Presumably minimal stalk is used in snus / snuff / chewing baccy to make it softer,
or is it chopped so fine it doesn't matter ?

Looking around, some tobaccos can reach 5% alkaloids anyway,
(http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/reprint/40/1/45.pdf)
so 25 mg per 1 gram wet-portion snus anyone ?


So looking up some figures:
http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/reprint/32/2/86.pdf

Not sure what the units above are, but seems alkaloid ratio in root to stem to leaves
is 1.3 to 1 to 2.9, almost 3 times as much in leaf as stem.

Bit surprised/worried about the degree of conversion of nicotine into nornicotine
during air-curing (like snus baccy is - which reduces TSNA massively compared to flue-curing),
do we believe this or did they get one of their figures switched in the table ?

I remember DVap saying he wasn't too keen on nornicotine, can't remember why exactly.

From the above table it seems 70% of the nicotine is converted to nornicotine
(and 7% converted to other alkaloids?). Wondering if this happens in flue-curing as well ?

Looking around for info about nornicotine:

The persistence of nornicotine in the bloodstream, as opposed to nicotine,
which quickly disappears after cessation of smoking may also suggest a role for nornicotine
in contributing to the biological mechanisms of tobacco addiction, since the nornicotine
provides a long-lived source of nicotine-like molecules.

Apparently it attaches to body biochemicals (much more than nicotine ?),
and you get advanced glycation end products which are 'troublesome'.

But it "stimulates nicotinic receptors and may produce psychomotor effects similar to nicotine"

And worst: Genetic Engineering of Nicotiana tabacum for Reduced Nornicotine Content - Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (ACS Publications)

Nornicotine is an undesirable secondary alkaloid in cultivated tobacco,
because it serves as a precursor to N‘-nitrosonornicotine (NNN),
a tobacco-specific nitrosamine with suspected carcinogenic properties.

So are snus-ers addicted to nornicotine rather than nicotine ?
.
.
Although : always looking on the bright side....
it appears there are genetically engineered (transgenic) tobaccos that
reduce this conversion by a factor of 100.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0610458
.
.

 

[olderthandirt]

OK
Ongoing refresher then, wasn't nornicotine one of the usual suspects all along with respect to WTA's efficacy? One of the missing alkaloids from nicquid responsible for the psycho-desert?

Memory? What's that... where am I who am I....

 

[exogenesis]

Mebe...there are 5 other alkaloids as well (anabasine etc).

Think we might need DVap's input here (if they ever let him out of the lab).

 

[a2dcovert]

It really amazes me how little we know about something that has been on the market for many years. I know the nicotine is there but exactly what else is there? Are we getting most of what we need to keep going?

 

[TWISTED VICTOR]

I'll shine my DVap light into the sky. He'll surely see it and run into the closest phone booth, where he'll strip off the mild mannered chemist apron and don his Super DVap lab coat and come to our rescue.......

 

[exogenesis]

I guess it's reasonable we know so little, since the exact snus processes
are closely guarded secrets.

There certainly appears to be some confusion out there about air-curing,
steam-curing, ageing (or possibly fermentation)

Although there's been lot's of studies - nearly all coming out positive (I think).

Amazing that the original snus-man in 18xx got the process so right
for reduced TNSA & othe tobacco harm, without knowing the science behind it all.


Can we get hold of Commissioner Gordon as well TV ?

 

[TWISTED VICTOR]

Can we get hold of Commissioner Gordon as well TV ?

Tried. He's vacationing in the Alps, of all places, and can't be reached .

 

[DVap]

I'm going to heed the warning I posted some time back about trying to apply simple principles to complex systems. In other words, I dunno.

Barring getting our hands on hard data, I'll remind everyone that we ignited, burned, and inhaled tobacco for years. Seeing that we generally agree that tobacco provides an "x-factor" that nicotine alone doesn't, any effort to lower secondary alkaloids might actually be counter-productive. Anyone recall the concept of a "low-nicotine" tobacco to "help unhook smokers"? I think we can all agree that this is a misguided notion as lowering the concentration of active ingredients will generally require the user to consume MORE product to achieve a similar result.

 

[exogenesis]

Depends on what you consider hard data I guess.

If we can't rely on published papers to contain correct info
(like maybe I'm not sure I believe this published 70% conversion of nicotine to nor-nic during air curing),
then we have a bit of a problem since we cant create the data ourselves (mostly).

I'd agree that infrequent strong amounts, is better than frequent weak amounts,
if the delivery system is heavily 'contaminated' (like ciggies).

Snus are a very much less-contaminated animal, at least we think so from all the evidence,
so I was just a bit disturbed with this glitch.

Still going to be way better than combustion tho.

 

[TWISTED VICTOR]

I'll remind everyone that we ignited, burned, and inhaled tobacco for years.

Oh, that makes me feel so dirty......what was I thinking?.......

 

[a2dcovert]

Reading the report that TV originally linked to stated that the nic uptake of Swedish portion snus is about 37%. So a 12mg portion should deliver 4.44mg of nic. Getsnus.com documentation states that a snus portion should deliver all of the nic in 30 min or less. If you go through 2 12mg portions in one hour you could get 8.8mg of nic. But then you would have to factor the half life of 2 hours? How many cigarettes would you have to smoke to get this much nic?