# Does nicotine itself cause health problems? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 19, 2016, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188 "2016-12-19T22:23:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2016, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/21 "2016-12-20T22:11:33Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I always read the vaping hate as being more a matter of “Smoking is fucking terrible and WILL kill you”, and while vaping is far better than smoking, it’s still pretty terrible for you overall. > > Kind of like something a friend who spent a few years in Russia back in the 1990s told me about. There was apparently some sort of anti-drinking/anti-alcoholism push that championed beer drinking. Sounds bizarre to us, but apparently when you drink vodka by the liter, switching to beer is an improvement. My personal take is that vaping is probably not good for you (but far better than smoking). Nicotine itself is a powerful agent, with some harmful and somebeneficial effects (for example, the vascular disease associated with smoking is primarily due to nicotine). I think that a lot of “vape hate” is a kind of backlash from an emboldened public that until recently has had to put up with smoking forever in all kinds of venues whether they liked it or not; they don’t want any back-sliding, nor due they want any more second-hand exposures due to other people’s vices/pleasures. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2016, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/22 "2016-12-20T23:30:41Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > My personal take is that vaping is probably not good for you (but far better than smoking). … I should clarify and say that I think that even without nicotine, vaping is probably not harmless. Your lungs are fairly delicate as organs go and does not in general like being exposed to “stuff”. There are legions of lung diseases caused by one inhalant or another. There is a lung disease related to inhaling the molecule giving microwave popcorn its buttery flavor. This has been present in some e-cig flavorings. NOTE: the over-hyped conclusion that this was causing disease is prob not true: [http://info-electronic-cigarette.com/popcorn-lung-e-cigs-the-truth-about-diacetyl/](http://info-electronic-cigarette.com/popcorn-lung-e-cigs-the-truth-about-diacetyl/) However, I do believe that we will learn a lot about what is safe and what is unsafe to inhale from vape-ers over the next decade or so. I wouldn’t volunteer for that myself… ---
**Author:** ![Surreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@Surreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surreal)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2016, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/23 "2016-12-21T07:32:21Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > I wouldn’t put much confidence in a website that makes money from selling nutritional ‘supplements’ – most of them have unproven (or even harmful) results. I looked all through my link and searched elsewhere on that site but I didn’t find any nutritional supplements for sale. One of us must be stupid. BTW why did you enclose the word ‘supplements’ in quotation marks like they’re some some sort of theoretical thing that doesn’t really exist? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2016, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/24 "2016-12-21T13:44:24Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Nicotine makes a useful herbicide and a tobacco leaf tea will kill many common plants. It also kills slugs. Ah, the good old days when you could buy Black Leaf 40 to kill nasty plant-eating bugs. I quit using it, partly because of the epic warnings on the label (“may be fatal if inhaled” kind of sticks in your mind). As noted, concerns about e-cigs go far beyond addiction and cardiovascular effects of nicotine. Vapers (or the preferred term, vapids) are guinea pigs for the long-term lung effects of [aldehydes](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vaping%E2%80%99s-toxic-vapors-come-mainly-e-liquid-solvents) and other chemicals inhaled in the course of e-cig usage. Pulmonologists and specialists in pulmonary pathology should have plenty of work in years to come. ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/25 "2016-12-21T16:21:18Z")
The vapors from e-cigs may be somewhat harmful but nicotine itself has the potential to be good for you. discovermagazine.com/2014/march/13-nicotine-fix . The main harmful effects of nicotine are similar to caffeine, high blood pressure and the like. So you choose your poison. Lower risk of Parkinson’s and dementia with nicotine, but a higher risk of stroke, heart problems and problems for people with diabetes. Like most drugs, there are benefits and harmful effects. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/26 "2016-12-21T16:59:13Z")
> [@Vicsage](#): > > So you choose your poison. Lower risk of Parkinson’s and dementia with nicotine, but a higher risk of stroke, heart problems and problems for people with diabetes. I wouldn’t be too sure that nicotine protects against dementia. A recent systematic review found a 70% higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease in those with a smoking history, and found evidence that pure nicotine may play a role in that elevated risk. _“The in vitro and animal and literature clearly demonstrates a causal relationship between OxS (oxidative stress); cigarette smoke/condensate, nicotine, and increased proinflammatory cytokines (via activation of immune cells, microglia and astrocytes) promote high concentrations of ROS and RNS (reactive oxygen and nitrogen species) and other oxidants. Animal models also showed cigarette smoke and nicotine exposure was causally linked to significant cerebral anti-oxidant depletion. The factors promoting cerebral OxS and antioxidant depletion in animal models are hypothesized to be operational, in vivo, in the human brain132, 151, 168, 177 and evidence of free radical-mediated damage was demonstrated post-mortem in the human brain.177 Taken together, the existing literature indicates that smoking and pure nicotine: a) serves as an exogenous source of high concentrations of ROS, RNS, and other oxidizing compounds; b) up-regulates activity and release of proinflammatory cytokines by peripheral and central nervous systems, which promotes immune system-mediated discharge of additional free radicals and oxidizing compounds; c) depletes enzyme-and-non-enzyme-based antioxidants secondary to increased demand for the chemical reduction of high radical concentrations (from cigarette smoke and proinflammatory cytokine signaling), and inhibits the production of glutathione, the primary antioxidant in the human brain. The combination of these conditions serves to place the brain and other organ systems of smokers under a state of chronic OxS. Importantly, OxS is associated with increased β-secretase cleavage of APP as well as tau phosphorylation; therefore, smoking-related OxS may serve as a fundamental mechanism initiating the AD-pathophysiological process promoting increased risk for the development of AD.”_ > **[Smoking and increased Alzheimer’s disease risk: A review of potential mechanisms](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098701/)** > > Cigarette smoking has been linked with both increased and decreased risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This is relevant for the US military because the prevalence of smoking in the military is approximately 11% higher than in civilians.Systematic ... The nicotine-based oxidative stress evidence appears to be heavily based on rat studies. So how about the human brain? We’ll probably know more in years to come, along with evidence of dementia incidence in e-cig users. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2016, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/27 "2016-12-21T18:46:15Z")
There is some evidence that nicotine can help Ulcerative Colitis but not Crohn’s Disease: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014383/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014383/) On the other side there is some evidence that while usually nicotine isn’t considered much of a carcinogen in and of itself, that may not be the case especially for those with certain gene mutations: [http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/04/22/study-links-mouth-cancer-to-nicotine-gum-lozenges.html](http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/04/22/study-links-mouth-cancer-to-nicotine-gum-lozenges.html) ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2016, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188/28 "2016-12-22T00:27:13Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > AFAIK, e-cigs deliver only nicotine and it affects the brain directly, but is it known whether it has any other effects? This may be only tangentially related to the question, since these are unusual cases by definition, however, there are case reports of deaths from nicotine poisoning. Industrial exposure is more common than exposure through use of e-cig fluid, but e-cig fluids have been implicated in survivable accidental poisonings by children, and in suicide attempts that resulted in three deaths of eight known cases: > [@Huy and Talbot review](#): > > 3.1.8. Accidental nicotine poisonings associated with EC > Three cases of accidental nicotine poisonings associated with EC involved children (Bassett et al., 2014, Gupta et al., 2014, Gill et al., 2015). The children in the reports ingested liquid nicotine which was reported in two cases to be wintergreen and grape flavored. These children experienced varying effects from nicotine poisoning that were either mild (two cases) or serious (one case). All children had symptoms of vomiting. For mild cases, one child experienced vomiting after ingestion of EC refill fluid, while the other child presented with irritability and behavioral changes. In the one severe case of nicotine poisoning, the infant experienced tachycardia, respiratory changes, and ataxia. In all cases the children recovered from nicotine poisoning following medical treatment. > > 3.1.9. Intentional misuse/suicidal attempts associated with EC > Eight case reports involving nine individuals (8 adults and 1 adolescent) are categorized as intentional or suicide attempts related to EC (Cervellin et al., 2013, Christensen et al., 2013, Valento, 2013, Eberlein et al., 2014, Schipper et al., 2014, Thornton et al., 2014; Bartschat et al., 2015, Chen et al., 2015). One case reported accidental overdose by intravenous injection of EC liquid combined with use of other recreational drugs. Six other individuals attempted suicide by internalization of EC liquid using varying routes of exposure. Nicotine concentrations in refill fluids varied from 18 to 100 mg/ml. > > Of eight attempted suicides, three deaths have been reported (Thornton et al., 2014, Bartschat et al., 2015, Chen et al., 2015). These cases reported that EC liquid nicotine was primarily ingested or intravenously injected at above lethal doses (2000 ng/ml in Thornton et al., 2014, 3950 mg in gastric contents, Bartschat et al., 2015, and 1000 ng/ml in Chen et al., 2015). Five of the eight individuals who attempted suicide had a history of mental illness, including the three individuals who died. > > 3.1.10. Nicotine usage reported in case reports > Nicotine concentrations were provided in six systemic and six poisonings cases reports. For systematic events, the average nicotine concentration in EC products was 14.4 mg/ml ± 3.9 with a range of 9–19 mg/ml. For nicotine poisonings, the average nicotine concentration available to EC users was 29.1 mg/ml ± 19.4 with a range of 18–100 mg/ml. > **[Potential health effects of electronic cigarettes: A systematic review of...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929082/)** > > The health risks associated with electronic cigarettes (ECs) are largely unknown. The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate published case reports that deal with health effects attributed to EC use. An Internet search was conducted to... Note especially that the _concentrations in the e-cig product_ under section 3.1.10 is **not** the correct information to determine a lethal dose (or one for causing chronic illness,) that is typically reported as a weight/(weight of human subject) or (volume [implied pure product])/(weight of human subject) - average e-cig users should be nowhere near the lethal dosages in the suicide attempts - these are people who disregarded the typical use of the product and injected or drank the fluid directly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-nicotine-itself-cause-health-problems/775188.md?page=1)