Life is Full with Chemistry

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Nicotine

This topic came into my mind when I walking along the street and I saw some smoker with several packs of cigarette with them. When I passed by them, the smoke from the cigarette was blown by the wind to my face. Inhaling that smoke made me a passive smoker which was really uncomfortable. In that moment, I had difficulty to breathe and cause me to feel so unease and irritated. I was wondering why are there so many smoker around when our health ministry already implemented increase of price of cigarette and even have a lot of advertisement regarding the harm of nicotine to human body all around the billboard and multimedia, even on the cigarette box itself there are picture of human part which damage by the result of active smoker.

I really don’t understand what’s wrong with these guys. Why don’t they spend that money in helping those in need than harming themselves and others? What a waste of money and time. If they want to boast due to stress why not take in some coffee or chocolate?

I’m curious to know what so big deal a saying from those smokers, “A cigarette a minute keeps me awake and active”. Lame!!

Nicotine was first discovered by a French scientist, Vauquelin in 1809.He noticed a volatile and alkaline active product in the tobacco juice. In 1828, Poselt and Reimann from Heidelberg’s University performed isolation and purification of nicotine .Nicotine was named upon Jean Nicot (the first person who imported tobacco in France from “Occidental India” in 1560).

In 1843, Melsen established the empiric formula of nicotine as C10H14N2, while in 1843 Schloesing determined nicotine weight at 16223 g.mol-1. In 1895, the structure of nicotine was obtained and developed by Adolf Pinner.

Nicotine is an alkaloid found in Solanum family of Solanacea which consist of 0.6-3.0% of dry mass of tobacco or from dried leaves and stems of Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica of concentration of 0.5-8%.Nicotine is a liquid alkaloid which have a ph of 8.5 with a bitter-tasting which strongly alkaline. Nicotine was named under IUPAC as 3-[(2S)-1-methylpyrrolidin-2-yl] pyridine.

I really would like to remind those smokers out there, please don’t smoke. You are not only causing health problem to others and your family but also causing global warming! I hate you guys! Here the effect of dosing nicotine. Hope u will wake for God’s sake.

Nicotine poisoning may develop within just 15minutes!! The onset of the symptoms is so drastic which it happen right after the ingestion of liquid nicotine. Death may just occur within 5 minutes of ingestion of concentrate nicotine solution. Just 4-8 milligrams of nicotine can cause serious symptoms in individuals’ health. When it start kicking in, you will feel your mouth and throat burning following by profuse salivation, vomiting, abdominal pain, nausea and diarrhea. On top of that, it could causes dizziness, confusion, hypertension and coma. Finally respiratory organs or system will be paralysis and would cause death. (Still want to take in nicotine??)

Passive smokers this part is for you (including myself)

When acute exposure to nicotine would causes dizziness, nausea and vomiting even just dosing a low concentration of nicotine. (That’s why I’m experiencing when with smokers around). Even skin exposure to nicotine can lead to intoxication.

When a smoker has a cigarette, each puff of it pulls nicotine into his/her lungs where it absorbed into the blood. Just within second, nicotine reached the brain. This process happen so drastic is due to the shape of the nicotine has a similar shape with acetylcholine. (Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that carry message in brain cell.). Nicotine inhibits acetylcholine receptor causes changes in stimulation of nerve. Nicotine raises the heart beat and respiration rate which causes blood sugar to increase lead to gradually boast in attention/alert of the smokers. (This is always the excuses which smokers use to omit their deed.) Imagine one day without acetylcholine in your older age, you will have depression all the time, then u will regret smoking during your young age.

Nicotine can also attaches to neurons and releases neurotransmitter, dopamine. Nicotine stimulate neurons to release large amount of dopamine which stimulate brain’s pleasure and reward limbic system(including feeling of pleasure, memory, appetite and learning).After stimulation, dopamine remain in synapses which reduces the transition of nerve.

These changes in brain and body cause nicotine highly addictive. (Never start having it!)

For those women that are currently pregnant, you are not advisable to consume nicotine in any form of way. It’s very harmful for the baby. Why is that so?

Exposure to nicotine will decrease breathing movements which will cause decrease of placental perfusion. On top of that, nicotine passes freely into mammal gland into breast milk at a small quantity; therefore consumption of milk by infant could cause nausea and vomiting.

Lastly, I really hope those that are consuming nicotine will stop it before too late and for those that want to try it for fun I recommend u not to. It’s a very addictive drug!

So as a last WARNING ! Don’t smoke! Start to remove those addiction away while your health isn’t completely overthrown by the damage of NICOTINE.

~Jasonyap~