Users, who tend to be older men, keep chewing tobacco in their mouths for several hours the tell-tale bulge often gives them away. Snuff, which is much more common today, is a powdered tobacco that's usually sold in cans. Users place a pinch of the tobacco between the lower lip and the gum, usually under the canine teeth. Oral cancer. This disease, which affects the mouth, tongue, cheek, gums and lips, is one of the most deadly forms of cancer. The five-year survival rate is only 59 percent.
Other cancers. Carcinogens in the tobacco also increase a user's risk for cancers of the pharynx, larynx, and esophagus. Breast cancer and cardiovascular disease have been linked to chewing tobacco. Nicotine dependence. Nicotine levels in smokeless tobacco are even higher than cigarette tobacco. Nicotine addition can lead to an artificially increased heart rate and blood pressure.
Tooth abrasion. Grit and sand found in smokeless tobacco products scratch teeth and wear away the enamel. Gum recession. With continued use, more and more tobacco is needed to get the same feeling. Many smokeless tobacco users say it is harder to quit smokeless tobacco than cigarettes. Some people believe smokeless tobacco is OK because it does not cause health problems from smoke and smoking.
This does not make smokeless tobacco safe, however. Some smokeless tobacco delivers more nicotine than cigarettes, making addiction more likely. There are also direct effects of smokeless tobacco on the mouth.
Bad breath. Smokeless tobacco can give you really bad breath and discolored teeth. This will not help anyone's social life. Dental problems. Smokeless tobacco's direct and repeated contact with the gums causes the gums to recede and become diseased, leading to loose teeth.
Many forms of smokeless tobacco also contain sugar. This mixes with the plaque on the teeth to form acid that eats away at tooth enamel to cause cavities and chronic painful sores. Cancer of the mouth including the lip, tongue, and cheek and throat can occur most often at the spot in the mouth where the tobacco is held. Surgical removal of cancer is often needed, and parts of the face, tongue, cheek, or lip must often be removed too. A white, leathery-like patch called leukoplakia may form in the mouth.
The patches vary in size and shape and can become cancerous. If you have a patch in your mouth, your doctor should examine it right away. Heart problems. The constant flow of nicotine into your body causes many side effects including increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and sometimes irregular heartbeats, which may increase risk for sudden death from a condition ventricular arrhythmias in which the heart does not beat properly.
Nicotine poisoning. You can stay in front of your Bloomberg terminal, spitting into empty soda cans. He prefers not to use his name, since he's in the closet at both work and home where he keeps the tins hidden in the basement, away from his wife.
I justified my habit because I told myself I was doing research. Max Shea—who works in international equities at Cantor Fitzgerald—tells me he dips when he has to work late nights writing reports. A third tells me, "There are more of us than you think. I live in a small Connecticut town where a lot of people work in finance. And the gas station here has a whole fridge full of smokeless tobacco. I am doing a research project on my family history and go visit a seventy-two-year-old genealogist at her home to discuss the latest findings.
She goes to the kitchen and hands me a glass. It's got a picture of a nineteenth-century rabbi on it—part of a collection, she tells me. Her eyes widen. You shouldn't be spitting on the rabbi. Spitting is the most controversial part of smokeless tobacco. It's the part my family hates most, thanks to the half-filled Diet Coke cans I often forget to clean up that dot the tables of my apartment.
Miraculously, no one has yet taken a swig. True dip fans swear by expectorating. And yet not all smokeless tobacco requires spitting.
I figure it's time to test out some saliva-free versions. First, I try a tin of dry snuff. Snuff is powdered tobacco you can ingest by snorting. It's got a long history—Beethoven and Napoleon loved to carry around boxes of it—but snuff just reminds me of cheap, dirty-looking cocaine.
When I sniff a little mound, it makes my nose burn, then I sneeze repeatedly. I can't get over the brown powder all over my hands. I look like I just came in from plowing potato fields. Next I test out an increasingly popular product called snus. Snus started in Sweden, where they remain hugely popular. They're little individual packets of tobacco, each one the size of a Chiclet. You tuck the snus into your upper lip, not the lower, because it's the Scandinavian way.
There's some evidence snus might be a tad healthier than chew, though I wouldn't bet my insurance premium on it. Regardless, they cause much less saliva. You rarely if ever need to spit. I tuck a snus into my lip one afternoon at my laptop and immediately fall for them. Snus are clean, compartmentalized, modern—a bite-sized version of Ikea.
They're prepackaged and convenient, like my kids' juice boxes. The Dip Doctor would be disappointed. And I feel un-American. But several of the Wall Street guys tell me they prefer the snus as well—they're easier to hide at work. You can have one tucked into your cheek at a meeting, no cup required. Plus, they can be surprisingly strong. There's a brand called Thunder that turned my brain to Jell-O. So for the next week, I go on a snus binge, tucking away a half dozen a day.
It's been a month. This morning, I woke up, checked the time on my iPhone, and then, while still in bed, tucked a snus into my upper lip. The most harmful cancer-causing substances in smokeless tobacco are tobacco-specific nitrosamines TSNAs. TSNA levels vary by product, but the higher the level the greater the cancer risk.
Many studies have shown high rates of leukoplakia in the mouth where users place their chew or dip. Leukoplakia is a gray-white patch in the mouth that can become cancer. The longer a person uses oral tobacco, the more likely they are to have leukoplakia. Stopping tobacco might help clear up the spot, but treatment may be needed if there are signs of early cancer.
Tobacco stains teeth and causes bad breath. It can also irritate or destroy gum tissue. Many regular smokeless tobacco users have receding or swollen gums, tooth decay and cavities from the high sugar content in the tobacco , scratching and wearing down abrasion of teeth, and bone loss around the teeth. The surface of the tooth root may be exposed where gums have shrunken. All of these can cause teeth to loosen and fall out.
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