NICOTINE DEPENDENCE
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When you turn on your first cigarette? getting out of bed? in the morning? after lunch?
It 's the key question of the Fagerstrom questionnaire used to assess the degree of nicotine dependence in smokers. Those who start smoking just wake up experience a strong dependence on nicotine. They are individuals who have developed dependence dall'alcaloide content in tobacco and feel the need to maintain a stable level of nicotine in the blood. "Given that during sleep the nicotine is gradually eliminated from the body, the smoker wakes up in the morning in a state of abstinence, and immediately tries cigarettes," explains Prof. Riccardo Polosa, head of the Anti-Smoking University Catania and President of the Italian League smoke (LIAF).
Nicotine has the characteristic of developing dependence in the majority of consumers: acts in the brain triggering in different parts of the brain various neuronal circuits that lead to the release of several neurotransmitters; between these noradrenaline, linked to the mechanisms of attention, and dopamine, that has an important physiological role related to the fulfillment of basic appetites such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire. It is a mechanism that nicotine has in common with other psychoactive substances, and that explains the attractions.
"Nicotine enhances alertness and concentration, relaxes, relieves anxiety and depressed mood, has a anorectic" says Prof. Polosa yet.
The dependence has remained solid physiological basis: when nicotine is missing manifests a state of abstinence marked by tension, irritability, insomnia, headache, fatigue and dizziness. The habit of which the most smokers find hard to escape, however, is somewhat more complex since it is not easy to distinguish between nicotine dependence and addiction cigarette.
This does not mean that we can not give up without effort to cigarettes. In fact, you should stop smoking!
Most of the damage attributed to cigarette smoking is not derived from the active ingredient, nicotine, but from other substances, 4000, produced by burning tobacco and responsible for various diseases among which, for severity and frequency, the tumor lung.
Source Italian League smoke (LIAF).
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