The Nicotine Dilemma: Powerful Nootropic or Dangerous Addiction

This week on Silver Strength, we're going to cover one of the most misunderstood substances in modern health nicotine We'll cover the science the risks the surprising benefits and everything in between if you're using nicotine or thinking about it This is the episode for you. Let's go deep Welcome to the Silver Strength podcast. We're going to talk about nicotine and it's worth noting that I recently started using nicotine personally in the form of these pouches and the reason I did was because I just I just couldn't stop hearing about it It seems like a lot of the the people that I follow for information and content a lot of people who are very influential in different spaces even fitness, the military space, politics, etc. are just raving about this product and even some of the the more scientific minds that I tend to go to for information people like Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Peter Atia and others are starting to talk about the benefits of nicotine. For the longest time I held a stigma that most of us have a connecting nicotine to smokeable type products because we all know about the disastrous effects of smoking vaping cigars even we won't go there But we tend to stay away and kind of right off and stigmatize nicotine for what we know about the carcinogenic effects and the cancerous effects of tobacco products, but once you start to research nicotine, it's really fascinating. I mean, there's no doubt There's no doubt that there are benefits to using nicotine, and there are also potential downsides and consequences to using it But all that to say I thought I would try it and I've had a lot of really really good experiences with it so far I find that it helps me at sometimes focus as someone who's always conscious of and guarded against a bad relationship with alcohol I found and this is anecdotal personal to me I don't care if there's science to back this up. I'm assuming that there is but I found believe it or not that by using an NA product like a hot water or maybe an NAB or with a zin pouch or another nicotine pouch of no connection to this brand It's really quite interesting on how much it relaxes me and helps me to feel social So in other words, it's actually helped me continue to have a healthy relationship with alcohol And I found that to be interesting I've also found and we're going to dive in in a little bit to the science and the pros and cons But I've also found in certain instances if I use this product It really helps me to focus and sometimes even relax, which is interesting because I had read that those were some potential benefits and now I'm experiencing them Myself by by no means am I recommending that everyone go out there and pick up this incredibly addictive Substance and I have felt that pull as well and we'll go into that I'm not I'm not advocating for everyone to try but I am just going to kind of Unbiased objectively go through the science and just talk about and help you make the decision Around whether or not this could be a good product for you to try and at least to try it, right? So let's start where I always like to start with let's start with the science I think the question you should be asking is what is nicotine because again It's not cigarettes and it's not tobacco. It's so much more than that So nicotine is a naturally occurring alkaloid that is found in tobacco plants But it's also found in a whole bunch of other places in nature that you might not expect places like vegetables Things like potatoes tomatoes eggplants green peppers. So it's not exclusive to tobacco But in tobacco it has significant concentrations, which is how it became so ubiquitous in you know cigarettes and Smokable products, but once extracted from wherever the source is nicotine is a powerful Stimulant it's what gives cigarettes cigars chewing tobacco vapes gums pouches Their effect now when you consume nicotine what is happening however you choose to consume it what is actually Happening it quickly very quickly in anyone that's tried it can attest to this enters your bloodstream and Travels to the brain and within seconds it binds to a nicotineic acid a coline receptor So that again nicotineic acid a coline receptor and it releases and this is cake It releases a surge of dopamine nor an effron and acid a coline All neurotransmitters that are associated with pleasure, focus, alertness and in some cases Calmness so it is working through your bloodstream into your brain and in the neurotransmitter Kind of world of your brain and that's why it has the calming effects that it does. That's why it has an impact on your head space If you will so it is a stimulant and it is powerful and it can become Very addictive very very fast to help break this all down Here's a clip from the great YouTube channel if you haven't visited two-minute Neuroscience here's a breakdown of exactly what nicotine is and what's happening in your brain Nicotine is the main psychoactive component of tobacco. It primarily exerts its effects by activating or acting as an agonist at certain receptors for the neurotransmitter acetyl coline These receptors known as nicotineic acetyl coline receptors are found throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems So what you heard described there Summarized by me is because nicotine mimics acetyl coline Which is a natural brain chemical tied to memory a rousal pleasure learning By hijacking that system nicotine enhances alertness and mood But it also starts a reward feedback loop and we're going to talk about this later But which could be beginning could be the beginning of the formation of a habit and it just so happens nicotine is one of the more powerful Habit forming substances that you can consume at least over the counter, right? But let's talk about the the history because I always like to talk about the science. What is it? What's happening? But then also how did it become so common? How did it become so large? And we're going to talk about the economy and uses this statistics in a little bit But nicotine has a very long history and it's traced back thousands of years to indigenous cultures in the Americas who used tobacco socially and ritually and by the 17th century Tobacco use head spread globally it evolved pipes cigarettes and then you see what you have today, which is these modern forms available everywhere easy to conceal easy to consume repetitively things like vapes, gums and pouches so it started socially and now I would say while it does remain Social in some aspects you think about cigar lounges and people taking cigarette breaks not as common anymore But now it's become more like just kind of daily in your back pocket use as needed Which of course kind of really highlights how quickly it can become addicted because of how accessible it is And if you're wondering how common or how widespread is nicotine use According to the Centers for Disease Control. That's the CDC 47 million U.S. adults currently use some form of tobacco product 47 million in the U.S. alone globally 1.3 billion if you think about the total population of the world and then fathom that of that 1.3 billion people use nicotine containing products on a regular basis That's mind blowing so cigarette smoking specifically has declined sharply Very very fast because of the adverse health impact that we all know about However, alongside that decline at the same time you see a rapid massive increase in other forms of nicotine products Because they don't have the adverse health effects at least most of them And you can really capture and get the benefits from what the things that nicotine does well And we're going to get into that but so I found that fascinating And it also makes sense to me because you know anecdotally I've noticed people that I know Don't smoke as much but then at the same time I'm seeing more and more people adopt products like this myself included Going two months now So fascinating stats there and if you're thinking about the actual market or the economics Of what it looks like when 47 million Americans use a product and 1.7 billion globally the global nicotine market is valued At $980 billion dollars 980 billion with billions alone just spent annually on marketing and advertising to get people to try the products The three heaviest users of nicotine in terms of countries if you'd like to guess I'll tell you The US China and Russia are the most heavy users of nicotine products Hey, it's Jesse and if you've been following this show then you know I've had my fair share of struggles with alcohol over the years you also know that I built a pretty solid toolkit to help maintain a healthy relationship with alcohol. 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Science backs this, experiences back this, but one of them right off the bat is focus and sustained attention. I can speak to that. Another is memory. I can't really say in the last two months I've felt like an increase in memory, but some scientists believe that it can help with regular usage to have better short and long-term memory, reaction time, and even alertness and sleep deprived individuals. I found that interesting and I can also speak to that. There's been, you know, I'm a pseudo busy person. I have a young family, we're very active and there are times when I'm sleep deprived. And I found that just by having my cup of coffee, diving into like a deep focus project or maybe a meeting and having one of these pouches going, I feel as though it kind of wakes you up now. It does fall off sharply afterwards, but there's an alertness component of it, but just to go a little bit deeper and do exactly what is happening when you rely on say stimulants. I'm going to go to my go to Dr. Andrew Huberman. I think you'll find this interesting. Nicotine taps into the acetacolene system, increases focus. It also will tap into the epinephrine and dopamine system. It's highly reinforcing, so I limit myself to two milligrams, maybe four times a week total. And I'm thinking about stopping all together because I'm just running this as an experiment on myself. And it really, really works for me. What does it do? It makes me more alert, more motivated. That also scares me. So you heard there very eloquently as always from Dr. Huberman that if used occasionally and in moderation, there's definitely cognitive benefits. I've listened to Dr. Huberman talk about this particular topic and I know that I believe he used his gum. So I think he has nicorette gum, I believe it's called. And he limits himself very intentionally to having, I think it's two pieces. And I think there's three milligrams. When you get something like a pouch, they come in different milligrams. This is a six milligram container. You can get them in a lower dosage. There's even ones that go much higher. I found six to be kind of what works for me as a matter of fact. I'll put one of these in. And after about 20 minutes, maybe because I haven't built up tolerance, yet, I start to feel a little off, I'll say. So I'll usually take it out. This this one actually has a container. We can pull it open and put it in there to store it. I have to take it out for say 10 to 20 minutes and then come back to it. It recommends about 60 minutes total. And then it recommends that you kind of take it out. But you know, depending on your tolerance and your body type and size and weight, you'll have to kind of play around that if you try to go in this direction. But Dr. Huberman limits himself to, I believe, three milligrams pieces of gum twice a week. If you do decide to explore a nicotine product, I would absolutely set a goal at the very least to start and try to stay within that goal. But you heard some some cognitive benefits there. Let's talk a little bit about some other benefits quickly before we go into the cons. One, it's noted that nicotine can impact your appetite by suppressing it. So there are some studies that hint that it can help with eating less. So if you're trying to eat less or might even just kind of do that naturally, whether that's your goal. And there's also some neuro protective benefits long term for aging brains. There's some emerging studies around more of a medicinal use, an intentional medicinal use of nicotine. I'm not going to dive too deeply into the science. I'm not a scientist and I don't want to get out over my skis on that one. So there's definitely some benefits. But I really want to talk about some potential downsides right out of the gate. I will tell you when I started this product, I was having say two a day and then very quickly went up to about four pouches a day that was not an intentional decision. It was also not a really, really kind of aggressive urge or pull. I just started enjoying the benefits and reaching for them more. And I got to a point within two weeks where I noticed it's like dang, this is increasing pretty fast. And I had read that that could happen. So they're highly addictive. And in this show and in life in general, we always want to be very careful with anything that can become addictive. And that could be social media. We know that that could be alcohol, of course, other drugs, you know, pornography gambling. We always want to have a healthy moderate relationship with anything that we're consuming with our body or our minds and our eyes. So it is highly addictive. That's a definite downside. And that can mean you become dependent. You can have withdrawal symptoms if you decide to step away. You can be thinking about it and preoccupying about it. It can interrupt your schedule in your day. If you don't have the product and you have to say drive to a store to get it. And it's costly. It can add up anytime you're consuming something. There's money to it. So you have unnecessary expense. All things to consider. There are some other downsides physically to what can be happening in your body. One is it can temporarily raise your heart rate and your blood pressure. So if you are someone who is currently battling something like high blood pressure, any type of heart disease, any cardiovascular issues, consult with your physician. And if you don't have a physician, go get one and get on at least an annual checkup schedule. Check with your doctor before you decide to dabble with or use nicotine regularly. You want to make sure that you're thinking about everything that could go wrong in any adverse side effects from using the product. It can also lead to vasoconstriction, which is a narrowing of the blood vessels. Again, that's in the whole family of cardiovascular drawbacks that you have to consider. That's not a good thing if your blood vessels are narrowing. And also, and this is so obvious, I'm going to say it anyway, but if you're consuming nicotine through the delivery method of smoke, vape, anything like that, there are absolutely toxic byproducts. And I encourage you to look up and research. If you are going to choose to intentionally continue to use smoke products and vape products, there's a ton of literature out there that should turn you quickly in the other direction. There's other safer ways that you can get the benefits of nicotine without the downsides and the potential harmful effects. And then lastly, I mentioned as a behavioral issue that it's highly addictive, another downside to be aware of is that it can actually lead to what's called habit stacking, and not good habit stacking, bad habit stacking. So you may find yourself in a situation where you really enjoy to have zin with a beer. Then even you have a beer, you'll be looking for zin, because they're both acting on your neuropsychetry. They're both acting on your dopamine system with neurotransmitters. So a lot of times what happens. And that's why I mean, I remember when I turned 21 cigarettes were still a thing in a bar. I mean, you'd go to a bar and then every 30 minutes, you'd see people outside just smoking in droves because they have a habit stacked between smoking cigarettes and alcohol. So it can be sort of a gateway to other bad habits or it can just become attached to where you always do two things synonymously at the same time. So those are most of the cons. And I think those are the most important ones that you should be aware of if you're thinking about exploring nicotine. Look, for some reason when it comes to mental health and recovery from alcohol misuse, people don't talk about supplements enough. When I decided to step away from alcohol and rebuild my health, I quickly learned that nutrition and supplementation weren't just optional, they're essential. That's why I choose momentous supplements. Look, for me, the goal has always been about living better for longer and when it comes to supplements for high performers, nobody does it like momentous. Momentous invests heavily in NSF certification, meaning every batch of their products is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label claim accuracy. 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So whether you're taking your first step or your next step in your fitness journey, these supplements are the building blocks of living better, longer. Go to livemomentus.com and try today at 20% off with code strength. And start living on purpose today. Okay, so those are the pros and the cons and now let's get to the key question around addiction, right? So one of the questions you'd be asking, if I'm using this product, should I stop or taper down? If I'm not using this product, should I dive in and try it? Hopefully the pros and the cons and the conversations so far can help with that. But I think something to talk about is addiction. So if you are using the product, or you're not, I just want to talk about how do you know if you're addicted? Sometimes you just know, other times it can just take some thought-provoking questions around addiction. And a key stat here is over 80% of daily nicotine users show signs of dependence. That is a alarmingly high rate. If you look at alcohol, alcohol use disorder, one in 10 alcohol consumers have or are on the spectrum of alcohol use disorder, so one in 10, 10% on the alcohol side, eight in 10 or 80% on the nicotine side. I think that says everything you need to know about how addictive this substance is. So odds are if you're listening and you use nicotine, literally the odds are you probably are addicted or at least showing signs of dependence. And I think to help really kind of tease out that answer for yourself. And I'll just be vulnerable here and answer for myself, do I need nicotine just to function? Your answer is yes, you have a chemical dependence. I don't. I think it's too early. I haven't really allowed it to snowball yet. Do I feel withdrawal if I step away, irritability, distraction, physically you can have headaches, maybe some anxiety, restlessness? If you've ever tried to step away and you felt any of those things, there's a physical dependence and even a psychological dependence. I in two months have not tried to stop, but we'll see where that goes. And then I think something to really just stands out is if your dosage just kind of skyrocketed up, continues to go up and it's either plateaued at a place that's really, really frequent use or is heading in that direction. And I'll say that in the short time I've used it, it has kind of spiked and doubled in the first two weeks, kind of plateaued off there. And those are key questions and if you're wondering about withdrawal a little bit more about what that actually feels like, here's a clip that really I think does a good job of unpacking withdrawal symptoms from nicotine. Quitting tobacco can cause physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. Most symptoms occur within the first one to two days, peak within the first week and subside within two to four weeks. These symptoms can be alleviated by smoking or using smokeless tobacco products, which is a major reason why people attempting to quit relapse. Symptoms can include cravings, increased appetite, weight gain, irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, depressed mood and insomnia. A person's behavioral patterns associated with using tobacco throughout the day also reinforce addiction. For example, behavioral patterns include the habit of smoking when waking in the morning, eating, finishing a meal, drinking coffee or other beverages and watching television. These patterns can complicate a user's quit attempt and can trigger strong urges to use tobacco. So I hope that was helpful and illuminated some things and the next thing I want to do is just talk about if you do decide and I'll take a quick moment to do this. If you want to taper down or step back, just some tips to do that. But before I do, I just want to give a quick shout out to men's alliance. Men's alliance is a men's group that really focuses and help guys find camaraderie, community, physical fitness and just move to a place of wholeness and health right now in 2025. Mental health, men's mental health in particular is borderline crises. When you look at rates of anxiety and depression amongst men and loneliness and isolation, it's just really scary. And men's alliance is an amazing group that helps gather people locally in different states to have sections all throughout the country to help guys get together, find like-minded men, focus on a workout and just talk about those issues. It's an amazing organization. So I've got a website you can go to, it's linked down below. I highly encourage you to check it out. Again, men's alliance could be the best decision that you make today. So a big shout out to men's alliance, jump in, get connected, go deep with those guys. So let's talk a little bit about what to do if you do find yourself having a dependency addiction with nicotine. And the stuff I'm going to talk about, it's interesting because it's some of the same tools that you would use if you were stepping away from other substances like alcohol, right? So first track usage, it's important to have a baseline to know how much you're consuming. So that could just be jotting down over a course of a couple days. How many cigarettes? How many vapes? I don't know, is that what you call it? How many times did you vape? How many pouches did you have? Whatever it is, track it down so you know you're starting point. And then from there, set what I'll call a taper schedule, right? Set a daily consumption that's less than what that baseline was. And then monitor it and track it. You can do that in an app. You can do that on a piece of paper or a journal, but it's important to know your consumption, set a goal, track your performance, and continually try to wean down or taper down. Never recommend, well rarely recommend something like a cold turkey approach where you just go from 100 to a zero, you're going to set yourself up to fail. So highly recommend tapering down and setting a goal. I think those are always really huge. Similar to on last week's show, where we talked about how caffeine can be tightly connected to daily rituals for caffeine things like morning coffee, coffee break, you know, coffee with friends, right? If you can try to create new rituals or when you have current rituals that are connected to nicotine, do something else or insert something else, that's usually a good approach because oftentimes when you have a dependence, when you do something behaviorally or physically and put yourself at a place in our environment that you connect with the substance, you're going to have a powerful urge for it and you'll wind up having a slip up. Something else you can try is if you're using something with like an intense form of nicotine delivery like a cigarette or a smoke product, introduce something more mild, like a pouch product and then kind of taper down your vehicle that is delivering the nicotine and try to move towards more healthy and even moderate forms of nicotine as you're tapering down. It's always something that I recommend and then lastly, with any substance or anything, if you're struggling with it in the darkness, meaning you're not telling anybody, tell somebody, look for accountability, it could be a friend, a spouse, anybody that you can just say, hey, I want you to know that I'm trying to do this thing less and I want you to ask me about it and I want to be able to tell you about it. Sometimes the motivation of knowing that somebody else is rooting for you or pulling for you or holding you accountable can be that extra motivation to push you across the finish line for whatever your goals are. So those are some tips for you if you're trying to step away from nicotine. So look, in closing, nicotine, we talked about the pros, we talked about the cons. Personally, I'm going to continue to use this product. I'm not experiencing the cons occasionally, there's some dehydration. There's a little bit of irritability if I say, have too much, but I'm just enjoying the power that it's kind of giving me, especially as it relates to not picking up and drinking alcohol. So I'm comfortable where I'm at, but like anything, it can quickly become a dependence and it can quickly become a problem and at that point, I would address it. But I hope this was helpful. I hope this was information that you can use and share with other people. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Sober Strength podcast this week and we'll see you next time. All right, everybody, that's the show folks. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Sober Strength podcast and spending some time with us today. We've got a favor to ask. If you enjoyed the show, would you please consider subscribing to the show and even leaving a rating and review that simple act drastically helps us reach more people in our mission. to help them live better, longer, healthier lives. 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