In my case, intriguingly, I thought I’d vape forever, but I had to stop it, because I grew less and less resistant to the nicotine. Even vaping a little became a challenge, and I actually had to stop it in what I’d define as a pretty natural process, because it simply made me feel better.
It was also mostly painless. I won’t lie, I spent six months with various substitutes (plastic spoons, matches, anything really) in my mouth, but it was the total opposite of any of my willingly attempts at stopping smoking. And no matter how depressed I have been since - and I have been, trust me!- , never the cigarette has come up as an opportunity to feel better.
To me, e-cigs are a miracle.
Like at first I used to take my mod with me going somewhere, I’d have a toot while driving or whatever. Now I usually just leave it home. I don’t feel compelled to have it available at all times and even if I am in the mood and I am in a position where I just can’t, it’s totally ok.
It’s nowhere near the compulsion that cigarettes were. While I am not currently planning to quit vaping, I really assume that it would be a lot less painful than the struggle to ditch the stinkies.
I’ve looked into it, but it feels like you need a degree to even know what the hell you’re looking at, much less get an idea of where to start. I do remember the Blu disposable things being pretty decent, but they don’t even sell them around here anymore and the recharging Blu stuff is nearly useless.
Congratulations! There’s really very little doubt that vaping offers substantial harm reduction over burning tobacco, and it largely eliminates the coughing, smell, and various nastiness associated with smoking cigarettes.
That said, you’re still consuming nicotine which has cardiac effects, and there’s some evidence that inhaling hot gas has a carcinogenic effect too. So it’s still better to quit entirely, if you can. Slowly taper off the nicotine in your juice, then give it a shot.
To be honest, I found the physiological effects of quitting smoking to be no big deal. I felt like sheisse for a week or so. Tapering will help with that anyway. The psychological effects were huge; I associated cigarettes with pleasurable things like finishing a good meal, sex, coffee, and leaving the office every hour. That was tough.
Vaping does a lot to satisfy the “hand-to-mouth and inhale” jones that made quitting cigarettes such a bear. For simplicity and ease of use, the Juul vaporizers aren’t bad. Self-contained liquid+coil pods mean a lot less fiddling. Hefty nicotine kick, though.
Nicotine is not really the bad guy anymore than something like caffeine. The artery stiffening and such are actually the same thing caffeine causes, only less.
Long term studies with people who have used nicotine replacement such as patches and gum show no negative or increased risk of basically anything.
The real killers from cigarettes are the tar, and the other 7,000 or so particulates from combustion.
More or less there are some terms to become accustomed to and a small amount of basic knowledge. That expands slightly if you decide to not use some all in one solution with a built-in battery, or go beyond that and begin to tinker with rebuildables, but it’s nothing insane.
For Christmas I also gave my ex two mods, batteries, two tanks and a charger and got her to give it a go. She’s now also smoke free and our children no longer have smoking parents.
There’s no way to put a price on that. Sure, we had made the decision long ago to not smoke in the house around the kids, but having it linger on us, in the cars and on our clothes while likely a minimal thing still felt kind of awful. It feels amazing to be able to honestly tell our kids that we ditched the cancer sticks and have zero doubts about relapse.
Hey man, I’m happy to hear that vaping is helping you. I would not dissuade that from anyone trying it, especially getting away from the combustion with smoking and associated tars. Not to mention, vaping does seem to help with lung issues in a vastly positive way.
But keep informed as best you can. There is a LOT of research going on right now about e-cigarettes and vaping, at least from some of the notes, you might be wrong in your statements above. What they are finding is, yes, nicotine DOES raise the levels of heart stress and even to levels leading to heart disease. Be careful and keep checking back. Vaping is still a bit of the wild west, and I’m sure it’ll take another decade (or more) of research before things settle out on what the underlying effects might be.
We recently reported that habitual e‐cigarette users, even in the absence of acute nicotine exposure, had increased cardiac SNA and susceptibility to oxidative stress.9 The current study adds to these observations by confirming that the nicotine, not non‐nicotine constituents, underlies this increase in cardiac SNA. We speculate that acute increases in cardiac SNA, mediated by acute nicotine exposure, may then set in motion a cascade of effects. As described in preclinical studies, increased cardiac SNA increases oxidative stress, which, in turn, increases SNA, and these become mutually reinforcing processes.41, 42, 43 Similarly, Stein et al59 reported that transdermal nicotine patches used in tobacco cigarette smokers who desired to quit were associated with an intermediate level of cardiac SNA, lower than precessation levels, but remaining higher than levels of cardiac SNA once all nicotine products had been discontinued. Interestingly, following 4 weeks’ cessation of all nicotine products, cardiac SNA still remained elevated compared with nonuser controls, consistent with ongoing nonpharmacological sympathoexcitatory effect.
I’m saying this as someone who lost two parents to issues that were compounded by smoking. Both had heart disease, both of them lifelong smokers. My father had a history of heart disease in the family. My mother had none, prior to her. Essentially arteriosclerosis got to her over time to a point it was fatal.
Meanwhile, I’m sipping my coffee and worrying about what you just mentioned. :(
EDIT: Just to add, it makes me wonder if vaping had been a choice 40 years ago, where would we be on ranking what harmful effects may or may not be from vaping. I think we all know it would be less, but to what degree? Any new issues?
Exactly. It isn’t clear just how much harm vaping does, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it does cause harm. And it’s equally clear that it causes vastly less harm than inhaling tobacco smoke.
I’d have to dig up the study I recall that was mainly referring to the nicotine bit, because of the things like patches and gums I hadn’t seen anything else that didn’t treat it as a known quantity of risk, which was miniscule. But I’ll peruse the above one for sure. It gets very tiring trying to vet out all of the idiotic ones that say, inject mice with horse appropriate doses of nicotine over the course of weeks and claim to be science.
Also the idea that animal studies matter in terms of toxicity to humans is also not true either.
So regardless of what they are, I tend to completely ignore animal studies. They may have other uses or help with understanding some misunderstood biological mechanism or lead to a useful research direction, but they are inapplicable to me as a human.
The rest is harder because what tends to happen is they use crazy old equipment and/or running it in a way that no human being would be able to vape resulting in crazy amounts of heat and straight up burning of materials.
I don’t for a moment believe it’s 100% harmless, but I continue to wait for competent science to show me the actual risks that I would use to make an informed decision with. The truly unfortunate thing is those are few and far between at this time.
Edit - Just skimming the linked study, I’ve already spotted multiple references to studies from as far as 2009, including one that mentioned a cartomizer. That’s bad. That usually means that they are propping up their assumptions based on old studies done poorly on equipment that isn’t even sold anymore.
The same holds for propylene glycol, which is currently going back and forth on the “is it safe or not” study list. A lot of juice makers are exploring methods besides PG for e-juice, so 5 years from now will any studies even be applicable? Also the same holds true for animal studies.
Really the thing to keep in mind: we don’t know what we don’t know. Vaping poses what appears to be a MUCH more healthy alternative to combustive smoking (tobacco or otherwise.) But that doesn’t mean that 5, 10 or 20 years of it won’t show that there might be issues with things.
I wonder this a lot when I have friends who amp up their vaping just for the massive cloud effects. I know it’s not the same as the old party trick of smoking multiple cigs at once, but it sure reminds me of the same problem: if there is anything bad in that, you’ve just amped it up to 11.
Ugh, yeah I have no use for or interest in pretending to be Puff the Magic Dragon.
From my perspective it’s extremely unlikely given what is actually known (and reproduceable) that there will be any eye catching awful side effects, but if there are it’s also unlikely to be equal or worse than smoking. That’s really the bottom line context that matters most. It’s like you said, a reduction of harm and risk not a lack of potential harm altogether.
I may choose to quit vaping in the future regardless, but it’s almost a full time job to read these studies and kind of rage inducing when it often becomes obvious that the people doing them are clueless or have some weird agenda because then my time is wasted and I’m left with no information of value.
Edited for hopeful clarity, even though the general topic is a bit of a mess by its nature heh.
I hear ya. And really, you’re doing the better thing, regardless. My SO vapes, so I understand where you’re at. I’m happy she does, as listening to her cough a year and a half ago was painful, even for me. That’s gone. She’s so much better off. You can only try to be better, and you’ve certainly done that. Be happy. Listen out fo things but don’t dwell on what we don’t even know right now.
Congratulations on moving to vaping. Certainly everything so far would indicate it is a vast improvement for your health.
That being said, I’ve pondered whether it might be an interesting idea for delivery of medicinals. Or even vitamins or other things. “Need a daily dose of your statin? Now you can satisfy your mouth cravings, reduce your cigarette risk AND take your daily meds, ALL IN ONE!”
It’s hard to keep track, but I do recall reading a blurb about someplace testing the delivery of nicotine in this way to treat some specific lung problems and some other things (I want to say alzheimers?) since previously the only other effective way to deliver nicotine as an inhalant was obviously cigarettes.
So there’s a lot of weird and potentially beneficial things to test, but it’s not only a new thing in general but a rapidly evolving one.
Edit - Quick search turned up this, which was one of the ones I was thinking of though they used patches in this case to supply the nicotine.
That’s what they call the nicotine-impregnated liquid, e-juice, nico-juice, or just juice. It’s actually quite dangerous to small children, if they drink a couple milliliters of nico-juice they can get heart palpitations and die from a nicotine overdose. Important to keep it out of their hands.
Here’s a brand new example of how media articles and many studies upset me. Even disregarding the whole funding angle, it ultimately boils down (again) shit methodology leading to assumptions I can’t trust using language chosen to lead you to false impressions.
Thankfully the UK seems to have their heads firmly not in their asses and they have done a great majority of the reputable research and produce some actual informative studies. None of which ever claim that vaping is 100% safe, but are reproducible using rational methods to arrive at useful conclusions.
