I used to be a smoker for more than a decade, smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. I quit it nine years ago. Didn't miss it for a day. It's an awful habit that takes a toll on your health, hygiene, finance, you name it. And I agree with the parent comment, just don't smoke. I don't think it's awesome, with the notable exception of pipes and some aromatic flavors most tobacco tastes like shit. It's an addiction and that makes many people think that it's awesome and cool and whatever.
The theory "smoking is all negatives, you have to force yourself to get used to it, but people power through for the social effects" fails miserably at explaining how smoking reached the level of prevalence where social effects could exist in the first place.
People with mental illness are over-represented in people who smoke.
There's some weird to-and-fro stuff happening that they haven't worked out yet.
EG: People with schizophrenia smoke a lot. And the hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke interact with anti-psychotic medication, which means people need to take more.
Sure, but the reasons people like it are pretty closely linked to the reasons it's bad for you (aside from inhaling poisons, you're hyper-stimulating the nervous system which can lead to burnout, depression, etc), so it's kinda moot to hope to retain the awesome without any of the harm.
The risk of lung/mouth cancer and general other physical effects far outweight the nervous system side effects (which are arguable, i never thought of smoking as a possible factor in depression).
You're expressing opinions ("arguable") when hard evidence is readily available.
Mouth and lung cancers and cardiovascular disease get all the headlines due to their mortality rates and hideous pictures.
But there's a whole spectrum of harm that exists well before you get to those extremes, and the evidence is easily found if you care to search for it.
See this 1993 study "Influence of cigarette smoking on human autonomic function" [1]
In habitual smokers, smoking acutely reduces baseline levels of vagal-cardiac nerve activity and completely resets vagally mediated arterial baroreceptor-cardiac reflex responses. Smoking also reduces muscle sympathetic nerve activity but augments increases of sympathetic activity triggered by brief arterial pressure reductions. This pattern of autonomic changes is likely to influence smokers' responses to acute arterial pressure reductions importantly.
Also, "Endocrine Effects of Tobacco Smoking" [2]
Over many years a large number of studies have demonstrated that exposure to cigarette smoke produces marked neuroendocrine changes. The effects of nicotine on the hypothalamicpituitary axis (HPA) were first studied by Balfour (1989), who showed that nicotine was a potent activator of the HPA. The basic mechanism of action of nicotine on these systems appears to be contingent on its ability to mimic the effects of acetylcholine at selected central nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptors (Rosecransland & Karin, 1998). There are at least three types of nicotine binding sites in the hypothalamus (Fuxe et al., 1989). Nicotine stimulates neuronal firing directly by acting at the binding sites or indirectly by causing the release of acetylcholine or monoaminergic neurotransmitters (such as dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin) (Pickworth & Fant, 1998). Nicotine can thus affect HPA function through a variety of paths (Rosecransland & Karin, 1998).
FYI it's often been observed that dysfunction of the HPA axis is a factor in depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, hypothyroidism and other debilitating illnesses. Eg...
One of the most enduring and replicated findings in biological psychiatry is activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in a subset of patients with major depressive disorder. This review will discuss some of these findings and their pertinence to the assessment and treatment of depressed patients. [3]
You're arguing inferred, postulated, or plausible effects from the chemical nicotine specifically in a combustion process that releases thousands of different varieties of volatile chemicals into the lungs and bloodstream, including things like chemical asphyxiants.
That's a hell of a confounder to be observing any effect beneath whatsoever.
To illustrate:
"Cocaine-coated axes are shown to cause increased adrenaline response when administered to the subject's ribcage at a high rate of speed. This makes sense, because we postulate cocaine to be a stimulant. [uncoated axes not tested]"
You're arguing inferred, postulated, or plausible effects from the chemical nicotine specifically in a combustion process that releases thousands of different varieties of volatile chemicals...
Not really, but I get what you're saying.
I can accept that e-cigs are likely vastly less harmful than smoked tobacco cigarettes.
It will take a lot of time and rigorous research to establish what the difference really is, but I would expect it to be profound.
But my point stands that there is likely not any way to get all the "benefits" of smoking without any of the harms.
If it were just about nicotine, I'd expect to see everyone stop smoking and switch to nicotine patches or gum. Clearly that hasn't happened. So it's not just about finding a safer way to deliver nicotine.
Of the thousands of chemicals inhaled in cigarettes, I know of at least one - cadmium, which is both a known adrenal stimulant ("benefit") and a known carcinogen ("harm").
And sure enough, cadmium is right there among the components of e-cig vapors, though not in dangerous amounts, according to the lobbyists. [1]
I don't really agree with that. Some students would often vape behind their laptop in class (to be cool/rebelious, they could easily wait to be outside) and it definitely makes an offensive odor. Non-vapers should have the right to breathe air that isn't polluted with second-hand mystery fumes, especially in doors where ventilation isn't perfect.
I smoked as a teenager because for some time I was stupid in order to fit with stupid friends.
I always found that a brainless bad habit, but it was interesting experience in the sense that I learned that to body could adapt to anything and even get to need it.
At first it is the worst thing in the world, it makes you cough but you force yourself into it(showing you "are a man" or whatever stupid reason) and you get to tolerate it, then you need it.
You probably could get used to eat shit or suck from a car exhaust pipe too. You can get used even to eat poison, like Rasputin.
One good thing is the ritual. I never thought of it as "brainless" before but that's a great way of putting it. Smoking is relaxing because you turn off your brain and go through the prescribed motions. When you finish the last motion you go back to life. It's not really relaxing in the chemically induced way (in fact smoking increases anxiety), it's more like meditation. You're allowing yourself to take a break from life for a few minutes. In fact, you're really being /given permission/ to take a break by the external mandate of addiction cravings. You can use this time to reflect, strike up a conversation, examine your surroundings, whatever you want.
Another good thing is bonding with smokers. It's a shared activity. The act of smoking serves as either punctuation for a conversation, or the background noise that substitutes conversation. A cigarette can be a prop used for emphasis. Bumming a cigarette is a sort of friendly offering. Most importantly, misery loves company. All smokers know they're addicted. When you smoke with someone else, you're acknowledging each other's weakness and demonstrating acceptance. That's one of the main reasons being a smoker is like being in a big, secret club. It's very romantic.
I haven't smoked in a very long time, and I realize now that it was a really stupid and damaging habit, but I do miss parts of it. I've promised myself that I can take up pipe-smoking as a reward for surviving into elderly age.
I would love all those positives you mentioned. I wonder if anyone could get a new custom started that provided those positives but not the negstives. Dumb idea, carrot breaks (yea I know really really dumb but there's got to be something)
When I worked in crap jobs, smoke breaks were a life saver. I worked at one place (a growers in rural England) where we only had 15 minutes for lunch (probably illegal) but we could take smoke breaks if we wanted. Everyone smoked super kings to maximise their break time.
I think something about smoking cigarettes is intimately linked to control of time, particularly in regimented industrial environments / crap jobs where you have to clock out to take a shit. When I smoked at work, it was like I was free for the duration of each cigarette.
That's definitely a thing. I like to get up from my desk a few times a day and go for a short walk, stretch my legs, get some fresh air, clear my mind, maybe run a minor errand. That's weird, but if I was going for a smoke, no-one would bat an eyelid.
Former smoker here. I used to take like 10 smoke breaks a day at my day job and it seemed completely normal at the time. I was a minority, but certainly not the only one. Looking back on it, it seems completely insane, though; I am baffled that it was tolerated, especially since a major theme in my job description was being on hand in case bad things happened (monitoring alarms).
I smoke pipes and cigars for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. It forces me to hang out on my deck for a couple hours doing nothing (because my hands are busy). It's fantastic introvert time to regroup after a long week.
I know pipes and cigars have lower risks of most health issues (mainly due to much lower frequency of use for many people, and because most people don't actually inhale), but I would be elated if that risk could be eliminated entirely. The experience is extremely useful for my mental health.
I've never smoked cigarettes but cigars I have. They make so many claims about how addictive nicotine is, and yet cigars are supposed to have so much more nicotine than cigarettes, here I am a year without smoking a cigar (maybe I've had one or two in the past year, if anything) and I'm probably not going through what a cigarette smoker goes through, and I've gone times where I've had a cigar daily. Winston Churchill smoked daily and lived to be around 90. So I'm not an "expert" but a lot of what they say doesn't add up with what I've lived and it seems others have lived. Cigarettes aren't pure tobacco usually anyway, they're full of "tobacco sheets", just like Coca Cola isn't as full of sugar as it is "Corn Syrup." My uncle on the other hand smokes daily for quite a few years, and I never see him have the same symptoms other cigarette smokers usually do. The trick is probably the fact we don't inhale the cigar smoke into our lungs, enough of the smoke will get in there regardless.
In my opinion he addiction doesn't come from nicotine but from the act itself which is very relaxing and pleasant.
Btw even if you don't inhale I understand that nicotine gets in your system anyway. Probably in smaller quantities, which is offset by the high amount of nicotine in cigar/pipe tobacco.
The psychological aspects are habit forming; the social aspects, the ritual etc.
Whilst nicotine is undoubtedly addictive, there are other things in tobacco / cigarettes that seem far more addictive. There's also the additional crap added, like chemicals to ensure the cigarette doesn't go out like hand rolled and cigars do, etc.
The part I missed most whilst quitting, with the aid of vaping (nicotine replacement gums, patches and inhalers were a waste of time and money for me) was something present in tobacco, but not in ecigs. Vaping never quite replaced that, or felt as nice. The occasional cig I had when out drinking with friends made it quite tempting to relapse - though I didn't.
The nicotine withdrawal when I quit vaping was so minor compared to the withdrawal from stopping tobacco that I actually wonder if the various quitting aids are replacing the wrong chemical(s).
I am, of course, just an anecdotal data point of one.
I'm currently witnessing an e-cig based quitting attempt that confirms your story. Just as in your experience, gums and patches tried earlier had been a total waste; and likewise, unlimited nicotine on demand does not seem to capture the full addictive content of cigarette smoking.
This undermines much of what you've said. The addictive properties of nicotine have been well studied. The 'pleasantness' associated with smoking is mostly caused by the relief of the need for nicotine.
Part of it probably is stimulus-response psychology. Cigarette smokers usually pair smoking with a lot more different situations than cigar smokers. As a consequence, the smoking impulse becomes more easily generalized for cigarette smokers, while cigar smokers restrict smoking to a stable, limited set of occasions.
An Engineer Guy video on YouTube where discusses the invention of the industrial cigarette rolling machine indirectly answer that question. https://youtu.be/_4zbNJmtbGo?t=51
The short version is cigarette smoke is inhaled pipe and cigar more or less just in the mouth. The nicotine in the smoke in the lungs is rapidly absorbed into the blood which goes to the brain in seconds.
You'd think we can put people on the moon, land a probe on a comet, create a world wide network of computers yet we cannot make one of the best and oldest human habits healthy....
Man, smokers can't win, can they? I'm against smoking because it smells, makes my eyes/throat hurt and is very, very annoying, even from a distance. E-cigs aren't as annoying (they're only annoying if you blow smoke directly on my face), so I don't have a problem with them.
If you want to vape, vape, I won't get involved, it's your personal choice.
You need to look at your comments in an incognito window or when you're logged out of your account. Many of them are showing [dead]. You might want to email HN to let them know.
They are annoying. Just look at the expression on the face of every vaper (or vapid, I call them). Look at meeeeeeee, I'm smoking!! Why do you think they put LEDs on them?
And they are still blowing completely unknown, unregulated chemicals into the air you breathe.
Also, the ingredients are not unknown. Juices have vegetable glyceryn, propylene glycol, nicotine and food flavoring. That s all.
If you use soap, brush your teeth, eat food or some 100s other activities, you already are in contact multiple times a day with most of those things (except for nicotine, of course).
I smoked for many years. And yes, there was a lot more to it than the nicotine. The aroma of a good Turkish/Virginia blend. The habitual mechanics of it all. But when it came down to giving it up, it was all about the nicotine. Also, I still miss the attention-focusing effects of nicotine. But it's not worth the addiction.
Gums. Patches. Lozenges. We've had methods of doing just that for decades, and none have had the rampant adoption e-cigarettes have. The short answer is there's a lot more to smoking than nicotine. Social interactions, rituals, etc that the vaping still allows for.
Because smokers aren't nicotine addicts like heroin users are heroin addicts.
One of the big effects of nicotine is that it reinforces habit formation. Smokers have a giant pile of situations where the unthinkingly obvious thing to do is to pull out a cigarette and start smoking it. Reprogramming the brain by replacing the action with "pull out an e-cig and start vaping" is much easier to do than not having a thing to do. If you don't have something else to replace the act with, you're probably going to do something like "think about how much you want a cigarette"
My underlying point, which I should have made explicit, was that adding all those extra components to e-cigs was a risk. Arguably an unnecessary risk. Except for marketing, of course.
Experimentally, it appears that GRAS by oral route doesn't necessarily mean that vaping is safe. But that's not very surprising. Vaping does involve heat, after all. Not burning, but perhaps high enough temperatures for components to react and degrade.
Also, GRAS doesn't really mean "safe". It means that people have been using something forever, and it's not acutely toxic. So inertia and vested interests win.
Vaping just glycerin and nicotine would arguably be a lot safer, no?
It is counter-intuitive, but smoking is more effective a mechanism of delivery than intravenous injection. It gives you the biggest hit the fastest. And everything else is way, way slower and mellower.
Our data confirm that smoking cigarettes causes suppression of several key immune genes in the nasal mucosa. E-cig users showed the same changes in immune genes as cigarette smokers. However, e-cig users also demonstrated suppression of several additional immune genes, suggesting even broader suppressive effects on respiratory mucosal immune responses as compared to cigarette smokers.
Looks to me that E-cigs shut down hundreds of immune system genes—regular cigs don’t is misleading.
Looks to me that smoking suppressed 53 genes vaping suppressed 358 that's 100's more indeed.
That said their test seems to be limited to ecigs with a specific flavoring compound which replicates the taste of cinnamon; so it's not clear how many types of flavored actually cause this effect.
It sounds to me like this new product category (vaping) needs time to discover the safest compounds to use for flavoring. In other words I suspect that the researchers in this study don't think it's actually the nicoteen which is causing this effect.
No they don't think it has to do with nicotine (not the discrepancy at least) for this study they more or less focused on cinnamaldehyde which is the compound that gives cinnamon it's flavor (it's also a known irritant and is used to kill mold, fungus and some other things).
I would assume that they've focused on cinnamaldehyde because it's most likely a common ingredient in e-liquid not only for the flavor but as it's an irritant (watch the fools doing the "cinnamon challenge" on YouTube for a good example of just how bad it can get) it's quite possibly been added to allot of liquids to increase their throat hit especially for those liquids that are aimed at recent former smokers that really look for that feeling to more closely imitate cigarettes.
According to what I've been reading vaporists in Colorado are experimenting in this area attempting to isolate the best "turps".
"Terpenoids and cannabinoids are both secreted inside the Cannabis plants glandular trichomes and they have a parent compound in common (geranyl pyrophosphate). More than 100 terpenoids have been identified in Cannabis. The most common and most studied include limonene, myrcene, alpha-pinene, linalool, beta-caryophyllene, caryophyllene oxide, nerolidol and phytol. Anecdotal evidence suggests that alpha-pinene is alerting, limonene is sunshine-y, and beta-myrcene is sedating.
Limonene (also found in lemon)
Alpha-pinene (also found in pine needles)
Beta-myrcene (also found in hops and mango)
Linalool (also found in lavender)
Beta-Caryophyllene (also found in pepper and Echinacea)
Caryophyllene Oxide (also found in lemon balm)
Nerolidol (also found in orange)
Phytol (found in green tea)"
Well "Turps" is coming from Turpentine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpentine they distill them in a very similar fashion alpha-pinene, nerolidol and beta-caryophyllene are known to have some adverse health effects alpha-pinene is especially nasty.
The problem isn't the synthesis there shouldn't be a difference in the effects of a compounds such as aldehydes based on if you distill them or synthesize them , if anything synthesized compounds have much higher purity levels than distilled ones.
The problem is understanding the effects of individual compounds the cumulative effect of multiple compounds (in any given combination and ratio) as well as their long and short term effects.
Add to that added complexity of different delivery mechanisms not all vaporizers are the same they operate on different principals, power levels and use different materials.
All this can make accurate measurement very difficult and a very long term project, this is now compounded by the fact that "vaping" is a multi-dollar industry and behind it there is even a bigger industry which is the food flavoring one which for a long time has enjoyed the "GRAS" classification of it's products which barely holds water at the common ways of ingestion and amounts and most likely will utterly fall apart if you look at it too deeply.
There's also some insane negative feedback from the vaping community it self calling it a conspiracy funded by big tobacco (which is funny considering that big tobacco owns all the big ecig brands).
I always stated before that vaping is most likely "safer" especially on short term than smoking 1-2 packs a day, but I always suspected that it can be just as bad if not worse due to completely different mechanisms.
If you vape for say 6-12 months just to help yourself quit smoking it's probably "worth" the risk, if you going to end up chugging 30ml of juice a day you are not going to enjoy the results.
Heck even if you breath water vapor all day it won't be good for you, there is no way in hell that breathing in "hot" vapor can be good, may types of cancer especially throat and mouth cancer have been connected just to that the intake of hot or warm air rather than the actual chemical compounds in it.
But people are keep buying some crazy 200 watt's ecigs and sucking on them like it's their mum's tit when you are spending 200W of energy it has to go some where at least some of that energy is deposited into the soft tissue of your mouth, throat and lungs and that can't be good no matter what else is in there.
> Heck even if you breath water vapor all day it won't be good for you, there is no way in hell that breathing in "hot" vapor can be good
Is the vapor really any warmer than body temp when it goes into your lungs though ? I just conducted an experiment where I took a puff of a vaporizer but kept the vapour in my mouth, then I probed with my index finger and honestly the air temp felt about the same as it does without the vapour.
Also I wonder if vaping a pack a day while living in the a prestine wilderness setting would be more safe than breathing regular air all day in a large metro with auto air pollution. I suppose it probably depends what flavors are in your liquid, and which city.
Then there's the question of whether or not it's safe to be nicoteen in the first place. The way I look at it sugar and coffee are probably equally bad if not worse for the body, but I haven't looked at it in depth
I can't really comment on your anecdotal experiment because well it wasn't exactly done under controlled conditions and while i appreciate the level of accuracy you assign to your index finger i'm not quite sure how accurate it is really :)
And yes we already live in the world with 1000's of environmental risk factors that may cause or increase the likelihood of contracting cancer, the first of which is probably the fact that if we survive trough our early 20's we are expected to live another 60-70 years instead of 30 or so 2000 years ago.
But if you really think that regardless of flavor or composition vaping is some how smoking with no consequences you are only fooling yourself.
Vaping should be looked as a tool that can enable you to quit smoking more easily not as a leisure activity or a life style choice.
After all nicotine it self is indirectly linked to cancer since it seems to mess with the natural mechanisms that prevent cancer in cells.
As far as overall health goes I would suggest to stick to the low powered ecig pens and not dragging around one of those car battery powered human smoke machine monsters that I've seen quite a few folks walking about with lately (which are probably the reason that ecigs are being banned everywhere now, a vape-pen produces like no visible vapor; whilst those big power bricks can be used to conceal military maneuvers), as they operate at a fraction of the power and also limit the consumption of eliquid, them being also much more unpleasant to use than the higher end stuff should also have some effect on the frequency of use.
well I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were full of hot air. :) and although I agree with you about nicotine but I'm personally more interested in the idea of consuming medicinal plant oils this way as a form of relaxation therapy because it would seem that cannabis prohibition is rapidly evapourating in the United States. I suspect it'll be a lot more difficult for scientists to find any medical evidence that this form of vaping is harmful, that is once they're finally able to conduct research into it.
One problem with conducting this kind of science however is that different varieties of cannabis have different profiles of cannabnoids and turpentines, so what science would really need first is a way to determine what genetics are what. This is why I'm so excited about the work that is being done to track the genetics.. here is a fascinating interview with a leading scientist about this if you're interested:
From the article, it seems it's the flavourings that are added to e-cig liquid that seem to be causing the problem.
Presumably the effect would be the same if the same flavourings were added to 'real' cigs, but, with the exception of menthol, that isn't commonly done.
Why are flavourings so popular with e-cig? Does the liquid (glycerin?) have a foul taste that they are trying to mask?
A related/alternative question would be why flavorings are unpopular with regular cigarettes. (The answer, at least in the US, is that it's been made illegal, as a youth antismoking measure.)
The flavors make it easier to switch. Cigarette smoke stinks, most people agree, and switching from that to something with a pleasant fruit smell is pretty acceptable for a partner/spouse/friend.
It's as if we switched, in a culture of frequent duels, from dueling with pistols to the death, to dueling with new, fairly safe boxing gloves to the submission.
"But they cause concussions", you say. "But the children will be more likely to take up dueling", you say. "We should ban them". "Look, we banned putting stickers on guns long ago so they wouldn't appear to children, but they're putting stickers on boxing gloves now! The horror!"
"But look, the problem is this obscene need to fight each other over honor. It's a problem of the patriarchy. We should publish hundreds of studies showing this while glancing furtively at the 'ban boxing' folks"
The death toll from smoking rivals the death toll from all the wars in the 20th century. Even after this was made clear, people found themselves unable to quit, smoking until they die. The evidence suggests that e-cigs are somewhere in the vicinity of coffee as a danger to your health. They are incomparably safer, and if just one percent of e-cig users began using them in order to quit smoking, that's worth it.
This study is completely uncontrolled, and being promoted as a hit piece. "Environment influences gene expression" is not novel. If they want to impress on me that there is anything of any importance whatsoever, they need to do the same gene expression tests on groups who ate hummus vs who did not eat hummus, groups who took a daily walk vs groups who did not, groups who drink tea vs groups who did not.
THANK YOU! After actually reading any available data, I agree this study seems deeply flawed and in no way controlled. Did the Ecig users smoke previously? Does the gene suppression go away after a day? I highly doubt it's permanent. Did they have Ecig users who were using no flavoring? What nicotine level? What vg/pg ratio? Most importantly in my opinion, what type of device was used and at what wattage etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly happy to see testing happening, but we need to do it right and control ALL the variables.
Anecdotally, I was sick all the time when I smoked cigs. Switched to Ecig a little over a year ago and I haven't had any illness beyond a normal upset stomach every now and then.
The worst part is we do need regulation and testing of this stuff for public safety, but there's propaganda machines on both sides thrown into such high gear we may never get it.
We need it because in a fly-by-night environment of small producers, there's no accountability or detectability if some idiot decides that melamine makes a good inert buffer material.
What we need is simple: Bonded, enforced labeling requirements. Safety could be nearly a solved problem with an ingredient list showing me how many milligrams of what precisely is going into the fluid (recipes left up to the producer), a license for distributing this precise formulation with money held as a security deposit, and an FDA mandate to randomly test one unit in every thousand.
What we'll probably get instead is that some US corporate power with interests in a fluid company will negotiate some deal that bans all their competitors for being unsafe, and things will be made stable and expensive once more.
Not that I disagree with your broader point at all -- and I say this as a former cigarette smoker, former e-cig vaper, present-day nicotine gum chewer, etc. (who is incredibly grateful for the existence of the latter two creations, or would have never quit smoking):
To be fair, though, e-cigs haven't been around nearly long enough to do any sort of longitudinal study on toxicity. We really have no idea what smoking one for twenty years will do, what kind of cancers it can give one, etc. And to be absolutely fair to your point, that's also true of lots of other chemical novelties and gewgaws.
They bought a "big" and extremely shitty company, to sell at gas stations everywhere so people will go back to cigs. The Ecig products they sell are just awful.
I used to smoke 3 packs of cigarretes a day, some days I couldn't even properly breathe. I tried everything, the only thing that got me out was vaping. Nowadays I can't even touch a cigarrete anymore because it tastes like crap.
From what I've seen so far, all of those studies always find the same thing, diacetyl is bad for you when inhaled. This only applies to some flavors and most of the "top" vaping juice vendors are aware of it and do not use juices that have diacetyl on it anymore.
I know it's not the best site, nor is the path to quitting an easy one, but it is something. The thing that I see helps most is a daily reminder and a damn good reason to stop (kids, new boyfriend, cancer, savings, etc). Find that, and it is a bit easier to quit. God speed.
"[...] specifically focusing on cinnamon-flavored e-cigarettes containing the flavoring agent cinnamaldehyde. Our data indicate that cinnamaldehyde-containing e-liquids have a significant negative effect on epithelial cell physiology and barrier function. In addition, cinnamaldehyde-containing e-liquids compromise the immune function of key respiratory immune cells, such as macrophages, Natural Killer Cells, and neutrophils. Using translational human in vitro and in vivo approaches, our studies will ascertain whether exposure to e-cigs, with a specific focus on cinnamon-flavored e-liquids/e-cigs, have immune suppressive effects on the respiratory mucosa."
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[ 55.0 ms ] story [ 2403 ms ] threadSmoking is awesome. If only we could find a way to do it without the health problems.
(FWIW it took till age 32 to permanently shake the rotten habit.)
There's some weird to-and-fro stuff happening that they haven't worked out yet.
EG: People with schizophrenia smoke a lot. And the hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke interact with anti-psychotic medication, which means people need to take more.
Mouth and lung cancers and cardiovascular disease get all the headlines due to their mortality rates and hideous pictures.
But there's a whole spectrum of harm that exists well before you get to those extremes, and the evidence is easily found if you care to search for it.
See this 1993 study "Influence of cigarette smoking on human autonomic function" [1]
In habitual smokers, smoking acutely reduces baseline levels of vagal-cardiac nerve activity and completely resets vagally mediated arterial baroreceptor-cardiac reflex responses. Smoking also reduces muscle sympathetic nerve activity but augments increases of sympathetic activity triggered by brief arterial pressure reductions. This pattern of autonomic changes is likely to influence smokers' responses to acute arterial pressure reductions importantly.
Also, "Endocrine Effects of Tobacco Smoking" [2]
Over many years a large number of studies have demonstrated that exposure to cigarette smoke produces marked neuroendocrine changes. The effects of nicotine on the hypothalamicpituitary axis (HPA) were first studied by Balfour (1989), who showed that nicotine was a potent activator of the HPA. The basic mechanism of action of nicotine on these systems appears to be contingent on its ability to mimic the effects of acetylcholine at selected central nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptors (Rosecransland & Karin, 1998). There are at least three types of nicotine binding sites in the hypothalamus (Fuxe et al., 1989). Nicotine stimulates neuronal firing directly by acting at the binding sites or indirectly by causing the release of acetylcholine or monoaminergic neurotransmitters (such as dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin) (Pickworth & Fant, 1998). Nicotine can thus affect HPA function through a variety of paths (Rosecransland & Karin, 1998).
FYI it's often been observed that dysfunction of the HPA axis is a factor in depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, hypothyroidism and other debilitating illnesses. Eg...
One of the most enduring and replicated findings in biological psychiatry is activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in a subset of patients with major depressive disorder. This review will discuss some of these findings and their pertinence to the assessment and treatment of depressed patients. [3]
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8339419/
[2] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/496223_2
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC181180/
That's a hell of a confounder to be observing any effect beneath whatsoever.
To illustrate:
"Cocaine-coated axes are shown to cause increased adrenaline response when administered to the subject's ribcage at a high rate of speed. This makes sense, because we postulate cocaine to be a stimulant. [uncoated axes not tested]"
Not really, but I get what you're saying.
I can accept that e-cigs are likely vastly less harmful than smoked tobacco cigarettes.
It will take a lot of time and rigorous research to establish what the difference really is, but I would expect it to be profound.
But my point stands that there is likely not any way to get all the "benefits" of smoking without any of the harms.
If it were just about nicotine, I'd expect to see everyone stop smoking and switch to nicotine patches or gum. Clearly that hasn't happened. So it's not just about finding a safer way to deliver nicotine.
Of the thousands of chemicals inhaled in cigarettes, I know of at least one - cadmium, which is both a known adrenal stimulant ("benefit") and a known carcinogen ("harm").
And sure enough, cadmium is right there among the components of e-cig vapors, though not in dangerous amounts, according to the lobbyists. [1]
We'll see.
[1] http://www.ecigarette-research.org/research/index.php/resear...
I smoked as a teenager because for some time I was stupid in order to fit with stupid friends.
I always found that a brainless bad habit, but it was interesting experience in the sense that I learned that to body could adapt to anything and even get to need it.
At first it is the worst thing in the world, it makes you cough but you force yourself into it(showing you "are a man" or whatever stupid reason) and you get to tolerate it, then you need it.
You probably could get used to eat shit or suck from a car exhaust pipe too. You can get used even to eat poison, like Rasputin.
It's called acquired taste and not all of them are bad.
One good thing is the ritual. I never thought of it as "brainless" before but that's a great way of putting it. Smoking is relaxing because you turn off your brain and go through the prescribed motions. When you finish the last motion you go back to life. It's not really relaxing in the chemically induced way (in fact smoking increases anxiety), it's more like meditation. You're allowing yourself to take a break from life for a few minutes. In fact, you're really being /given permission/ to take a break by the external mandate of addiction cravings. You can use this time to reflect, strike up a conversation, examine your surroundings, whatever you want.
Another good thing is bonding with smokers. It's a shared activity. The act of smoking serves as either punctuation for a conversation, or the background noise that substitutes conversation. A cigarette can be a prop used for emphasis. Bumming a cigarette is a sort of friendly offering. Most importantly, misery loves company. All smokers know they're addicted. When you smoke with someone else, you're acknowledging each other's weakness and demonstrating acceptance. That's one of the main reasons being a smoker is like being in a big, secret club. It's very romantic.
I haven't smoked in a very long time, and I realize now that it was a really stupid and damaging habit, but I do miss parts of it. I've promised myself that I can take up pipe-smoking as a reward for surviving into elderly age.
I think something about smoking cigarettes is intimately linked to control of time, particularly in regimented industrial environments / crap jobs where you have to clock out to take a shit. When I smoked at work, it was like I was free for the duration of each cigarette.
I know pipes and cigars have lower risks of most health issues (mainly due to much lower frequency of use for many people, and because most people don't actually inhale), but I would be elated if that risk could be eliminated entirely. The experience is extremely useful for my mental health.
Btw even if you don't inhale I understand that nicotine gets in your system anyway. Probably in smaller quantities, which is offset by the high amount of nicotine in cigar/pipe tobacco.
Whilst nicotine is undoubtedly addictive, there are other things in tobacco / cigarettes that seem far more addictive. There's also the additional crap added, like chemicals to ensure the cigarette doesn't go out like hand rolled and cigars do, etc.
The part I missed most whilst quitting, with the aid of vaping (nicotine replacement gums, patches and inhalers were a waste of time and money for me) was something present in tobacco, but not in ecigs. Vaping never quite replaced that, or felt as nice. The occasional cig I had when out drinking with friends made it quite tempting to relapse - though I didn't.
The nicotine withdrawal when I quit vaping was so minor compared to the withdrawal from stopping tobacco that I actually wonder if the various quitting aids are replacing the wrong chemical(s).
I am, of course, just an anecdotal data point of one.
The short version is cigarette smoke is inhaled pipe and cigar more or less just in the mouth. The nicotine in the smoke in the lungs is rapidly absorbed into the blood which goes to the brain in seconds.
And smoking cigars is still pretty harmful, with heavily increased risk of some cancers of the mouth and throat.
If you want to vape, vape, I won't get involved, it's your personal choice.
Nicotine, no cancer, no smoke and no lung damage.
(It won't be sold in the EU, because of tobacco company lobbying.)
Snus is linked to mouth, throat, esophagus, stomach and pancreas cancer. Also, cancer of the penis.
According to NY Times, even mouth cancer risk increases more for smokers anyway (given modern snus).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/business/studying-snus-a-s...
You need to look at your comments in an incognito window or when you're logged out of your account. Many of them are showing [dead]. You might want to email HN to let them know.
And they are still blowing completely unknown, unregulated chemicals into the air you breathe.
Also, the ingredients are not unknown. Juices have vegetable glyceryn, propylene glycol, nicotine and food flavoring. That s all.
If you use soap, brush your teeth, eat food or some 100s other activities, you already are in contact multiple times a day with most of those things (except for nicotine, of course).
One of the big effects of nicotine is that it reinforces habit formation. Smokers have a giant pile of situations where the unthinkingly obvious thing to do is to pull out a cigarette and start smoking it. Reprogramming the brain by replacing the action with "pull out an e-cig and start vaping" is much easier to do than not having a thing to do. If you don't have something else to replace the act with, you're probably going to do something like "think about how much you want a cigarette"
Experimentally, it appears that GRAS by oral route doesn't necessarily mean that vaping is safe. But that's not very surprising. Vaping does involve heat, after all. Not burning, but perhaps high enough temperatures for components to react and degrade.
Also, GRAS doesn't really mean "safe". It means that people have been using something forever, and it's not acutely toxic. So inertia and vested interests win.
Vaping just glycerin and nicotine would arguably be a lot safer, no?
Our data confirm that smoking cigarettes causes suppression of several key immune genes in the nasal mucosa. E-cig users showed the same changes in immune genes as cigarette smokers. However, e-cig users also demonstrated suppression of several additional immune genes, suggesting even broader suppressive effects on respiratory mucosal immune responses as compared to cigarette smokers.
Looks to me that E-cigs shut down hundreds of immune system genes—regular cigs don’t is misleading.
That said their test seems to be limited to ecigs with a specific flavoring compound which replicates the taste of cinnamon; so it's not clear how many types of flavored actually cause this effect.
I would assume that they've focused on cinnamaldehyde because it's most likely a common ingredient in e-liquid not only for the flavor but as it's an irritant (watch the fools doing the "cinnamon challenge" on YouTube for a good example of just how bad it can get) it's quite possibly been added to allot of liquids to increase their throat hit especially for those liquids that are aimed at recent former smokers that really look for that feeling to more closely imitate cigarettes.
According to what I've been reading vaporists in Colorado are experimenting in this area attempting to isolate the best "turps".
"Terpenoids and cannabinoids are both secreted inside the Cannabis plants glandular trichomes and they have a parent compound in common (geranyl pyrophosphate). More than 100 terpenoids have been identified in Cannabis. The most common and most studied include limonene, myrcene, alpha-pinene, linalool, beta-caryophyllene, caryophyllene oxide, nerolidol and phytol. Anecdotal evidence suggests that alpha-pinene is alerting, limonene is sunshine-y, and beta-myrcene is sedating.
The problem isn't the synthesis there shouldn't be a difference in the effects of a compounds such as aldehydes based on if you distill them or synthesize them , if anything synthesized compounds have much higher purity levels than distilled ones.
The problem is understanding the effects of individual compounds the cumulative effect of multiple compounds (in any given combination and ratio) as well as their long and short term effects.
Add to that added complexity of different delivery mechanisms not all vaporizers are the same they operate on different principals, power levels and use different materials.
All this can make accurate measurement very difficult and a very long term project, this is now compounded by the fact that "vaping" is a multi-dollar industry and behind it there is even a bigger industry which is the food flavoring one which for a long time has enjoyed the "GRAS" classification of it's products which barely holds water at the common ways of ingestion and amounts and most likely will utterly fall apart if you look at it too deeply.
There's also some insane negative feedback from the vaping community it self calling it a conspiracy funded by big tobacco (which is funny considering that big tobacco owns all the big ecig brands).
I always stated before that vaping is most likely "safer" especially on short term than smoking 1-2 packs a day, but I always suspected that it can be just as bad if not worse due to completely different mechanisms.
If you vape for say 6-12 months just to help yourself quit smoking it's probably "worth" the risk, if you going to end up chugging 30ml of juice a day you are not going to enjoy the results.
Heck even if you breath water vapor all day it won't be good for you, there is no way in hell that breathing in "hot" vapor can be good, may types of cancer especially throat and mouth cancer have been connected just to that the intake of hot or warm air rather than the actual chemical compounds in it. But people are keep buying some crazy 200 watt's ecigs and sucking on them like it's their mum's tit when you are spending 200W of energy it has to go some where at least some of that energy is deposited into the soft tissue of your mouth, throat and lungs and that can't be good no matter what else is in there.
Is the vapor really any warmer than body temp when it goes into your lungs though ? I just conducted an experiment where I took a puff of a vaporizer but kept the vapour in my mouth, then I probed with my index finger and honestly the air temp felt about the same as it does without the vapour.
Also I wonder if vaping a pack a day while living in the a prestine wilderness setting would be more safe than breathing regular air all day in a large metro with auto air pollution. I suppose it probably depends what flavors are in your liquid, and which city.
Then there's the question of whether or not it's safe to be nicoteen in the first place. The way I look at it sugar and coffee are probably equally bad if not worse for the body, but I haven't looked at it in depth
And yes we already live in the world with 1000's of environmental risk factors that may cause or increase the likelihood of contracting cancer, the first of which is probably the fact that if we survive trough our early 20's we are expected to live another 60-70 years instead of 30 or so 2000 years ago.
But if you really think that regardless of flavor or composition vaping is some how smoking with no consequences you are only fooling yourself.
Vaping should be looked as a tool that can enable you to quit smoking more easily not as a leisure activity or a life style choice.
After all nicotine it self is indirectly linked to cancer since it seems to mess with the natural mechanisms that prevent cancer in cells.
As far as overall health goes I would suggest to stick to the low powered ecig pens and not dragging around one of those car battery powered human smoke machine monsters that I've seen quite a few folks walking about with lately (which are probably the reason that ecigs are being banned everywhere now, a vape-pen produces like no visible vapor; whilst those big power bricks can be used to conceal military maneuvers), as they operate at a fraction of the power and also limit the consumption of eliquid, them being also much more unpleasant to use than the higher end stuff should also have some effect on the frequency of use.
One problem with conducting this kind of science however is that different varieties of cannabis have different profiles of cannabnoids and turpentines, so what science would really need first is a way to determine what genetics are what. This is why I'm so excited about the work that is being done to track the genetics.. here is a fascinating interview with a leading scientist about this if you're interested:
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/episode-73-distributed...
When it comes to aesthetics though I think we're on the same page about those portable smoke monstrosities.
Presumably the effect would be the same if the same flavourings were added to 'real' cigs, but, with the exception of menthol, that isn't commonly done.
Why are flavourings so popular with e-cig? Does the liquid (glycerin?) have a foul taste that they are trying to mask?
Having tried a few flavors, I find flavorless to be by far the least offensive, to me, as well as the people around me.
I find this constant drumbeat of "ecigs will kill everyone" disingenuous at best.
"But they cause concussions", you say. "But the children will be more likely to take up dueling", you say. "We should ban them". "Look, we banned putting stickers on guns long ago so they wouldn't appear to children, but they're putting stickers on boxing gloves now! The horror!"
"But look, the problem is this obscene need to fight each other over honor. It's a problem of the patriarchy. We should publish hundreds of studies showing this while glancing furtively at the 'ban boxing' folks"
The death toll from smoking rivals the death toll from all the wars in the 20th century. Even after this was made clear, people found themselves unable to quit, smoking until they die. The evidence suggests that e-cigs are somewhere in the vicinity of coffee as a danger to your health. They are incomparably safer, and if just one percent of e-cig users began using them in order to quit smoking, that's worth it.
This study is completely uncontrolled, and being promoted as a hit piece. "Environment influences gene expression" is not novel. If they want to impress on me that there is anything of any importance whatsoever, they need to do the same gene expression tests on groups who ate hummus vs who did not eat hummus, groups who took a daily walk vs groups who did not, groups who drink tea vs groups who did not.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly happy to see testing happening, but we need to do it right and control ALL the variables.
Anecdotally, I was sick all the time when I smoked cigs. Switched to Ecig a little over a year ago and I haven't had any illness beyond a normal upset stomach every now and then.
We need it because in a fly-by-night environment of small producers, there's no accountability or detectability if some idiot decides that melamine makes a good inert buffer material.
What we need is simple: Bonded, enforced labeling requirements. Safety could be nearly a solved problem with an ingredient list showing me how many milligrams of what precisely is going into the fluid (recipes left up to the producer), a license for distributing this precise formulation with money held as a security deposit, and an FDA mandate to randomly test one unit in every thousand.
What we'll probably get instead is that some US corporate power with interests in a fluid company will negotiate some deal that bans all their competitors for being unsafe, and things will be made stable and expensive once more.
To be fair, though, e-cigs haven't been around nearly long enough to do any sort of longitudinal study on toxicity. We really have no idea what smoking one for twenty years will do, what kind of cancers it can give one, etc. And to be absolutely fair to your point, that's also true of lots of other chemical novelties and gewgaws.
Philip Morris bought a big ecig producer etc...
From what I've seen so far, all of those studies always find the same thing, diacetyl is bad for you when inhaled. This only applies to some flavors and most of the "top" vaping juice vendors are aware of it and do not use juices that have diacetyl on it anymore.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stopsmoking
I know it's not the best site, nor is the path to quitting an easy one, but it is something. The thing that I see helps most is a daily reminder and a damn good reason to stop (kids, new boyfriend, cancer, savings, etc). Find that, and it is a bit easier to quit. God speed.
"[...] specifically focusing on cinnamon-flavored e-cigarettes containing the flavoring agent cinnamaldehyde. Our data indicate that cinnamaldehyde-containing e-liquids have a significant negative effect on epithelial cell physiology and barrier function. In addition, cinnamaldehyde-containing e-liquids compromise the immune function of key respiratory immune cells, such as macrophages, Natural Killer Cells, and neutrophils. Using translational human in vitro and in vivo approaches, our studies will ascertain whether exposure to e-cigs, with a specific focus on cinnamon-flavored e-liquids/e-cigs, have immune suppressive effects on the respiratory mucosa."