How Long Does Nicotine Stay in Your System from Vaping
                     How Long Does Nicotine Stay in Your System from 
 Vaping?
wotofo.com/blogs/vape-guide/how-long-does-nicotine-stay-in-your-body
The majority of people, some vapers included, aren’t aware of how much time n 
icotine  stays in human bodies before being fully flushed out. Consequently, they are 
much
interested in knowing how long the addictive substance remains in their system. What 
if  they are to be subjected to nicotine testing in their places of work; if it turns out to be  
positive they might lose their job! Or maybe as a condition of occupation to determine  
their state of health for insurance cover.
That’s how serious the matter can be. As unfair as it sounds, most employers and
insurance firms do not have to differentiate between cigarette users and consumers of  
nicotine in other safer forms, such as vaping or smokeless tobacco methods. Even 
when  you’ve been consuming nicotine in the form of nicotine gum – which has been 
approved  safe for long-term consumption by food and drug authorities, this is as well 
treated as a  potential health risk and can lead to costlier insurance prices.
Insurance firms treat nicotine presence as a reliable sign that the person is an active  
tobacco user if not an NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) product user that often 
implies  an ex-smoker (and a person who is susceptible to returning to the smoking 
habit, as over  90% of NRT product users usually do).
Before getting into the subject of the matter, we need to understand what nicotine is. It’s  
simply the addictive substance in cigarettes, v ape flavors, and other tobacco products.  
When you smoke a cigarette or take vape a nicotine-saturated vape flavor, your body 
will  absorb nearly 90 percent of the nicotine.
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Nicotine elements will still be present in your bloodstream after you no longer feel their 
 impact. Arguably, vaping is a relatively recent method of nicotine ingestion hence its  
safety and long-term impacts on the human body are yet to be properly established. It  
was until recently when several health authorities across the globe began 
investigating  the outbreak of certain lung infections related to the use of e-cigs and 
other vaping  products.
After consuming tobacco or its products, nicotine is retained into your bloodstream for 
 some time even after you’ve quitted using it. Medical tests on your urine, blood, 
saliva,  hair follicles, or nails will show traces of nicotine present in your body.
How Long Does Nicotine Stay in Your System?
Whenever you c hew or inhale tobacco, or unknowingly inhale secondary smoke from  
your hood, nicotine gets absorbed into your bloodstream. While in the bloodstream, 
most  of the nicotine is broken down by enzymes secreted in the liver to become 
cotinine.
Amazingly, the amount of cotinine in your bloodstream is proportionate to the amount 
of  nicotine ingested.
The substance is in turn excreted from your body systems through the kidneys in form of  
urine. Interestingly, cotinine can still be diagnosed in your body even after three months 
of  ingesting nicotine into your bloodstream. Nevertheless, how long cotinine, nicotine for  
that  matter, depends on the way/method and how often you ingest it. For instance, if you  
consume nicotine – In cigarette, vape flavor, or in whatever form – infrequently, a test on  
your urine will show traces of cotinine even on the third to fourth day from ingestion.
If you usually have regular exposure to nicotine, this “chemical” can stay in your body for  
up to three weeks from your last day of exposure. For a test on your urine to turn 
positive,  it will depend upon when the urine sample was presented relative to the last 
time you’re  exposed to nicotine. If you are an active consumer of nicotine, the test may 
turn positive  at approximately 1000 ng/mL. Nevertheless, different test labs may have 
varied positivity  ranges, so it is always important to discuss your results with your 
examiner – doctor in  that case.
Now, how long will nicotine elements be present in your bloodstream? And the answer is  
simple; one to three days. On the other hand, a cotinine test can be positive up to the  
tenth day from the last nicotine exposure. Nicotine tests can be conducted using both  
qualitative and quantitative means that detect nicotine, cotinine, and anabasine – a  
breakdown product of nicotine. Sometimes we experience false positives from nicotine  
testing, particularly from blood testing. This’s is often due to the presence of thiocyanate 
–  a compound commonly found in foodstuffs such as cabbage and broccoli, and 
sometimes  in various medications.
In other body fluids such as saliva, nicotine can take around four days to get 
completely  flushed from the. Interestingly, nicotine elements can generally be present 
in your hair  follicles approximately three months from your last exposure. And 
depending upon the
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kind of hair test conducted, a nicotine test can turn to be positive even a year after 
your  previous exposure. Nevertheless, although nicotine testing can be tested using 
the hair  follicle test, the commonest tests are conducted on urine, saliva, and blood as 
the hair  test is a bit costlier.
Test Methods
Whereas there’re test methods to detect nicotine in the body, it is a bit difficult to 
diagnose  nicotine in human blood three days after the previous exposure, or in the urine 
four days  after consumption. This is the reason the majority of employers and insurance 
firms aren’t  concerned with how much time nicotine remains in the body. Instead, they go 
for a
metabolite of nicotine, particularly cotinine.
Nevertheless, how long cotinine stays in your body may depend upon your gender, 
ethnic  background, type of medication administered previously, and diet among others. 
For
instance, in terms of gender, men often maintain higher levels of cotinine compared with 
 women. With the advancement of science and technology, advice on cut-points (the  
degree above which someone being subjected to nicotine testing is regarded positive 
for  nicotine consumption) has been altered. Below are the proven testing methods:
1. Urine Testing
Compared with saliva and blood serum, urine contains a larger amount of cotinine –  
approximately more than six times – and this makes it an ideal option for testing a low  
concentration of nicotine. Moreover, the test is simple and less expensive. It all involves  
soaking a test strip into a sample of urine for some minutes. Ultimately, either a positive 
or  negative result is given.
2. Blood Testing
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Blood testing is an accurate method of testing the presence of nicotine in your body. It’s  
capable of detecting both nicotine and cotinine. Unfortunately, it is one of the most  
expensive methods making it a less frequently used technique compared with other  
testing approaches. Ordinary, piercing an injection and drawing blood from a test 
subject  requires some expertise and training, and most importantly a visit to a 
laboratory.
This whole process makes the entire method a bit cumbersome and in turn expensive 
for  the employer and employee. In nicotine blood testing, two kinds of testing are used: 
a  simpler one that indicates whether the test is positive or negative and a complex one 
that  indicates the degree/level/amount of nicotine and cotinine present.
3. Saliva Testing
Due to its high degree of sensitivity, nicotine saliva testing is becoming the commonest  
testing technique and a handsome number of labs and insurance firms are switching to 
it.  The degrees of cotinine that this test can detect are approximately a third as high as 
the  one tested in blood serum and close to a fifteenth than in urine. The biggest 
advantage of  this kind of test is it’s easy to accomplish. To test the presence of cotinine, 
employers  usually use kits generated by 3rd party laboratories. Often, swabs are taken 
from the  subject’s mouth, inserted into a self-sealing container, and shipped to a testing 
lab. The  employer or the insurance company gets the results via telephone or online. 
Saliva  testing is far cheaper and less time-consuming than sending every individual 
employee to  the lab to get blood serums extracted from them.
4. Hair Testing
Testing the presence of cotinine from samples of hair follicles is an equally reliable and  
complicated process, a slow as well as expensive procedure. Hair testing is the 
preferred  option where the results of the abovementioned tests are losing clarity or are 
in doubt. It
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is often applied in scientific studies. The efficacy of the whole procedure is that 
cotinine  can be retained in hair samples for as long as three months.
The Concept of Half-Life
Two hours after smoking, vaping, or whatever kind of nicotine ingestion you use, your  
body will have eliminated close to half of it, implying that its half-life is around 2 hours. Its 
 short half-life implies that nicotine has short-term effects that vanish quickly, so users 
feel  like they want moreover a short time. Upon infusion into the bloodstream, nicotine 
is  broken down into over twenty substances such as cotinine, anabasine, nornicotine, et  
al.
These products are eventually excreted from the body as urine. Studies show that it  
takes  more than two weeks for the blood of someone who has consumed tobacco to 
reach the  same level of cotinine as another person who is a non-user. At the same time, 
it takes  several more weeks for cotinine levels in the urine to become low. The more 
someone  consumes tobacco and the higher their frequency of nicotine consumption, the 
longer  nicotine will take to leave their body.
Nevertheless, the exact time length taken for nicotine to completely clear from 
the  bloodstream differs from one person to another:
Nicotine stays longer in people aged 65 years and above
Compared to men, women are known to process nicotine at a faster rate, 
especially  when they are using birth control medications.
The human body takes longer to eliminate nicotine in users who have consumed 
it  more often and for a longer period.
Nicotine Withdrawal
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The ferocity, as well as the timescale of withdrawal signs, may vary, depending on the  
amount of nicotine an individual has consumed. For instance, it’s been found that  
smokers who consume five or fewer cigarettes per day may not experience severe  
physical symptoms as their bodies aren’t much dependent on the nicotine substance.  
Nonetheless, they may still experience emotional connections – craving- to smoking. 
In  the first few days to a couple of weeks after quitting nicotine consumption, 
withdrawal  symptoms are at their worst.
Actually, users experience the hardest time during the first week, and these 
symptoms  gradually weaken as time goes by. Some of the physical and physiological 
nicotine
withdrawal symptoms include anxiety and stress, irritation, depression, insomnia,
restlessness, polyphagia, focusing difficulty, et al. Even when all the physical symptoms  
have vanished, and all nicotine in the bloodstream has left the body, smokers or vapers  
may still experience the psychological urge to ingest more. Usually, this is often 
because  the individuals are used to smoking or vaping habits. The desire to ingest 
nicotine
worsens when you encounter triggering situations or occasions.
For example, when you’re stressed, on a vacation with friends who smoke, and when 
an  active smoker exposes you to secondary smoke among others. With time, these  
triggering situations become lesser and less powerful.
Do Insurance Companies Test For Nicotine?
Some insurance firms often conduct nicotine examinations on health insurance clients,  
while others examine for life assurance reasons. Most recently, several companies are  
altering their policies and allowing their clients to vape or consume smokeless tobacco  
while still being eligible to hold non-smokers’ rates. Interestingly, some firms are allowing 
 cigar smokers to do their stuff without raising any rate.
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If you are shopping around or looking for life insurance, be fair to your health and look for 
 the one that embraces reduced-risk nicotine consumption. In eth coming days, we are  
hoping that both the employers and insurance firms will consider the difference that 
exists  in risk between the consumption of nicotine through cigarette smoking and other 
safer
methods like vaping, and stop “victimizing” vapers as well as snus users.
Meantime, if you’re to be subjected to nicotine examination in your workplace for  
occupational or health insurance purposes, your best bet is to just abstain from nicotine  
consumption for at least two weeks. If you’re firmly secure in your current occupation,  
consider discussing with your establishment why they should encourage smoking  
employees in your firm to transition to low-risk nicotine consumption methods like 
vaping.
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