Have You Ever Thought About Quitting Smoking?

Quitting smoking is one of the best things you can do for your health and body as smoking can cause major harm to your organs, especially your lungs and heart.

You might have thought about smoking e-cigarette (vape) as a way of transitioning from traditional cigarettes to not smoking at all. But, do you think vape is better than smoking the traditional cigarette? Can vape help you to quit smoking?

Facts You Need to Know About Vaping

1. Vape Contains Toxic Chemicals
Vape is a device that heats nicotine, flavours and other chemicals to create water vapours for you to inhale. Although regular tobacco cigarettes expose you to 7,000 toxic chemicals, there is no doubt that vape exposes you to fewer toxic chemicals. It means that vaping is still harmful to your body.


2. Vaping is Bad for Your Health
Vape contains nicotine which is a primary agent in both traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes. It causes addiction and may cause one to suffer from withdrawal symptoms if the craving is ignored. Nicotine will increase your blood pressure and heart rate which increases the chances of getting a heart attack.

Although no evidence is stating that vaping is bad for our health, you are still exposing yourself to various forms of chemicals that is harmful to the body.

An investigator, Balbo, from the University of Minnesota has conducted a vaping test on a group of five people. Balbo and her colleague have found that after a 15 minutes vaping session, a compound that can damage the DNA in the mouth area of the users is produced. They have also mentioned that “The DNA changes observed could be related to multiple types of cancer, including oral and lung” (1).

3. Vape is Not the Best Option
Although many advertisements have marketed vape as a way to help you to quit smoking, vape has not received the Food and Drug Administration approval as smoking cessation device.

A study done by Rigotti (2) has found that those who use vape as a smoking cessation were more likely to develop a habit of smoking both cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Another study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that those who smoke both cigarettes and vape were at a higher risk of getting a heart attack (3).


4. Vape is Not Risk-Free
Many people have thought that they are only inhaling water vapour and not a direct tobacco chemical which leads them to think that vape is risk-free.

Although little is known about vape, whether it can cause cancer as compared to smoking cigarettes, it does not mean that vaping is risk-free. Furthermore, there are no known long-term effects of vaping towards one’s health as it is still considered new for the necessary researches to be done.

References:
1. Lee, H. W., Park, S. H., Weng, M. wen, Wang, H. T., Huang, W. C., Lepor, H., … Tang, M. shong. (2018). E-cigarette smoke damages DNA and reduces repair activity in mouse lung, heart, and bladder as well as in human lung and bladder cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718185115
2. Rigotti, N. A., Chang, Y., Tindle, H. A., Kalkhoran, S. M., Levy, D. E., Regan, S., … Singer, D. E. (2018). Association of E-cigarette use with smoking cessation among smokers who plan to quit after a hospitalization a prospective study. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.7326/M17-2048
3. Alzahrani, T., Pena, I., Temesgen, N., & Glantz, S. A. (2018). Association Between Electronic Cigarette Use and Myocardial Infarction. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.05.004