How Does Nicotine Affect the Body?

When a person smokes, nicotine diffuses through the skin, lungs and mucous membranes and from there it travels to the blood vessels to be delivered to the rest of our body. It changes how your body and brain function by giving a you a relaxed and invigorated feeling. At the same time it releases adrenaline, which cause an increase in blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing.
Nicotine also blocks the release of your insulin hormone thus curbing your appetite so you eat less. It also increases your metabolic rate so you burn more calories than you usually would. This appears to be just fine because you're losing weight without exercising but smoking doesn't offer any benefits. In fact, it can increase the level of your bad cholesterol or "LDL" because it hardens your arteries and it's just a matter of time before you get a stroke or heart attack.

Prolonged use of this substance and the failure to kick the habit may cause death on nicotine addiction. Health problems associated with nicotine addiction include lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, heart problems and diabetes complications. Other effects of nicotine addiction are erectile dysfunction, Buerger's disease (acute inflammation of veins and arteries of the hands and feet). This is like gangrene and amputation might be the last resort.

Nicotine is a highly addictive substance. The effects on your body last between 40 minutes to a couple of hours. This leads smokers to consume more and more cigarettes or tobacco to reach the same degree of relaxation and euphoric state, thus explaining why a smoker graduates from a 3 sticks per day to smoking one or two packs a day. How can I clean nicotine out of my system faster? The answer is discipline and determination. Quitting smoking is easier said then done. Only 10% of those who attempted to kick the habit succeeded. Eventually they return to their old bad habit. Why? It normally takes one to two months to clean your system from nicotine addiction. But this time frame is the most excruciating for nicotine addicts. Since your system is adapted to having nicotine on a regular basis, sudden withdrawal or "cold turkey" causes your body to function differently in the absence of the drug. Quitters experience extreme craving for nicotine, irritability, anxiety and depression.

After one month, these physiological cravings will subside significantly. After another month, all the nicotine residues are completely eliminated. But for many smokers, even a day without a single stick of cigarette is a struggle. Most try quitting but after just one week, they return to their smoking habit. This just shows the irresistible and addictive pull of nicotine.

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