Nicotine

Untitled Slide

• Cigarettes typically contain about 10 milligrams of nicotine 
• It can add up to 20 milligrams depending on the brand
• Smoking a cigarette, about 1 to 2 milligrams get absorbed by your body
• Nicotine is absorbed through: 
• skin, mucosal linings in the nose, mouth and lungs

Nicotine travels through the bloodstream to the brain

Short Term Effects

• Increase in blood pressure
• Increase in heart rate and the flow of blood from the heart
• Causes arteries to narrow
• Imbalance in the demand for oxygen by the cells 
• Imbalance in the amount of oxygen the blood is able to supply

Long term effects

• Cause chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, stroke
• Cancer of lungs, larynx, esophagus, mouth, and bladder
• Also cancer of the cervix, pancreas, and kidneys

How we learn to smoke

• Strongly influenced by people we look up to:
• parents, peers, actors, and popstars
• There is an immediate effect on our brains with those first cigarettes,
• ...so we keep smoking to get this reward
• Later, we associate smoking with other activities (ex. restaurants,etc)

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• We become conditioned so just the thought of the activity triggers
• the need for a cigarette 
• Just like Pavlov's dogs learned to drool at the sound of a bell
• These psychological associations remain when smokers try to quit
• You learn to keep smoking, because if you try to quit you are punished by 

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• ...withdrawal symptoms 
• Having a cigarette gets rid of these symptoms...
• which negatively reinforces the desire to carry on smoking
• Such conditioning, keeps you hooked on smoking because the reward when you 
• ...smoke is instant

Smoking

• While it takes years before you become aware of the damage in terms of your
• ...health
• When you try to quit, the punishment of withdrawal symptoms comes quickly
• The benefits of better health take longer to realize