TL;DR: Worse than not smoking, much better than tobacco. No surprises, IMO. Nicotine is bad for the heart no matter how you consume it
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Not all vapes contain nicotine though
True, but it looks like this study was specifically about those that do. It's the overwhelming majority
Yeah, “e-cigarettes” kind of implies a nicotine vape rather than a THC vape.
They were probably referring to flavor-only vape. That's what they use in vape cloud tricks, and people who have quit nicotine but still have the oral fixation
This is one of those statistical deceptions. Vaping doesn't give you a 20% chance at hear failure. It's just raising your already existing chance 20% higher. For example, if you've got a 5% chance to develop heart failure, now you've got a 6% chance for vaping.
Much less scary right?
Relative risk vs absolute risk, it's an important concept to be aware of.
THESE NUMBERS ARE MADE UP and for example.
Absolute risk: people have a 10% chance of having a heart attack at some point in life. Smokers have a 20% chance of getting cancer in their life.
Relative risk: smokers have a 100% increased risk of having a heart attack in their life.
Also.
Absolute risk: living has a 100% mortality rate.
Relative risk: Smoking doesn't increase your risk of dying at all!
Cancer?
It does say more likely in the title tbf.
Yes of course. It's all correct, but gives a more significant impression to people who don't pick it apart.
They DID adjust for previous and current use of other substances (such as alcohol and plain old tobacco), if anyone else was immediately curious about that like I was. As I understand it conclusive research has been tough because so many vapers are former smokers and many also just do both.
But it makes sense, I mean I remember when I was first hearing about vapes back before they really blew up. People at that time were generally saying the nicotine was probably still bad for your heart
Plus inhaling virtually any particles at all is not healthy. I suspect will continue to see more and more of that research over the coming decades.
Is that because the people in the study smoked cigarettes for a long time before taking up vaping?
I wonder how this compares to straight up cigarette smokers
A quick Google says it's double - so whereas this study finds it to be 20% more likely for vaping, smoking is at 90-something according to this.
I am on mobile so I didn't thoroughly look or vet the source.
Nicotine is a vaso-constrictor. Not great if you already have clogged arteries and/or high blood pressure.
I'm vaping for 4 years, meanwhile almost no nicotine. It enabled me to train again after 20 years. Everyone is different. And there are different ways of vaping. Im not saying it's good, nope, I wish i wouldn't do it anymore, but i try to reduce as much as possible & it's much better for me than smoking.
Does this apply to weed vapes too?
It looks to me like this study was specifically for e-cigs (with nicotine). Recently there have been some studies about heavy metal poisoning and weed pens. My takeaway was that you could reduce your risk by using a reasonably high quality vape (because the materials of the vaporizer itself can leach into the product while heating), and to avoid no or low regulation weed (and delta 8) which tested much worse than regulated stuff. This is based off one recent study in canada and is obviously only exploratory.
Anecdotally my lungs and my wallet really appreciated it when I switched from a pen + cartridges to concentrates + a nice vaporizer (carta). I also use a mouthpeace with a filter but who knows if that does anything significant.
which is why i always refuse e-cigs even if they absulutley not contain tobaco.
My husband loves to vape. I can’t understand why. I don’t think this news will stop him. He’s in love with his vaping supplies.