The Effects Of Nicotine On The Body

Nicotine has many effects on different parts of your body. How it affects your neurotransmitters, brain parts, and nervous system are all different. The steps nicotine takes to be ingested in your body to produce pleasure and satisfy the addiction all take less than a minute. The effects of certain drugs on the brain vary with each substance. Nicotine affects the brain in the lobes and even in more particular areas such as the hippocampus.

Cigarettes contain about six-hundred ingredients. When they burn, they generate more than seven-thousand chemicals according to the American Lung Association. Many of those chemicals are poisonous and at least sixty-nine of them can cause cancer. Many of the same ingredients are found in cigars and in tobacco used in pipes and hookahs.

Each neurotransmitter is like a key to a lock, called a receptor. Nicotine is shaped like the neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which is a compound that occurs throughout the nervous system and acts as a neurotransmitter. “This compound is associated with muscle movement, breathing, heart rate, learning, and memory.” (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015) Nicotine attaches itself to the compound, acetylcholine, and mimics its actions and courses throughout the body. While it travels binded to acetylcholine it travels the body to many brain structures and body organs. These changes cause the smoker to feel abnormal when not smoking, in order to feel “normal” the smoker repeatedly smokes throughout the day making the process occur multiple