Nicotine, which is a compound of more than 40000 chemicals, can be found in tobacco, cigarettes, snuff, cigars,… It makes up 0.6% to 3.0% of the dry weight of tobacco. When you inhale tobacco smoke, nicotine is absorbed through the lungs and liver and reaches the brain and blood in about 7 seconds. Nicotine is very addictive. When you use it once, you find it hard to quit. During the withdrawal, you have to face many symptoms like irritability, anxiety, sleeplessness or even delusion..
Duration of Nicotine Presence in The Body
Let’s find out how long nicotine stays in your system after the last time you use tobacco.
- In blood: When you smoke a cigarette, 1 mg of nicotine enters your blood. It will totally be gone within 1-3 days after your last using tobacco.
- In urine: The urine test normally can detect nicotine level within 3-4 days after the last time you use tobacco. However, if you often smoke or you are passive smokers, nicotine can stay for a period of 15 to 20 days in urine. After this period, no traces of toxic can be found in your urine.
- In saliva: It stays in your saliva up to 4 days.
- In hair: It can stay in hair for months instead of for days. It is more surprised that many hair tests can detect nicotine for up to a year. However, it is normally found within 1-3 months after you stop smoking.
There are differences of the time to stay in each part of the body. You should know exactly the type of test to calculate the time needed to get nicotine level out of your body.
Factors That Influence
Despite the time supplied above, the time it stays in your body can be a little different because there are many factors that can affect like frequency of nicotine usage or the individual variation.
1. The frequency of usage
When you use tobacco frequently, you will have more nicotine level in the body than people who use infrequently. Depend on the frequency of usage, tobacco users are divided into 3 groups:
- Light Users: They are people who just smoke once a week; nicotine will be detected within 2 – 3 days after using.
- Medium Users: These people only smoke one to three times a week. Their nicotine level detected in the body is a little higher than the first group.
- Heavy Users: They are addicted to nicotine or can consume it on a continuous level. When being tested, the nicotine level will be found within 10 days or even more after you have consumed it for the last time.
2. The individual variation
The speed of elimination depends on many individual factors like: diet and meals, age, genes and hormones.
- Diet and meals: As mentioned above, it can reach blood in 7 seconds after smoking. Meals, posture, exercises or drugs are factors that can affect the blood flow- where the nicotine metabolism happens. After the end of a meal, hepatic blood flow increases about 30% and as a result, the nicotine elimination rises up to 40%. It is also very surprised to know that menthol is an element affecting the nicotine metabolism. Menthol is a popular ingredient that is used in many foods, mouthwash, toothpaste, and cigarettes. It is reported that menthol can inhibit nicotine metabolism in human liver. There is a research showing that metabolism of nicotine in mentholated cigarette smokers is inhibited more when compared with that in non-mentholated cigarettes smokers.
- Age: Age plays an important role in affecting the amount of time a body needs to eliminate nicotine. Because when you are young, your liver can work well to clear poisons from your body. The older you are, the harder the liver has to work.
- Genes and hormones: Many researches show that gene variation can lead to the difference in the rate of nicotine metabolism. They also show that the Asians, Africa, Americans metabolize nicotine more slowly than the Caucasians or Hispanics. Sex hormones also made the difference in the metabolism. It is discovered that with the same level, women can absorb more quickly than men can. Among women, the person who is pregnant or has the high level of estrogen can metabolize nicotine faster than others can.
3. Time of a day
During a day, elimination variety can fluctuate approximately 17%. From 6 p.m. to 3 a.m is the period that the slowest clearance happens. Besides, when you sleep, the hepatic blood flow declines and so does the nicotine clearance.
4. Medications
During a day, a person can use many another pharmaceutical products which can inhibit the nicotine metabolism like rifampicin, dexamethasone, and phenobarbital although these drugs by themselves can induce CYP2A6-a type of enzyme responsible for the oxidation of nicotine and cotinine.
These factors explain why there are differences in the time that nicotine can stay among people. Understand those clearly can help you estimate more accurately that time.
Nicotine Drug Test
After you get more information about nicotine level in your body, let’s discover the nicotine drug test. As mentioned above, it can be found in 4 positions: blood, urine, saliva and hairs corresponding with 4 type of test.
- Blood test: The blood test for nicotine is very accurate so it is widely used in the world. Firstly, a blood sample will be got for this test. Then, a lab will be used to measure the presence of nicotine.
- Urine test: It is very cheap and easy to this test. This test is also a common nicotine test. Just like the blood test, a urine sample will be collected. Then a strip is dipped into the urine for 5 minutes. If the result is positive, nicotine is present in the urine and in contrast if the result is negative.
- Saliva test: It is the most sensitive test for detection. The method is rather similar to the urine test. The first step would be collecting a saliva sample. They will soak a test strip into the saliva for 20 minutes. The appropriate amount of nicotine that you have used will be measured by this test.
- Hair test: As this type of test is rather expensive, they use this test when all other forms of tests are unsatisfactory. Because it takes a long time for hair to metabolize nicotine, hair test is a reliable test to determine nicotine even if you stop smoking for a time. As usual, a hair sample would be obtained. In case of being bald, hair from other parts of the body still can be used.
As you can see, there are many ways to test the level of nicotine in your body. If your tests are about coming, you should do many ways to get that out of our body.
Tips To Get Nicotine Out Of Your System Fast
If you are trying to get nicotine out of your systems as fast as possible, our tips may be useful for you to speed up that process.
- Drink water: we might not need to mention too many advantages of water to body anymore. Even if you are healthy, you still have to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. Kidneys can eliminate nicotine and other toxins when you drink lots of water, your body will rid all sorts of toxins.
- Eat foods that contain antioxidants: Diet can affect the metabolism and antioxidants from food can speed up the nicotine elimination. Fruit juices are a good idea but you should not put sugar into to have the most effective benefit.
- Eat foods that increase production of bile: Bile can help you to detoxify the body and remove nicotine effectively. Some examples of these foods are onion or garlic.
- Do exercise: An appropriate exercise level will help you speed up the metabolism. However, it doesn’t mean that the more you exercise the more nicotine level your body can rid. You should consult your physical trainers to have healthy exercise programs.
Here is some useful information about how long nicotine stays in your blood, urine, saliva and hair as well as tips to get nicotine out of your body fast. We hope you can use our tips not only for the purpose of acceleration of the nicotine metabolism for the upcoming tests but you can also apply them daily to be always healthy.