E-CIGARETTES - Around 95% Less Harmful Than Regular Smoking

 E-CIGARETTES

Around 95% Less Harmful Than Regular Smoking

Stes de Necker

From the ripe age of about six years and starting your school career in grade I, chances are very good that the first organs in your body you learned about, were the lungs.

Which of us haven’t seen, or were expected to learn, the following diagram of the human lungs:

After this initial introduction, chances are that, save for a few incidental references to the physiology of the human lung, you will hardly ever again hear about the workings of the lungs.

That is until that inevitable first time that you will be confronted with the evils of smoking!

Oh my goodness, and what a terrible day that was .......

Pictures of the most rotten lungs you have ever seen; People lying in hospital with emphysema; Patients hooked up to oxygen tanks and whatever other frightening pictures you can think off. Enough to stop any potential smoker dead in his tracks.

But has anyone up to now actually explained to the fear stricken smoker or potential smoker, what the real dangers are and what actually happens in the event of smoking? Chances are slim that this has happened.......

So what are the facts?

Let me first hasten to say that I am no doctor or specialist on the issue of tobacco smoking. What I wish to share with you is my personal experience when I was confronted with the possibility of having some lung defect.

After some time of regularly waking up with a rather bad cough and a rather large amount of phlegm in my lungs, I decided that it was time to visit a doctor and thanks heaven for the fact that he referred me to a medical technician for a Lung Function Test.

In essence this test measures the amount of air passing through the lungs and the efficiency of the lungs to absorb the amount of oxygen from the air in the lungs.

The results of the test are presented in a graph format looking as follows:

Where the blue dotted line represents the normal condition and the red line the test object’s results.

In other words, the more damage there is to the lungs, the less air can move through the lungs and the less oxygen can be absorbed by the lungs, causing a feeling of tightness in the chest and having to breathe faster in order to get enough oxygen from the air in the lungs.

1. Smoking

Traditional cigarettes are responsible for many illnesses and conditions and the harmful effects of cigarette smoking is well known. What is possibly not so well known though is that it's not the raw contents of the cigarette that are dangerous - it's the burning of the contents.

Smoking a traditional cigarette burns tobacco, and when tobacco is burnt it releases a dangerous cocktail of around 4,000 chemicals including Carbon Monoxide, Tar and even Arsenic, to name but a few. At least 80 of these chemicals are capable of causing cancer and hundreds of others are actually poisonous.

2. Tar

The main culprit for the damage caused to the lungs, is the tar content in the smoke that is being inhaled when smoking.

Tobacco contains an ‘oiliness’ which, when the tobacco leaf ‘burns’ is deposited in the form of a dark coloured tar. So the more ‘oil’ there is in the tobacco, the more tar will be deposited. That is why in most instances, the tar content of a cigarette is indicated on the cigarette package as a weight in milligrams. (ie. Tar content 9mg)

Tar being inhaled by the smoker obviously enters the lungs and because the lungs cannot dispose of the deposited tar, the tar then starts to remain in the ‘alveoli’ of the lungs and begins to accumulate thus blocking the alveoli ‘wall’ so that oxygen can no longer be absorbed from the air by the alveoli.

The more tar that consequently builds up within the alveoli, the less the alveoli are able to function and oxygen must now be absorbed by the next ‘tier’ of lung ways, which are the ‘bronchi’ and the process continues itself now in the bronchial tubes.

3. Nicotine

Nicotine in the tobacco smoke can, unlike the tar, be absorbed by the lungs.

Nicotine itself is of course a highly addictive drug and many smokers actually want to stop smoking but are unable to break this addiction.

However, nicotine plays no role in the damage caused to the lungs by the smoke!

Nicotine is absorbed in the blood and this is the drug that causes the brain to send out the ‘signal’ that it now wants more; in other words causing the ‘craving’ to smoke.

4. So how can the damage to the lungs be stopped?

The only way to stop any further damage to the lungs would be to remove the tar and other poisonous contents from the smoke before it enters the lungs.

And short of stop smoking all together, there is only one way to do this and that is by means of the so-called Electronic Cigarette.

 5. The Electronic Cigarette

The concept of the electronic cigarettes has been around since the early 1960's but it's only in recent years that manufacturing has been able to produce reliable working models. In 2003 the Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik developed the basis for the modern version that's widely in use today. He did this after the death of his father from lung cancer. The huge demand and popularity of electronic cigarettes has driven vast improvements in the last few years with many different models now available. 

In a nut shell an electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette, is a device that simulates the act of smoking traditional cigarettes by producing a vapour instead of smoke. For this reason, "smoking" an e-cigarette is often referred to as "vaping". Vaping offers a genuine alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes by providing the same sensation and nicotine content (if required) but eliminates many of the harmful side effects of smoking.

The vapour that's produced by an e-cigarette has the appearance of cigarette smoke and can also share the same flavour and nicotine content of a traditional cigarette. The difference really is in the detail though; the vapour that's produced by an e-cigarette does not smell like smoke and more importantly, does not contain the 4000 or so toxic chemicals that are produced by a smoking a traditional cigarette, including Carbon Monoxide, Tar and even Arsenic 

Image of a typical Electronic Cigarette.

Are Electronic Cigarettes Safe?

A new report published in the U.K. has concluded that e-cigarettes are nowhere near as harmful as smoking. 

Carried out by Public Health England (PHE), the report found that e-cigarettes are “around 95% less harmful” than smoking tobacco, and that the National Health Service should consider recommending them to help people quit smoking all together.

They have also concluded that there is “no evidence” that they offer young people a gateway into smoking.

The review suggests that e-cigarettes may be contributing to falling smoking rates in the U.K., as 2.6 million adults are now thought to be using the product. 

They also found that almost all of these adults are ex-smokers, providing evidence that many people are not starting to use the devices after having never smoked in the first place, and instead are using them to either quit or cut down on tobacco.

“E-cigarettes are not completely risk free but when compared to smoking, evidence shows they carry just a fraction of the harm,” explained Professor Kevin Fenton, Director of Health and Wellbeing at PHE. “The problem is people increasingly think they are at least as harmful and this may be keeping millions of smokers from quitting. Local stop smoking services should look to support e-cigarette users in their journey to quitting completely.” 

  

The report also goes some way to dismiss the fears that e-cigarettes act as a route into smoking for young people and non-smokers. This reasoning is partly behind the Welsh government's recent move to ban e-cigarettes from all places in which smoking tobacco is also banned, arguing that they normalize the habit, and could encourage young people to take it up.

“Fears that e-cigarettes have made smoking seem normal again or even led to people taking up tobacco smoking are not so far being realised based on the evidence assessed by this important independent review,” said Professor Linda Bauld from Cancer Research UK. “In fact, the overall evidence points to e-cigarettes actually helping people to give up smoking tobacco.”

It’s estimated that currently 80,000 people in England die each year as a result of smoking, but if everybody who does smoke were to switch to e-cigarettes, then this figure is predicted to drop to just 4,000.

The evidence, according to the report, is clear: Smoking e-cigarettes is much less harmful than smoking tobacco cigarettes. And if used in conjunction with stop smoking support services, they offer a much better chance at quitting altogether. 

E-cigarettes do not burn anything, so they quite simply sidestep this serious health issue.

Another major benefit of smoking electronic cigarettes is the considerable financial savings that can be made. It can be up to 80% cheaper to use e-cigarettes versus traditional cigarette smoking. 

A word of caution

While every effort to help people stop smoking all together should remain a priority, many people either do not wish to stop smoking or (like me) find it very hard to do so. For this group, I believe that there is no better product that can deliver nicotine in such a safe way, without the harmful components like tar and the rest, found in tobacco.

Most of the diseases associated with smoking are caused by inhaling smoke which contains thousands of these toxic chemicals.

By contrast, nicotine is relatively safe. I've yet to hear of someone ‘overdosed’ on nicotine!
Or destroyed his own life or the lives of other's like in the case of alcohol abuse.

Therefore, e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without the harmful toxins found in tobacco smoke, are likely to be a safer alternative to smoking.

In addition, e-cigarettes reduce second hand smoke exposure since it does not produce actual smoke.

The wonderful thing about e-cigarettes is that you have complete control over the amount of nicotine that you use.

You can choose to reduce your nicotine intake by using ever weaker ‘e-liquid’. It's even possible to use e-liquid that has zero nicotine content, should you still struggle to break the physical habit completely.

It's important however to understand that electronic smoking can still be addictive if nicotine is used though.

Before changing to electronic cigarettes I would still recommend however that you contact your GP/Doctor for advice.

6. Note

I want to reiterate, I am no doctor or any kind of expert on these matters, but I am merely sharing with you my personal experience over the last few months.

I've been smoking for 49 years and during this period I only stopped on two occasions. Once for a week and once for three weeks.

I've switched to smoking an electronic cigarette and for the last eight months, I haven't touched a cigarette!

So if I can do it, so can everybody else. 

And the irony is, I'm still smoking..........