Possible Side Effects (and what you can do about them): Skin redness, itching, or burning (rotate the patch to a different site each day). Headache (try a lower dose patch). Sleep disturbances such as difficulty sleeping and vivid dreams (remove patch at night).
Mild itching, burning, or tingling may occur when the patch is first applied. This should go away within 24 hours. Call your doctor if you have a rash or if your skin is swollen or red. Do not put on a new patch.
It is normal to feel mild tingling, itching, or burning when you put the patch on. This feeling usually lasts 15 minutes to 1 hour. When you take off an old patch, your skin may be red where the patch was. Your skin should not stay red for more than 1 day.
When the nicotine unlocks the receptor, a feel-good chemical called dopamine is released, giving you a little hit or buzz. This doesn't last long. The nicotine soon fades making the receptor eager for more.
How long does a nicotine patch take to work? It can take up to eight hours for the nicotine in your patch to reach a comfortable, steady level of nicotine in the blood stream.
Determining the patch dose
For most people who smoke one pack per day or less, the following is a reasonable starting point: more than 15 cigarettes per day: 21 mg patch (Step 1) seven to 15 cigarettes per day: 14 mg patch (Step 2) fewer than seven cigarettes per day: 7 mg patch (Step 3).
Can I smoke with the patch on? No, and this is important! Smoking while wearing the nicotine patch can not only increase your addiction and tolerance to nicotine, but it also puts you at risk for nicotine toxicity. Having too much nicotine in the body can cause dangerous heart rhythm problems that could be fatal.
Usual places to put the patch are the upper chest, upper arm, shoulder, back, or inner arm. Avoid putting the patch on areas of irritated, oily, scarred, or damaged skin.
Smoking while on nicotine patches will help subjects to reduce their expired carbon monoxide levels from the levels they were before they started using the patch. Subjects will also decrease their daily consumption of cigarettes.
The 24-hour patch may cause sleep disturbance, such as difficulty sleeping or unusually vivid dreams. Removing the patch a few hours before you go to sleep may stop sleep problems. Choosing the right patch strength is important to your success in quitting smoking.
“There is now evidence that electronic cigarettes with nicotine are likely to increase the chances of quitting successfully compared to nicotine gum or patches,” said Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, an expert at the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group who co-led the review.
Nicotine Replacement Therapy is safe to use. Quit-smoking medicines containing nicotine (NRTs) do not cause death and diseases like cigarettes do. Most of the dangers of smoking are due to the hundreds of toxic chemicals in the cigarette smoke, not the nicotine.
Nicotine Patch Dosage
The 21 mg patch is usually recommended as a starting point for people who smoke a pack of 20 cigarettes or more daily.
Press patch firmly in place for 10 seconds so it will stick well to your skin. You can bathe, shower or swim while wearing the patch. You can put tape over the patch if needed. Avoid wearing the patch on the same area more than once a week.
Please note you can't cut nicotine patch into smaller pieces because doing so might affect how this medication gets absorbed into your body. To get the full benefit of nicotine patch, apply one full patch to your body at a time.
Because nicotine has a stimulating effect on the intestinal tract, the amount delivered by the nicotine patch may help minimize constipation as you are quitting smoking. You should not rely on the patch for constipation relief, however.
Yes, you read that correctly; the success rate of the nicotine patch, nicotine gum, sprays and lozenges is less than 10%. It's near impossible to get a recent accurate figure from Google, but an independent scientific study* conducted shows a success rate of 3.4% for cold turkey and 6.2% for the nicotine patch.
One cigarette may seem harmless, but it can quickly lead to resuming your regular smoking habit, even if you've gone a long time without smoking. Nine out of 10 people return to smoking after having just one cigarette. And as Jorenby points out, this usually happens fairly quickly.
Studies have found that the most common negative feelings associated with quitting are feelings of anger, frustration, and irritability. These negative feelings peak within 1 week of quitting and may last 2 to 4 weeks (1).
The (24 hour patches) patches slowly release nicotine as you sleep and during your REM cycle (your dream state) this would cause your mind to become more active. It is relatively common for quitting smokers on NRT to report unusually vivid dreams.
Nicotine gum and patches do not expose the lungs to much nicotine, not even from the bloodstream, Dr.
Patches can provide a steady level of nicotine in the body to help lessen withdrawal, while the gum can be used to more quickly relieve cravings as they happen. If you have strong cravings while using the nicotine gum, make sure you are using a strong enough dose and that you are using the gum often enough.
Is it harder to quit smoking the longer you smoke? The longer you've been a smoker the more it will be part of your everyday routine and lifestyle. This may make it harder to kick the habit, as not only do you have to stop smoking, but you also have to change the way your routine works day-to-day.
Light smokers have been classified as smoking less than 1 pack/day, less than 15 cig/day, less than 10 cig/day, and smoking 1–39 cig/week (9, 14).