6 ms·

Nicotine gum is awful for your teeth and gums, and there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that it thins out hair.

• RandomInteger4 10y ago
  Perhaps, and I wouldn't know from first hand experience trying it myself, but I imagine it is almost guaranteed to be safer than smoking. For reference on that matter, my mother passed away a while back from lung cancer induced by smoking (small cell lung cancer).
  • dajohnson89 10y ago
    Yes nicotene gum is definitely safer than smoking, and also safer than playing russian roulette.
• nhaliday 10y ago
  Do you have a source for the first assertion? I can't find any studies on google. I'm skeptical because people so often attribute many of the negative effects of other chemicals in tobacco to nicotine with no evidence (a point the OP hammers home at https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine). Even the FDA seems comfortable with this conflation, as evidenced by their disposition toward e-cigs.
  • dajohnson89 10y ago
    Academic studies? No, sorry, I can't find any either. Here's a a source of anecdotal evidence, FWIW. http://www.askapatient.com/viewrating.asp?drug=18612&name=NICORETTE http://www.askapatient.com/viewrating.asp?drug=18612&name=NI...
    • nhaliday 10y ago
      It would be pretty hard to separate the effects of nicotine from the effects of a lifetime of smoking + potentially poor dental hygiene (gum disease is rampant https://www.perio.org/consumer/cdc-study.htm https://www.perio.org/consumer/cdc-study.htm) + aging. Per wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine) the general medical consensus is that nicotine poses few risks on its own for nonpregnant adults, besides vasoconstriction and dependence.