This medicine is effective in helping patients to quit and stop smoking. Champix works in the brain to reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms. The medication also decreases the pleasure that people get from smoking. It blocks the nicotine’s effects in your body.
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What is Champix?
Champix contains no nicotine and works to relieve the craving and withdrawal symptoms associated with giving up smoking. Champix contains the active ingredient varenicline which is a member of a group of medications known as smoking cessation therapies. It helps people quit smoking when nicotine replacement therapy proved to be ineffective or is found to be inappropriate. Champix is intended to be used by adults in combination with counselling and quit-smoking education.
How does Champix work?
Champix works in the brain to reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms. The medication also decreases the pleasure that people get from smoking. It blocks the nicotine’s effects in your body. The brain has receptors for nicotine. When cigarette smoke is inhaled, the nicotine binds with the receptors to trigger a release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine.
Shortly after your smoking is done, the levels of nicotine and dopamine begin to drop, setting your craving and feelings of withdrawal, making you crave for another cigarette. Champix is believed to work at the receptors that are affected by the nicotine from cigarettes. It is not clear how Champix exactly works.
What are the benefits of using Champix?
The main benefit of Champix is the help it provides in quitting smoking when nicotine replacement therapy proved to be ineffective or is found to be inappropriate. Many patients also find using Champix to be more compliant and effective then patches as the patches dont always stick to the skin surface.
Champix tablets are taken twice daily, normally as a 12-week course.
A quit date (where you stop smoking cigarettes) should be set 1-2 weeks after starting the medication to allow the dose to build up using the starter pack, before stopping smoking for good.
The Champix Starter Pack (0.5mg & 1mg) should be used to initiate smoking cessation treatment before increasing the dose and switching to a course of Champix 1mg Tablets. Starting with the 0.5mg tablets and working up to the 1mg tablets reduces the chances of side effects and increases your chances of stopping smoking.
Side effects from Champix may include:
gastro-intestinal disturbances, appetite changes, dry mouth, taste disturbance, headache, drowsiness, dizziness, sleep disorders, abnormal dreams. Champix has a small risk of nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and skin rash.
Active ingredients
The active ingredient in Champix is varenicline tartrate.
Inactive ingredients
The inactive ingredients in Champix are: microcrystalline cellulose, anhydrous dibasic calcium phosphate, croscarmellose sodium, colloidal silicon dioxide and magnesium stearate.
Champix 1mg tablets
