Nicotine Gum – What is it and how does it help you to stop smoking?

There are many different brands of nicotine gum on the market for you to choose from. They all do the same thing so the more expensive gums may not always be the better choice. All nicotine gums contain nicotine and are known on the market as NRT or nicotine replacement therapy. They can be used in conjunction with other NRT’s like patches or replacement plastic cigarettes but they can also be used on their own to help you quit your habit of smoking. As discussed in other articles on this site nicotine is addictive and when you are trying to quit you can experience a whole range of withdrawal symptoms which can be very upsetting for the person who is trying to quit. NRT works by giving you enough nicotine to help keep the receptors in check. This is provided by the gum when chewed. You can buy on the market some gums that are flavoured as chewing nicotine can be very unpleasant and the makers of the gum soon found out that no one wanted to buy the original flavour so they added different flavours to tempt the people who were trying to quit back to trying the gum out.

The gum is not chewed like normal gum but is chewed for a minuet until the flavour and hit of nicotine becomes strong, when this happens you have to stop chewing and place the gum between your teeth and cheek, this done over and over again until the gum looses all of the nicotine which has now entered into your blood stream. A piece of gum lasts on average about twenty minuets to half an hour. The gums comes normally in two different strengths; for people who smoke less than twenty a day the 2mg gum is advised and for people who smoke more than twenty a day there is a 4mg option which will further help reduce the cravings. The amount of gum you chew each day will depend on the amount you smoked and how often you get cravings for a cigarette. There are warning labels on the packets that will advise you the daily limit that you are allowed to chew per day without overdosing.

As you begin your program of using the gum you will find quite quickly that you will have less and les cravings. The manufacturers and the medical association all agree that the gum should be used for three months or more after you first quit smoking. Some people worry that they are going to become addicted to the gum but this very, very rarely happens and even if it did it is less dangerous to your health than being addicted to smoking as the nicotine is so minimal that it being released in to your blood stream than if you smoke a normal cigarette.

As well as using NRT replacement therapies you need to also avoid situations where you would normally have smoked to break the physiological cycle where you associate yourself with smoking.