Many people dream of kicking their smoking habit. Almost seven out of ten smokers want to quit. The best thing you can do for your health is stop smoking; smoking damages virtually every organ in the body, including the heart. Smoking and secondhand smoke are responsible for one-third of all heart disease fatalities.
You may have read that using electronic cigarettes, vapes, or vaping, can help smokers quit. However, there is a mixed bag of evidence on the matter.
Essentially, a vape and e-cigarette are the same thing, and they come in different sizes, colors, and shapes. They also consist of several compounds, such as nicotine, cannabis, or other drugs.
Even though e-cigarettes have fewer toxins than traditional cigarettes, they still pose health hazards. Keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to e-cigarettes. Hence, it’s difficult to determine how they impact the population’s overall health.
If you’re looking forward to quitting smoking, here is how vaping can help your journey from cigarette addiction.
What Exactly Does Vaping Help?
E-cigarettes, often known as e-cigs, are battery-operated devices that produce a vapor of flavored nicotine from a heated liquid. On the other hand, traditional cigarettes emit smoke from tobacco combustion and have around 7,000 chemicals. Hundreds of these substances are toxic.
Image Source
E-cigarettes include fewer chemicals than traditional cigarettes, some of them, such as CBD, being advantageous while others are harmful to your health. Many vapers use vape juice containing CBD, and if you’re looking for CBD vape juice or CBD oil or in the US, you can find it in your local vape shop or online.
E-cigarettes have been marketed as a safer option for smoking and a tool to aid smokers in quitting. But it’s not as straightforward as it appears. Vaping helps smokers quit in various ways. Below are some of them:
- Inhaling and exhaling – Many smokers miss this sensation. However, vaping provides an identical one.
- Hand-to-mouth action – Vaping utilizes the same hand-to-mouth motion you use when smoking, which might be missed when you inhale and exhale.
- An identical throat hit – You don’t know how much you will miss the nicotine hit in your throat until it’s gone. Vaping provides you with the same throat hit but with greater control because of the diversity of nicotine levels, flavors, and fewer toxicants than cigarette smoke.
- A controlled nicotine delivery system – Going nicotine-free might be difficult, but vaping allows you to obtain your nicotine fix similarly to smoking. Unlike other products, vaping gives you greater control over the quantity of nicotine you get because e-liquids come in several concentrations.
The Scientific Evidence Behind Vaping and Quitting Smoking
A 2019 study indicated that 19% of individuals who used e-cigarettes to quit smoking no longer smoked a year later, compared to 9% of those who used nicotine replacement treatments like patches and gum.
However, instead of just 9% of persons in the nicotine replacement group, 80% of e-cigarette smokers continued to vape a year later. This means that e-cigs may be more addictive than conventional cigarettes.
In a 2019 research on e-cig and dual smokers, individuals who smoked both e-cigs and traditional cigarettes were more nicotine-addicted than those who smoked conventional cigarettes.
Health Effects of E-Cigarettes
Researchers are still discovering the long-term health impacts of e-cigarettes, as they are still relatively new. Here’s what we understand about the health impacts of e-cigarettes right now:
- Nicotine is harmful to pregnant mothers and their unborn children.
- Nicotine can damage brain development in children and young adults, which lasts until roughly 25.
- Nicotine, the extremely addictive chemical present in tobacco, is contained in most e-cigarettes.
- Compared to smoke from burning tobacco products, e-cigarette aerosol has fewer hazardous substances. However, the vapor from e-cigarettes can include cancer-causing chemicals and small particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs.
Does The FDA Approve Vaping for Smoking Cessation?
Vaping has not been approved for smoking cessation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA has approved only nicotine replacement therapy and a few prescription drugs as effective tools for quitting smoking.
Vaping and other electronic cigarettes have been available for more than a decade without much regulation. In recent weeks, FDA officials have examined which products they will allow to remain on the market.
To continue selling their products, manufacturers would have to apply for permission in 2020. Almost one million applications have been denied since then.
The FDA approved a new electronic cigarette device and two nicotine vape products for marketing for the first time in 2020. As a result, these items can be promoted as smoking cessation aids.
This does not imply that the FDA has approved or found these items safe. The FDA reached this judgment because it believed that these products might assist adult smokers in transitioning from tobacco cigarettes to potentially safer e-cigarettes.
Conclusion
To help them stop smoking, some people have resorted to vaping. However, the studies do not firmly back this up. Researchers are still looking into the long-term health impacts of vaping, as it is a relatively new practice.
Although some e-cigarettes contain fewer carcinogens than traditional cigarettes, they are still dangerous and can lead to life-threatening health consequences such as lung cancer.
Short-term vaping may be an alternative for adult smokers who wish to stop smoking if other established approaches, such as nicotine replacement therapy, haven’t succeeded.
