NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Chewing nicotine gum for many months or years appears to have some of the same negative health effects as smoking cigarettes, a new study suggests.
The findings indicate that former smokers should use the craving-quieting gum only as a temporary crutch while kicking the habit, according to the report in this week's issue of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.
In the new study, 20 middle-aged men who chewed the gum for an average of four years were compared to 20 of their same age, nicotine-free counterparts. The result? Those who chewed the gum were significantly more likely to have insulin resistance, a condition that increases the risk of getting non-insulin dependent diabetes and dying of heart disease -- also known to be more common in smokers.
Insulin resistance is a condition in which the cells of the body are unable to utilize blood sugar because they are less sensitive to the presence of insulin.
The study confirms that nicotine is the substance that causes some of the ill effects associated with smoking and with chewing tobacco.
"These findings suggest that nicotine is the major constituent in cigarette smoke that leads to insulin resistance, metabolic abnormalities associated with the insulin resistance syndrome, and increased cardiovascular morbidity," wrote lead study author Dr. Bjorn Eliasson, of the Lundberg Laboratory for Diabetes Research at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden.
"Thus, the use of nicotine replacement therapy during smoking cessation should be transient and limited."
But don't use this as an excuse to go back to smoking. The gum-chewers did not have all the ill effects associated with tobacco -- they did not have low blood levels of HDL, or "good" cholesterol, and high levels of artery-clogging LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, that smokers do.
Source: Circulation (1996;94:878-881)
