Millions of people, when hearing the word “nicotine” think about the effects of tobacco such as disease and death. However, pure nicotine has the potential to be a valuable pharmaceutical compound that can do a lot of positive things when you get the right amount of it: weight loss, performance enhancement, protection against Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and sleep apnea.
What is Nicotine?
Nicotine is a powerful nootropic, a liquid alkaloid, a naturally occurring nitrogen-containing chemical. It is found in several plants of the Solanaceae family. We can also find it in potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, cauliflower, and tobacco plants.
However, when you hear the word “nicotine,” you probably think of cigarettes and tobacco products first. The tobacco plant has a significant effect on living things because it has the highest nicotine content in nature. People assume nicotine is the harmful ingredient in tobacco products, known to cause serious diseases, such as cancer. On the other hand, there are vape products that come with controlled nicotine stuff, and nowadays people are more into vaping than traditional smoking with an extensive range of vape wholesale products.
Like caffeine, nicotine is a defense mechanism by plants to prevent their consumption by animals, insects, or fungi. Many plants produce nicotine and store it in their leaves, it keeps hungry animals at bay. When ingested in large doses, nicotine is bitter and toxic.
Nicotine is very toxic to smaller animals, but humans can tolerate and benefit from it. Once in the brain, nicotine binds to nicotinic receptors and activates pathways controlling attention, memory, motor function, and pleasure. Each receptor affects your brain differently. This alkaloid has several other uses besides cigarettes.
How Nicotine Works
Our bodies contain proteins called receptors. Certain neurotransmitters or chemicals are bound to these receptors. Some of them are called Nicotinic cholinergic receptors, and nicotine binds to them because it is an agonist, meaning that when it binds to receptors, it causes a biological response.
Nicotinic cholinergic receptors are in the brain, neuromuscular junctions, the inner part of the adrenal gland, and ganglia. When nicotine’s receptors bind, neurotransmitters such as dopamine, acetylcholine, beta-endorphin, noradrenaline, serotonin, and ACTH are released. Some neurotransmitters regulate pleasure, mood, emotion, and pain relief. For example, the release of dopamine makes you feel pleasure after smoking a cigarette. In a similar ways, the Elf bar products that come with Elf bar wholesale collection pleases and pacifies the mind with its amazing vibe and mouth watering flavors.
Other receptors control physiological responses such as heartbeat and muscle movement. This is the reason a person’s heart rate may increase, arteries may constrict, or blood pressure may rise immediately after nicotine ingestion.
What are the benefits of controlled nicotine consumption?
When consumed in a controlled manner, Nicotine has the following effect:
- Prevents Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s: Clinical research in animal models suggests that nicotine protects against neuron degeneration, improves motor skills, and enhances cognitive function, reducing the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. When used by Parkinson’s patients, it improved their processing speed for complex tasks.
- Promotes alertness: Nicotine enhances the brain’s electrical activity and induces alpha brainwave activity increasing attention, alertness, and creativity. It also affects brain areas associated with arousal, visual attention, and motor activation such as the thalamus, parietal, occipital, and the brain’s caudate cortices.
- Improves Memory: Nicotine acts on the brain’s visual attention and attention-processing regions to improve memory and cognitive performance.
- Reduces ADHD symptoms: Nicotine reduces the severity of ADHD symptoms. In non-smoking patients, it increases attention, vigor, accuracy, and reaction time. Nicotine may help relieve mild nervousness in ADHD patients who quit smoking and experience withdrawal symptoms.
- Neuroprotective: It stimulates nicotinic cholinergic receptors, blocking estrogen, and reducing inflammation.
- Promotes weight loss: Animal clinical studies show that Nicotine can suppress appetite and prevent weight gain. The alkaloid may affect insulin sensitivity and blood sugar levels.
- Repairs tissue: Nicotine stimulates the body to increase the growth of blood vessel capillaries and tissue, repairing damage and speeding healing. When applied topically in low concentrations appears to promote rapid wound healing.
When taken in its pure form, nicotine shows benefits of therapeutic value. Some clinical studies suggest the alkaloid reduces appetite and weight gain, increases brain receptors, and lowers Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s risk. Some health conditions such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, and dementia seem to benefit from it, and it can act as a neuroprotective agent, promoting alertness, wakefulness, and a healthy gut. This nootropic drug has been the focus of extensive research due to its surprising benefits.
Many people rely on nicotine or smoking to cope with stress and anxiety, but even though it is a powerful stimulant it is highly addictive. It can cause symptoms of adrenal fatigue by acting directly on the brain. Prolonged exposure to it can increase cortisol, disrupt sleep, and increase blood sugar, anxiety, and depression. It can also over-activate the HPA axis delaying the recovery process from adrenal fatigue. Therefore, people with AFS should avoid using Nicotine for stress and fatigue relief.
For many years it has been known thanks to extensive research that traditional cigarettes contain tobacco and several other harmful chemicals, thus making the product dangerous to human health. Nevertheless, there is no significant evidence that nicotine is carcinogenic yet. Some studies suggest that various harmful chemicals in tobacco cigarettes make smoking dangerous. This is a reason why vaping has become a popular alternative. Products like Elf Bar have gained a lot of interest because they provide a source of this particular alkaloid without harmful chemicals. There is an ever-growing range of vape wholesale distributors and brick-and-mortar stores where people can look for a wide variety of products to get that nicotine hit.
