Nicotine Therapy overnight – 16hr vs 24hr

When on 7mg/24hr patches I pushed through sleep disruption caused by the patches and while my nicotine disturbed sleep improved each day it was still pretty terrible. It also hasn’t recovered after 4+ weeks. Some of that though is a shift in my body systems since nicotine.

So I am considering using 16hr patches and either wear for 16hrs or wear for 24hrs which would give a little higher overnight dose than taking it off but still very low compared to daytime.

This graph uses 21mg/24hr and 25mg/16hr but you can see the difference in the blood levels. 24hr patches get you to max dose and keep you there 24/7. Whereas 16hr patches are slower to get to max and then drop overnight if you remove the patch at 16hrs. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mean-plasma-nicotine-concentrations-during-exposure-to-2-different-transdermal-nicotine_fig1_295255213

Also the 16hr was better tolerated and delivered a lower overall dose than the 24hr patch. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149291810001992

This study https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00044011-199612040-00005 showed that leaving a 16hr patch on for 24hrs gives an extra small dose overnight. Which one would assume would be even smaller on a lower dose of patch.
This study was based on 15 mg/16 hours patch.

“Plasma nicotine concentration profiles were similar after application to the arm or the hip with maximum nicotine concentrations… attained after 8 to 10 hours”
“half-life after removal of the patch was approximately 4 hours. When applying [patch] daily for 16-hour period, nicotine stored in a shallow skin compartment was emptied during the nonapplication night-time period”
“wearing it for 24 hours resulted in an additional nicotine release of only 2 to 3mg”

https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00044011-199612040-00005

This study https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199108013250503 has blood nicotine levels which also show that a 16hr patch certainly has lower levels overnight but that there’s certainly still some in your system. So it’s not like going cold turkey using a 16hr patch.