E-cigarettes, often called electronic cigarettes, deliver nicotine with no pitch and smoking of conventional tobacco smokes. But physicians say they still carry dangers.
Researchers are aware the nicotine contained in electronic cigarettess constricts blood vessels. Nevertheless, they do not yet understand the accumulative damage electronic cigarettes cause to your heart, lungs and blood vessels. Many specialists encourage everyone — heart patients in particular — to avoid smoking any merchandise, including electronic cigarettes. And this is one reason that the UK are considering regulation.
Electronic cigarettes create an inhaled vapor from a flavored liquid which includes nicotine, mimicking the impact of smoking. Preliminary studies indicate nicotine might do direct damage to heart cells, so heart patients should avoid vaping or smoking conventional tobacco products entirely.
Are electronic cigarettes a safer alternative?
Research workers in Greece quantified heart function and blood pressure in 22 young adults before and after using electronic cigarettes. Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos of the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Greece presented a scientific paper on the study at the European Society of Cardiology in 2012. He says the subjects revealed none of the acute cardiovascular difficulties linked with smoking conventional smokes (including impact on heart pumping function and increased systolic blood pressure).
Researchers saw a substantial escalation in subjects’ blood pressure after they smoked a conventional tobacco smoke. After subjects smoked an electronic cigarette, they found just a minor upsurge in diastolic blood pressure. “This is an indicator that although nicotine was present in the liquid used, it’s consumed at a lower speed when compared with standard cigarette smoking,” Dr. Farsalinos says.
He urges that researchers continue to examine the effects of electronic cigarettes. Nevertheless, he says, “Considering the extreme dangers related to cigarette smoking, presently available data indicate that e-cigarettes are much less dangerous and replacing tobacco with electronic cigarettes could be valuable to health.”
Other studies advocate caution
The Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College of Physicians published an advisory in October 2007. In the drawn-out record, experts urge caution in using materials including nicotine (and tobacco). But, the report says that prohibition and over-regulation might also result in abuse of such materials.
Preliminary biochemical studies indicate nicotine is dangerous
Studies done at Brown University go to the heart of the matter — nicotine’s effect on cardiac tissue. Specialists understand that smoking electronic cigarettess increases your own risk for cardiovascular disease and that nicotine is the likely perpetrator. Vascular tissue exposed to nicotine shows damage. Nicotine literally drills holes through smooth muscle walls and makes debris in its aftermath.
The preliminary research reveals how damage from nicotine may cause atherosclerosis, or a build-up of plaque in the arteries. Whenever there’s damage to tissue, inflammation and plaque build-up can follow.
Questions and guidance
Cardiologist Maan Fares, MD, didn’t participate in the studies, but is quite knowledgeable about the subject of smoking cessation and electronic cigarettes. “I ‘m regularly faced with general questions concerning the possible benefits of changing from smoking to electronic cigarettes and vaping,” he says.
“I mention the hazards of nicotine including the potential mechanisms for example direct vasoconstriction effects in the coronary arteries and direct injury to the layer that lines the interior of the arteries,” he says. “We must also understand the danger of hypertension, and nicotine’s organization with elevated glucose levels, especially in patients with diabetes or pre-diabetes.”
What this means for you
While you might prevent a number of the cancer risks related to tobacco use when you change from conventional smokes to electronic cigarettes, you do not remove your risk for heart disease.
The American Heart Association (AHA) recently urged the authorities enforce stricter ecig regulation until additional studies can confirm the long term effects of electronic cigarettes in the heart.
Because electronic cigarettes are a tobacco-free nicotine delivery system, you still get a dose of nicotine directly into your lungs and blood stream, each time you vape. The USA are considering taxes on electronic cigarettes as the FDA have been slow to regulate them under tobacco laws.
For those who have heart troubles you’re especially exposed to the consequences of nicotine, so you need to prevent electronic cigarettes.
There are helpful smoking cessation programs available which can help you to quit dangerous tobacco and nicotine use, once and for all.