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E-Cigarettes With Nicotine Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease, Says Study (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Even after puffing on just one electronic cigarette with nicotine, healthy non-smokers were found to have a biological marker known to increase the risk of heart disease in tobacco users, according to a new study. The research, published in Journal of the American Heart Association, shows that nicotine is not harmless, as many people believe. It can affect a smoker's health in more than one way, and not just by triggering addiction. Another study, conducted by Middlekauff that was published earlier this year, showed that people who use e-cigs almost every day have biological markers known to increase the risk of heart disease in tobacco users. These included an increase in adrenaline levels in the heart, which can predispose smokers to bad heart rhythms, heart attacks, and sudden death, as well as increased oxidative stress, an imbalance in the body's ability to defend itself against the damaging action of free radicals. Oxidative stress can lead to changes in blood fats and lead to arteriosclerosis.
That study, however, didn't show what exactly was causing those changes. E-cigarettes can have different flavoring and solvents, as well as nicotine. So to identify the culprit, Middlekauff brought 33 healthy non-smokers and non-vapers into the lab. On three different days, one month apart, the participants were asked to puff on three different kinds of e-cigarettes for 30 minutes: one with nicotine, one without nicotine, and a sham e-cig that was empty. The researchers did blood tests and measured the subjects' heart rhythms, and found that the participants had high levels of adrenaline in their hearts after they smoked the e-cig with nicotine, but not after they puffed on the e-cigarette without nicotine or the empty e-cig.
That study, however, didn't show what exactly was causing those changes. E-cigarettes can have different flavoring and solvents, as well as nicotine. So to identify the culprit, Middlekauff brought 33 healthy non-smokers and non-vapers into the lab. On three different days, one month apart, the participants were asked to puff on three different kinds of e-cigarettes for 30 minutes: one with nicotine, one without nicotine, and a sham e-cig that was empty. The researchers did blood tests and measured the subjects' heart rhythms, and found that the participants had high levels of adrenaline in their hearts after they smoked the e-cig with nicotine, but not after they puffed on the e-cigarette without nicotine or the empty e-cig.
Are the odds 100% that this "study" was funded by tobacco money? Do 40k Americans die in road traffic accidents every year but we never discuss them because there are no angles for profitable corporations? Does vaping save the lives of up to 400k people a year? Actually I think there is a good case for locking up the people doing the study for manslaughter.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
No. While a lot of people do switch to e-cigs then down their nicotine to zero. I'm pretty sure that the health benefits accrue when one switches to e-cigs. The tobacco products kill because of the tars in them that cause cancer and most of the other health effects. Those are eliminated and you are left with a powerful stimulant.
The requisite comparison to smoking is because people are very typically swapping smoking for vaping. And to determine the ill-effects you need to take that into effect. There's likely some people who might take up vaping directly, who might not have taken up smoking. And the stimulants might be able to unilaterally lead to their deaths, especially if they have an underlying heart or lung defect. And those deaths would be entirely the result of vaping. The problem though is you need to take into account the lives saved by the exceptionally common happening of people giving up smoking in order to vape, and even without attenuating any nicotine, get much much healthier in very short order and can run marathons.
There might be additional health benefits to attenuating the nicotine to zero and quitting vaping too, but they pale in comparison to swapping smoking for vaping. The deadly cancer causing tars are not habit forming, in themselves, and can be completely mitigated this way. While I'm not at all convinced it's as benign as coffee, if people took up drinking coffee because it entirely replaced alcoholism and opioid addiction, I couldn't see any moral stance other than welcoming it as a savior. And if we suppose it might be worse for you than coffee, that's okay because alcoholism and opioid addiction combined don't kill as many people as smoking does.
There's not enough research to say how benign it is, but we can say it's more benign than smoking. And that makes vaping a certifiable lifesaver; which is why it must be compared to traditional smoking.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.