Can't live without it: The nicotine addiction
Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 12:42
in Health & Medicine
The first pull on a cigarette should send you into convulsions. The brain proteins that nicotine affects are nearly identical to a receptor protein on muscle cells that tells them to contract, but nicotine doesn't affect your muscles. "Muscle proteins couldn't be very sensitive to nicotine," says chemist Dennis Dougherty. "Because if they were, smoking would be intolerable -- every puff would activate every muscle in your body."