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Atlantic
6 days ago
- Sport
- Atlantic
A Fast Tour de France—No Doping Required
For fans of the Tour de France, the word extraterrestrial has a special resonance—and not a fun, Spielbergian one. In 1999 the French sports newspaper L'Équipe ran a photo of Lance Armstrong on its front page, accompanied by the headline 'On Another Planet.' This was not, in fact, complimenting the American athlete for an out-of-this-world performance in cycling's premier race, but was code for 'he's cheating.' At that point, L'Équipe 's dog-whistling accusation of doping was based on mere rumor. More than a decade passed before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency declared Armstrong guilty of doping. His remarkable streak of seven Tour wins was wiped from the record, but misgivings about extraterrestrial performances have never left the event. L'Équipe was back at it in 2023 when it used the headline 'From Another Planet,' this time for the Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard, who won that year's Tour. And earlier this year, the U.S. magazine Velo reported on the 'other worldly' performances of Tadej Pogačar, the Slovenian favorite to win this year's race, which will wind up in Paris on Sunday. Despite the astronomical language, no evidence at all suggests that Vingegaard and Pogačar are doping—which makes their recent dominance of the Tour all the more striking. This year Pogačar is in a class of his own: Earlier this week, he surpassed his 100th career win and could be on target to beat his astonishing 2024 record of winning nearly half the races he started in. 'The conversations I hear are: How is Tadej Pogačar better than rocket-fueled Lance Armstrong? ' Alex Hutchinson, the 'Sweat Science' columnist for Outside magazine, told me. ' What is it that has changed? ' This was precisely my curiosity because—by all the available data, and there are a lot—the current crop of contestants for the Tour de France podium are faster and better than ever before, and that includes the bad old days of systematic doping. Travis T. Tygart: Bad regimes are winning at sport's expense The sport's problem was once so endemic that it reached beyond the pro peloton and down even to the humble amateur ranks in which I used to compete. We would shake our heads when occasionally someone got busted for taking an illegal substance— just to try to win 50 bucks in a park race. Yet the story of the past decade has been a reversal of the old vicious cycle. That alone was notable enough, but what's truly remarkable is the sport's virtuous cycle, which I wanted to understand better: not just being clean but having attained an entirely new level of human performance. For a century, the sheer rigor of a bicycle race lasting three weeks and covering thousands of kilometers, up and down mountain passes, lent itself to artificial stimulants. Riders were always looking for a little help, but the big change came in the 1990s with abuse of a medical drug named erythropoietin, which increases red-blood-cell production. That led to years of extraterrestrial performances, fueled—as Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey —by a sophisticated blood-doping scheme. Travis T. Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, led the investigation of Armstrong and his co-conspirators, which was crucial to ending that dire era and setting the sport on a better path. 'What we're hearing—and we have good sources in the peloton and the community—is that the bias is in favor of clean athletes: that you can be clean and win,' he told me. This was a strong statement from the ultimate clean-sport cop. 'In anti-doping, my job is to be skeptical but not cynical,' he went on. 'All athletes deserve sports fans' trust and belief in them, even if they're doing amazing things that we've never before seen.' No one I spoke with for this article, including riders past and present, dissented from this view or raised suspicions about performance-enhancing drug use. The gold standard of cycling performance—which boils down to a rider's ability to push against the wind and go uphill fast—is a high power-to-weight ratio, given in watts per kilogram. The benchmark figure is how many watts per kilo a cyclist can sustain for a one-hour effort. Every rider now has a power meter fitted to their bike, so they know their numbers in a constant, real-time way (together with heart rate, speed, and other measurements). 'Cycling is more quantifiable than any other sport,' said Hutchinson, who is also the author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. 'The power meter really gives you a window into the soul of the cyclist.' The riders now train with the data, they race with the data, they publish their data on Strava and similar training apps, they probably dream about their data. So we know that during a crucial mountain stage in last year's Tour de France—won convincingly by Pogačar on his way to overall victory—he produced approximately 7 watts per kilo for nearly 40 minutes. His main rival, Vingegaard again, actually tried an attack that failed, despite an estimated output of more than 7 watts per kilo for nearly 15 minutes. These were efforts in the Pyrenees; at sea level, the numbers would be even higher. (This all gets geeky quickly.) Within living memory, a figure of 5 watts per kilo would have been enough to make a professional rider competitive in a multistage race such as the Tour; and at his blood-doped peak, two decades ago, Armstrong was averaging an estimated 6 watts per kilo. In 2004, on that same climb in the Pyrenees, he took nearly six minutes longer than Pogačar did last year. In other words, Armstrong on dope then would be an also-ran next to Pogačar today. From the May 2018 issue: The man who brought down Lance Armstrong For Hutchinson, this realization of human potential is a triumph of sports science. 'Pogačar's getting better every year because the technology, the ability to control his training and racing, is getting better,' he told me. His hypothesis is that all of these data, gathered and processed, are helping an athlete not only maximize their output but also optimize it. Data are 'allowing people to live on the edge of their capacities more effectively than they used to,' he said. To make a mechanical analogy—endurance athletes love to talk about their 'engine'—a pro cyclist knows exactly where their red line is and how to live right on it. 'Every sport sees evolution to a certain extent,' Sean Quinn, a professional cyclist who was the 2024 U.S. national road-race champion, told me from his altitude-training camp in Europe. 'But the reason cycling has seen such an accelerated evolution in the last 20 years is because of the evolution of science across so many different dimensions.' Measuring riders' wattage is only the beginning of optimizing their performance. Inevitably, there's an app for that: A premium subscription to VeloViewer means that 'nine out of 10 guys in the peloton have seen a large part of the course before riding it,' Quinn explained. Highly accurate long-range weather forecasting can predict the wind speed and direction for a given race and course, Quinn said. That information helps cycling teams decide when to use aerodynamic but heavier wheels over lighter ones that produce more wind resistance. The improvement in equipment is relentless. A bike is limited to a minimum weight (about 15 pounds), but as long as it meets certain regulations of dimension and geometry, its drag coefficient can be wind tunnel–tested to the nth degree. And not just the bike itself—everything is subject to this aerodynamic imperative: the rider's helmet, jersey, shoes, even socks. Less drag means more speed, and fewer wasted watts maintaining that speed. Much of this technological advance can be attributed to the philosophy of 'marginal gains,' pioneered by the British Olympic cycling team in the early 2000s. At the time, short-distance events held in the Olympics' velodrome were regarded as a sideshow by the pro peloton, whose riders mostly showed up only for the more prestigious road races. By that happenstance, the Olympic velodrome became an arena for clean sport—and a laboratory for technical innovation. 'They made incremental improvements,' Phil Gaimon, a former U.S. pro, now an author and podcaster, told me. 'You make 100 of them and they add up in a big way.' As the doping culture waned, steady advances in equipment and training ultimately led U.K. riders to a string of Tour de France victories in the 2010s. Soon, the whole peloton had to get with the program: Everyone is an incrementalist now. 'Equipment's improved,' Gaimon said, but 'probably the main thing in the last couple of years would just be nutrition.' Tygart, the anti-doping chief, agreed: 'The nutrition is significantly different. Riders are fueling way more and in different ways from what they did in the past.' Eating more marks a big change from past custom, which Gaimon summed up as: 'Here's your apple, go ride for six hours.' Cyclists have always responded to the obvious logic that when the road goes uphill, the lighter you are, the better. In the years before he turned professional, Quinn was aware of a 'big movement toward weight loss and high-volume training, a lot of hours on the bike, and being as skinny as possible.' Until the 2020s, many riders still believed that fasted training—or, as Quinn says, 'functional starvation'—was the way to go. 'Especially in the past five years, it's become public knowledge that that is the opposite of what you want to do.' Racers are now constantly replenishing calories as they ride, in a highly calibrated way: They know exactly how many grams of food to eat and how often. This all adds up to an awful lot of energy bars and gels, as another former pro rider, George Hincapie, a co-host (with Armstrong and others) of the cycling podcast The Move, attested. Although he retired in 2012, his 17-year-old son Enzo now races on a development squad affiliated with Quinn's team. 'The amount of nutrition that shows up at my house for his training rides is mind-boggling,' Hincapie told me. 'It drives my wife nuts: boxes and boxes of nutrition.' But in the race to eat, not all calories are equal. Off the bike, quality meals are now a priority at all times—during training periods, in hotels at races, in the off-season. I spoke with Hannah Grant, a Danish TV chef and author who spent several seasons preparing food for the Saxo Bank pro-cycling team in the 2010s. At first, she encountered stiff resistance to the dietary changes she was trying to introduce: more vegetables, whole grains, no white pasta, no refined sugars when not on the bike. 'I was called 'the spawn of Satan' for taking the ketchup off the table,' she told me. A turning point came when one rider on the team was found to be gluten-intolerant, and Grant was able to change his diet in a way that hugely helped his performance. 'He was, like, 'This is working!'' she said. 'And then the other riders were, like, 'What's he doing that we need to do?'' Grant follows the latest practices because she now provides recipes to Vingegaard's team. 'Each rider will have the day's menu on their app,' she said, 'and it will tell the rider: You can have 37.5 grams of lentils; you can have 92.8 grams of chicken; and so on. You see them standing with their phones at the buffet.' Fueling the engine properly might seem blindingly obvious for participation in a race that will require a cyclist to burn 4,000 to 8,000 calories a day. But because riders tend to be conservative, even superstitious, in their loyalty to tried routines, shifting the culture took some time. Today's generation of rising stars are digital natives for whom ignoring the data and the apps is unthinkable: You can't win without them. To those of us who love the sport of cycling, the notion that intelligence has proved stronger than even the most fiendish cheating is terribly appealing. In today's Tour de France, I'm tempted to see not just a redemption narrative but an arc toward human perfectibility—and need to remind myself that, back in the worst doping years, fans were routinely fed supposedly technical reasons for the extraterrestrial performances: For instance, Armstrong was said to be more efficient because he pedaled at a higher cadence than other riders and had great 'ankling' technique in his pedal stroke. So that history does make one legitimately skeptical of claims about magical technical gains. No one I spoke with would rule out that doping still exists in the sport. Occasionally, athletes are still caught at it—but that now seems to happen more at lower levels of competition where the monitoring is less comprehensive. One permitted practice that offers some performance benefit is sodium-bicarbonate loading. You read that right: Chowing down baking soda helps aerobic performance in some circumstances by buffering lactic acid, a by-product of intense exercise. But eating an extra muffin won't do it, and the gastric distress associated with eating a lot seems a natural limiter. Another, more alarming method involves microdosing with carbon monoxide—a deadly gas—to mimic the effect of altitude training. Cycling's governing body has moved to ban the practice. But these are small matters compared with the rampant cheating that used to pervade the sport. Tygart's dictum—'be skeptical but not cynical'—makes ample sense. Assuming that Pogačar rolls over the finish line on the Champs-Élysées on Sunday with his lead intact and claims a fourth Tour victory, cycling fans seem safe to celebrate a clean, fair win for him and a victory for applied science. True, the Slovenian's preeminence has turned this year's race into something of a formality—a spectacle that can encourage a nostalgia for when the competition seemed to turn on other human factors such as race craft and guile, a capacity to suffer, and the will to overcome, rather than on data analysis and physiological optimization. Yet cycling never truly had a golden age. From a clean-sport perspective, it was bad old days all the way.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
A moment of sportsmanship in the Tour de France
In a perhaps unusual display of sportsmanship, riders in the Tour de France slowed down to wait for defending champion and pre-race favorite Tadej Pogačar, who crashed a few miles from the finish line Wednesday on stage 11. At the same time, the man who caused the crash faced an inbox full of threats and hate mail that left him 'terrified.' Norwegian rider Tobias Halland Johannessen unintentionally took out Pogačar on the outskirts of Toulouse as they rode among a group of contenders for the overall title, including the Slovenian's chief rival Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark. Pogačar skidded across the road but was on his feet quickly. A Tour mechanic on a motorcycle helped reattach his bike chain and he pedaled furiously to catch up. The group could have ridden hard to put some time on Pogačar, who was second overall at the time, but slowed enough for him to get back. 'We waited for him, like we should do, in my opinion,' Vingegaard said, per Velo. 'When it's like that, it's pure bad luck. It was not because he overcooked a corner or anything, he just overlapped wheels so that's the right way to do it.' A show of respect Vingegaard's teammate, American Matteo Jorgensen, said a 'collective decision' was made to allow Pogačar to catch up. 'It's the sporting decision,' Jorgenson said following the race. 'After a lot of the comments the other day, I guess accusations of unsportsmanlike stuff that I've never seen before from him, I think at least now he can be confident we're trying to beat him in a sporting way.' Jorgenson was referring to an incident in the feed zone on stage 7 where Pogačar appeared to push him out of the way. Though it doesn't always hold sway, Tour de France tradition dictates that in the event of an unfortunate crash or mechanical problem, the peloton sits up and waits for the rider in the yellow jersey. But Pogačar wasn't in yellow on Wednesday. Irish rider Ben Healy snagged the overall lead earlier in the week and had the jersey on his shoulders. While Healy isn't a threat to win the Tour, he could have extended his lead over Pogačar heading into Thursday's stage, possibly keeping him in yellow for another day. 'It was respect among the riders,' Healy said, per Cycling Weekly. 'Whenever someone makes a silly mistake in the final when there's not going to be a crazy difference from that point forward, I think anyone would appreciate the same.' Backlash scares Norwegian rider While fellow riders showed Pogačar some respect, race fans weren't as kind to Johannessen, who is riding in his second Tour de France. Johannessen said he's 'terrified' of the threats he has received since inadvertently cutting across Pogačar's front wheel, causing him to go down. He apologized on social media. 'I am terribly sorry for what happened to @TamauPogi. I was trying to follow a move and I can see that I was too close. I thought everyone would move to the right, but I made a mistake and would like to say sorry again. I hope he is as good as he can be after a crash like that," he posted on X. 'I would, of course, like to do it again and do it differently, but I can't. That feels (expletive), but I would not wish anyone the amount of threats I get in my inbox. I am terribly sorry, but also terrified of the hate from all the people. This feels very scary.' Cyclingnews reported seeing Johannessen apologize to Pogačar's team director Joxean 'Matxín' Fernández after the stage. 'Just now arriving to the car and the bus was Tobias to say sorry and that it was involuntary, and I spoke directly to Tadej, and for him it's not a problem,' he told the publication. Before starting Thursday's stage 12, Pogačar told reporters, 'I'm OK. Nothing too bad. Just my whole left arm is open completely with more of just like burned off skin and I hit my hip a little bit and shoulder. 'Today is another day. It's not the first time that I crashed and continued the race. We'll see how the legs are.' Apparently, Pogačar's legs are just fine. He blew away the field on Thursday's stage 12 in the Pyrenees and now has a 3-minute, 31-second lead on Vingegaard.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Shiba Inu's Futures Open Interest Tops 7M SHIB as Price Recovery Meets Whale Selling
Shiba Inu (SHIB) whales have stepped up their sales as the cryptocurrency's price recovery looks to gather steam alongside an uptick in futures market activity. The path of least resistance still appears to be on the higher side. SHIB, the world's second-largest meme token by market value, traded above the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the May-June sell-off as of writing, up over 1% on a 24-hour basis, according to CoinDesk data. Prices have gained over 5% in one week alongside bullish signals from key indicators such as the 14-day relative strength index. The momentum oscillator has crossed into the bullish territory above 50 for the first time since May 23. Supporting the bull case are volume figures, which have exceeded the daily average of 307.5 billion tokens during the recent price recovery phase, according to data tracked by CoinDesk's AI research. Meanwhile, open interest in perpetual futures listed on Binance has surged past the 7 million SHIB mark for the first time since May 23, according to data source Velo. The upswing, accompanied by positive funding rates, suggests an increased investor interest in betting on continue price gains. The ascent, however, could be challenged by whale and insiders moving trillions of coins to exchanges, with ten wallets controlling over half of the total token supply. Support zone at $0.00001172-$0.00001175 attracts high-volume buying interest. Resistance at $0.00001196 caps upside moves with consistent reversals. Volume exceeds 307.5 billion token daily average during recovery phase. Intraday high $0.00001195 represents 1% gain from session open. 7.25 billion token volume spike marks resistance test during breakout attempt. ( Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
XRP Futures Open Interest Zooms to 5-Month High as Traders Seek Bullish Bets
Futures tied to XRP XRP are flashing positive signals as the payments-focused cryptocurrency looks to build bullish momentum. On Monday, cumulative open interest in XRP perpetual futures listed on major exchanges briefly rose to 800 million XRP, the most since Jan. 19, according to data source Velo. The platform tracks activity in USDT and USD perpetuals listed on Binance, Bybit, OKX and Hyperliquid. Cumulative open interest is currently 743 million XRP, still 33% higher than on June 22, when XRP put in an interim price bottom at $1.90. Open interest refers to the number of futures contracts open or active at a given time. An increase represents an influx of money into the market, although it doesn't give any clues about the nature of the flows. That said, the recent surge in open interest seems to have been led by traders chasing bullish long bets. That's because perpetual funding rates have consistently held positive, occasionally topping the annualized 10% mark, pointing to demand for bullish exposure. Exchanges typically collect funding rates every eight hours and involve longs paying shorts when the demand for bullish bets results in perpetuals trading at a premium to the spot price. Also pointing to the bullish mood in the market is the "top trader long/short ratio" in the Binance-listed XRP/USDT market. As of writing, the ratio tracked by Coinglass stood at 1.90, implying that for every short, there are two long positions open. Short positions profit when the cryptocurrency declines. Last week, the Deribit-listed options market saw traders chase the higher strike XRP calls. Still, the cryptocurrency's spot price is yet to see notable bullish volatility. On Monday, prices rose to a high of $2.35, the level last seen at the end of May, only to quickly fall back to $2.25 and remain around that level. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
What to Know Before You Hop on the Zyn Bandwagon
When John,* 43, first heard about Zyn from a friend a couple years ago, it struck him as a 'much better alternative to chewing [tobacco],' he tells SELF, which he'd previously done on occasion to get a buzz and stay alert on long days. He didn't have to spit while using Zyn, an oral nicotine pouch, which made it easy to camouflage, and it didn't seem to have as many harmful-sounding ingredients. The pouches delivered a feel-good boost, and it wasn't long before he was powering through a tin of Zyns every two days, barely sleeping but always energized. He had an inkling that this lifestyle might backfire someday—but for the time being, he was hooked. Nicotine pouches like Zyn, On!, and Velo are little white, pillow-like sachets of nicotine salt and other chemicals and flavorings that you place between your lip and gum, which allows the nicotine to seep into tissues in your mouth. (Once you've soaked up its nicotine content for as long as you like—from a few minutes to an hour—you toss out what remains of the pouch.) How they're used is reminiscent of chewing tobacco or dip, but the big difference is, these don't contain tobacco, Mary Hrywna, PhD, MPH, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and founding member of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies, tells SELF. Nicotine is the key ingredient, either extracted from tobacco leaf or made synthetically. In other words, the pouches are to dip what vapes (a.k.a. electronic cigarettes or e-cigs) are to cigarettes. Their entry into the US market has charted a similar trajectory to that of vapes, surging among young people especially. Despite the fact that you have to be 21 to buy any form of nicotine or tobacco in the US, a 2025 study found that nicotine pouch use doubled among high schoolers between 2023 and 2024, just as the combined use of pouches and vapes also climbed substantially in this group. (We have the, ahem, Zynfluencers peddling Zyn on social media, along with podcasters like Joe Rogan, to thank for that.) This uptick helps explain why monthly sales of the pouches more than tripled between 2021 and 2024, even as usage in adults remains low—under 3% report ever popping one in, though that number is higher among folks who currently smoke (11%) or once did (7%). The pouches also share much of the same appeal as vapes, at least relative to their tobacco-laden cousins. For starters, they come in a bunch of fruity, minty, and candy-type flavors, 'which masks the inherent bitterness and other unpleasant sensory properties of nicotine,' Adam Leventhal, PhD, director of the Institute for Addiction Science at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, tells SELF. That's extra relevant for young folks, who are less likely to be used to the harshness of tobacco, he points out. Pouches are also more discreet to use, he adds. While vaping made it easier to sneak a puff without others noticing, Zyn-ing is all but invisible and hands-free. It was an easy sell for John, who found himself sporting Zyns even in the midst of activities like pickleball. But perhaps most concerning is how these pouches have co-opted the health halo once shrouding vapes. 'People know cigarettes are bad for you, and 'cigarettes' translates to 'tobacco,'' Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD, a developmental psychologist at Stanford University who studies adolescent decision-making, tells SELF. 'So the perceptions [around vapes] became, 'Oh, if it's not tobacco, it must be okay, it must be healthier.'' Now we're seeing the same thing with pouches, she says, which also have the added upside of not requiring any inhalation. It's true that bypassing the lungs makes these products less harmful than smoking or vaping, as does their tobacco-free status, Dr. Leventhal says. After all, tobacco is a source of multiple carcinogens, a.k.a. cancer-causing agents—nicotine isn't. In January 2025, the FDA authorized the marketing of several Zyn products after determining that the benefit of these pouches for people who switch to using them over cigarettes or smokeless tobacco 'is sufficient to outweigh the risks.' (Still, they aren't FDA-approved as a type of nicotine replacement therapy, or NRT, like nicotine gums and lozenges, nor have they gone through the stringent process required of these products to demonstrate safety and efficacy as a cessation aid.) Of course, being 'less harmful than the most dangerous legal product in our society doesn't mean the pouches are safe,' Michael Steinberg, MD, MPH, director of the Rutgers Tobacco Dependence Program, tells SELF. Just ask John: After about a year of frequent pouch use, the extra pep in his step was replaced by nagging stomach pain—and since leaving Zyn behind roughly two months ago, he's battled brain fog and depression too. While there isn't much research yet on how nicotine pouches, specifically, may harm your health (because of how new they are), we know plenty about the risks of their main ingredient. Below, experts share their concerns with oral nicotine pouches and what to be aware of if you're debating Zyn-ing. The most important thing to know about oral nicotine pouches? They can very effectively shuttle a lot of nicotine—a highly addictive chemical—to your brain, Dr. Steinberg says. Part of that is because nicotine salts can pack a concentrated amount of the stuff into a small sachet; in the US, Zyn pouches are sold in 3- and 6-milligram doses, while Velo goes up to 7 mg, and On! goes up to 8. (And it's plenty easy to put more than one of these puppies in your gums at once, potentially increasing your exposure by double or more.) For reference, a cigarette typically contains 10 to 15 mg of nicotine. But here's the kicker: With smoking a cig, you'll absorb just about 1 to 2 mg of that; a pouch sitting in your mouth for about an hour could leach up to half of its nicotine content into your blood, meaning you could wind up with as much, if not more, nicotine in your system than with smoking. The timeline of exposure, though, is much more gradual, Brittney Keller-Hamilton, PhD, an epidemiologist at The Ohio State University College of Medicine who studies tobacco regulatory science, tells SELF: The amount of nicotine in your blood usually peaks within a few minutes of starting a smoking session and dissipates pretty swiftly once you wrap up, whereas with a pouch, that nicotine level builds slowly (likely for the full length of time you're using it) and then takes longer to clear too. Mark*, 48, who started using Zyns when his son brought them home from college last summer, tells SELF it feels more like a 'slow drip' versus the 'sudden rush' of smoking or vaping. This gentler form of delivery could make it easier to consume more nicotine with the pouches than you realize. Getting hooked on Zyn or On! might seem like an innocuous, if eventually expensive and time-consuming, habit—after all, you're not getting exposed to the cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco products. (Worth noting: The pouches could contain other carcinogens; research on this has mostly been funded by the companies that make them, so it's hard to say for sure, but generally, their cancer potential is thought to be low.) The problem is, nicotine use, in and of itself, kicks off a negative cycle of dependence: 'Your brain gets used to having nicotine in your system, so you don't get the same mood or attention boost on it as you did previously,' Dr. Leventhal explains. Eventually, you need it 'just to have a normal level of functioning—the same as you had before you started.' There's a risk that, as addiction sets in, some people who've exclusively used the pouches may switch to 'more harmful products with a quicker mode of delivery like a cigarette or vape just to continue chasing that growing nicotine dependence,' Dr. Keller-Hamilton says. The worst part? Trying to ween off or quit typically brings a slew of withdrawal symptoms. The timing varies based on how long you've been using them, but you could experience things like anxiety, irritability, difficulty concentrating, restlessness, and depressed mood as soon as a few hours after taking out a pouch, Dr. Steinberg says. 'It's not a constellation of things you want to go through.' And these symptoms don't go away overnight, he notes. Depending on just how dependent your body has become on nicotine, you could be stuck feeling off—or outright miserable—for several days, weeks, or longer. Nearing two months sober from Zyn, John says he still feels 'like a shell of myself.' He has a shorter fuse and attention span, less energy. 'I used to be this vibrant, fun-loving guy who couldn't wait to wake up and see my kids,' he says. 'But now, I have trouble just getting out of bed in the morning.' The threat of nicotine dependence applies all the more to people under age 25 because of the fact that 'their brains aren't yet fully developed,' Dr. Halpern-Felsher says. One region that hasn't matured at this stage is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-order thinking and decision-making. It's the reason why, in our youth, we're more likely to act on impulse or emotion versus weigh long-term costs and benefits, Dr. Halpern-Felsher explains. At the same time, certain nicotine pathways in the brain are especially primed for action when we're young, she says, and pruned away later in life if they aren't used. Taken together, these factors make young adults more likely to both start Zyn-ing without thinking too deeply about it and to become addicted to nicotine. In fact, CDC data shows that people who begin smoking between ages 18 and 20 are more likely to develop nicotine dependence than those who pick up the habit later in life. Facing the milieu of withdrawal—irritability, anxiety, restlessness—could hit even harder for a teen who's also dealing with the angsty, hormonal reality of puberty. Not to mention, rates of depression and anxiety are sky-high in young folks these days. While this might be the very thing nudging some of them toward nicotine pouches, Dr. Halpern-Felsher points out, it could also make them more vulnerable to the mental health effects of addiction and withdrawal. To make matters worse, there's even evidence that nicotine use during adolescence can fry some of the ongoing development in brain areas related to attention and mood, Dr. Leventhal notes, increasing risk for things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anxiety disorders. These effects are admittedly tough to study in people (ethically speaking, you can't supply nicotine to young folks and see what happens), but based on epidemiological research and animal studies, they're definitely a concern, he says. Amid talk of mood boosts and focus, it can be easy to forget that nicotine is, at its core, a stimulant. Like any other drug in this class, it can raise your heart rate and blood pressure, which could make you jittery. Mark first realized he might be experiencing these effects when his Apple Watch notified him a couple months ago that his resting heart rate had been elevated over the prior month. When he looked at the analytics, he was surprised to find it had been notching up steadily since last year and was clocking in around 15 beats per minute higher than his norm. He now suspects that's been hurting his workouts: 'I feel more winded these days on runs, and I just can't get after it like I used to,' he says. 'I've also started to get a bit more anxious.' Whether these effects of nicotine can harm your heart long-term is not totally clear. 'Much of what we know about the cardiovascular effects of nicotine comes from studies on smoking, which involves a bunch of other toxicants that contribute to adverse outcomes,' Dr. Keller-Hamilton says. 'When we look at lower-risk oral nicotine products that are similar to pouches, we do see some increased cardiovascular risk, but it's not a huge increase for major outcomes like heart attack and stroke.' That said, it's certainly possible that taking in a lot of nicotine from consistent pouch use could worsen your odds, she adds. Another cluster of potential pouch effects spans the digestive tract, from mouth to stomach. Starting at the top, nicotine pouches can cause gum irritation and recession in the areas where they're used, Dr. Steinberg says, which can up your risk for gum disease. And moving downward, the sachets might also be linked with a sore throat, upset stomach, nausea, and other GI woes—all among the most commonly reported side effects. Some of this discomfort might spring from how nicotine can shift the release of certain chemicals in your gut (which could up your risk for an ulcer) or relax the valve between your throat and stomach, paving the way for acid reflux. As Dr. Steinberg notes, stomach issues can crop up or worsen with withdrawal too; cutting out nicotine may change the secretions in your GI tract and fry your nervous system (which syncs with your gut). Hence why it can be tricky to tell whether stomach issues are sparked by the nicotine or your body craving it—particularly when pain lingers both on and off of it, as in John's case. Dr. Keller-Hamilton emphasizes that these products do have a less harmful profile than the tobacco-based products on the market. Which is to say: If someone who already uses a different nicotine item is going to continue regularly using a commercial nicotine product, fully switching to pouches would lower their overall health risk. They may also be cheaper, more accessible, or more palatable than nicotine replacement therapy for some people, or may just represent a new option for those who feel like they've tried everything to quit to no avail, she points out. But it's equally important to remember that these pouches are not NRT (and don't have the same safety and efficacy bonafides). They also don't come with any guardrails around how to use them—what dosage, how many per day—to effectively quit smoking over a designated timeframe, Dr. Hrywna notes, which is all information you could get from a physician or pharmacist about NRT. So while Zyns might take the place of other nicotine items in your life (and some research is underway on their potential in this regard), they're not necessarily designed for this purpose. And let's not forget how messaging around the pouches obscures a key detail—while they might have upsides compared to tobacco products, they're far from risk-free themselves. 'The narrative on this stuff is that…no one has side effects from it, it's good for you,' John says. But that can wrongly signal to people, especially young folks, that the pouches are a viable end game and could even encourage those who haven't used nicotine before to start with these. The same thing happened with vapes when they first hit the scene, Dr. Halpern-Felsher says. 'It was like, 'Well, we need to get [teens] to quit smoking. Oh well if they're on e-cigs forever.' But plenty of teens weren't smoking cigarettes, so it wasn't e-cigarettes versus cigarettes; it was e-cigarettes versus fresh air,' she says. All that to say? We should be careful not to lose the plot with pouches too. As Dr. Halpern-Felsher reiterates, nicotine is a highly addictive substance that we should be wary of promoting in any form. 'I hope the word gets out, and people think twice about getting on these,' John says, 'or at least know what could potentially happen.' *Some names have been changed or abbreviated for privacy reasons. Related: How to Quit Vaping When It's Really, Really Hard Here's What Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms Actually Feel Like Is Smoking Weed Bad for Your Heart? Get more of SELF's great service journalism delivered right to your inbox. Originally Appeared on Self
