How Long Does Nicotine Stay in Your System ?
For smokers, the question “How long does nicotine stay in your system” is always a big question. In this article, we will help you answer this question.
What is Nicotine?
Nicotine is a compound that can increase feelings of well-being, comfort, and relaxation. The American Heart Association recommends that nicotine be one of the hardest to give up. It is even more addictive than cocaine and heroin. Nicotine has the potential to affect the nervous system in the brain, heart rate, oxygen consumption of the heart muscle.
Some information on the existence of nicotine in the system.
If you start smoking cigarettes first, it takes two to five hours for it to begin to appear in the urine. If you smoke every day, nicotine will be in your body from repeated use earlier. How long does nicotine stay in your system depends on your metabolism. It may vary from person to person.
After absorption (smoking), nicotine in cigarettes goes to the blood at a pH of 7.4 and plasma protein binding is less than 5%. Studies show that nicotine has reached the brain of rats within 1 minute after injection. The accumulation of nicotine in the blood is 6 to 8 hours after stop smoking, i.e overnight.
Thus, smoking at high concentrations, smokers may be affected by the pharmacological effects of nicotine for 24 hours a day.
How long does nicotine stay in your system?
That depends on a few things, such as:
- Method of eating
- Physiological properties
- Age and gender
- Liver function
- Frequency of use
- Used Time
How do you know if nicotine stays in your system?
If you want to know if someone has smoked, or if your system contains nicotine, a nicotine testing is the best option for you. In this way, you will not need to question the metabolism or something like this, you can do this test with a simple way. If you want to test nicotine in your system, you have a variety of ways – through urine, blood, saliva and hair follicles.
We know that, your system will take from 12 to 15 hours to remove nicotine. However, when nicotine passes through the liver, it decomposes into cotinine. The disappearance of cotinine is longer than that of nicotine (it is a more stable compound), so cotinine can be detected by tests even if nicotine is already clean in your system.
Nicotine in the urine
To know “How long does nicotine stay in your system?”, you can use a urine test. When you perform a urine test, they focus on cotinine (not nicotine). Smokers are not frequent, they will not worry about this. Cotinine is usually removed from the urine for three to four days. But for regular smokers, a urine test may have a positive test for three weeks.
Nicotine in saliva and hair follicles
Nicotine and cotinine do not stay in the saliva for long (it’s like cotinine in the urine). They are in the system for four days for those who smoke irregularly. However, the hair follicles are not the same as saliva. It will depend on the test that has been used, but cotinine can be present for three months and, in some cases, throughout the year.
Nicotine in blood
Another way to know “How long does nicotine stay in your system?”, you can check nicotine in your blood. We have two types of nicotine (cotinine): qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative tests help us to test the presence of cotinine in your system; Depending on the test, we can find 50ng cotinine in your system. This means that these tests are quite reliable. Quantitative tests will help you know how much cotinine is in the system, this is very helpful when we try to determine if someone is a mild, regular or heavy smoker.
Conclusion
If you smoke regularly, you should try to limit your intake. Because smoking is bad for your health. With the above sharing, I hope you have the answer to the question “How long does nicotine stay in your system”.