First pioneered in 2003 by Chinese inventor Hon Lik, vaping has become a globally popular trend in the past decade. If you never vaped before, the chances are you will have walked through a scented vape cloud at one time or another!
The culture of smoking traditional cigarettes has, thankfully, reduced significantly in the UK over the past few decades.
Take 1974 for example; compared to then when 50% of the UK population smoked, only 14% do today and the government intend to ban smoking altogether by 2030.
Although vaping was initially scrutinised by scientists for being a potential threat to health, it’s now becoming clearer that it is fact, less detrimental than cigarettes. Here are some of the benefits to ditching the fags in favour of what is still, a very new phenomenon.
Vaping is the lesser of two evils: an idea now backed up by research
Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, the idea of vaping was met with much uncertainty amongst the scientific community. It’s reassuring to know that substantial research has since taken place to establish whether what was then, an alien concept, could be bad for us or not.
Studies from the prestigious John Hopkins (JH) Medicine, have found that vaping is, in fact, safer than smoking tobacco. Why? Director of Clinical Research at JH Medicine Michael Blaha said: “Whilst we don’t know exactly what chemicals are in e-cigarettes (…) there’s almost no doubt that they expose you to fewer toxic chemicals than traditional cigarettes”.
It’s true there have been lung-related deaths seemingly associated with vaping. However, according to Blaha, these conditions predominantly affected people who modified their vaping devices or used black market e-liquids, so be sure to avoid doing this if you want to vape safely.
Vaping vs smoking
Vaping contains flavourings and chemicals to create water, which a person inhales rather than the numerous chemicals (over 6000) contained in cigarettes. As you don’t inhale heat when vaping, you’re not at risk from the heat smokers are exposed to which is widely known to cause damage to the throat.
By switching to vaping, you eliminate the risk of toxicity, which can also cause serious complications in the lungs, including lung cancer. Those who smoke are 15-30 more times more likely to develop lung cancer.
There are very few people out there who really like the smell of cigarette smoke – you’d be hard pushed to find many who do!
Vaping is much less offensive on the nose. You don’t have to worry about the smell of smoke tenaciously clinging to your clothes and hair.
Vascular health study by the University of Dundee
The University of Dundee recently discovered promising information that long-term smokers who switched to vaping were halfway towards achieving the vascular health of a non-smoker within a month.
The largest clinical trial to date, it found that partakers’ blood vessel function increased by around 1.5% points within four weeks, compared to those who continued to smoke.
Vaping as a means to quit smoking
The moral of the story is that vaping is a less damaging alternative to smoking and can serve as a useful, temporary transition period, for those seeking to quit altogether someday.
Though even if you don’t stop vaping, you can be sure it’s a healthier alternative to smoking and that’s solidly backed up by the research out there – healthcare professionals unanimously that this is the case.
Don’t hesitate to drop Healthier Matters a comment or DM on our social media pages if you need advice or support. 😊
Author: Lucy Walker
Lucy Walker is a journalist, author and health living enthusiast who has been involved with health writing since 2014.
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I recently quit smoking a few months ago. Its been quite hard to fully quit since we had a lockdown and there wasn’t much keeping my mind off smoking. Instead of going back to smoking, I turned to vaping and so far its been great. A lot more benefits and nice flavours!