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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.

12 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. Just WOW! by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    E-Cigarettes With Nicotine Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease

    I'm shocked! SHOCKED I TELL YOU!

    But I'll bet there's a hell of a lot less tar!

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    1. Re:Wow. Just WOW! by Pseudonym · · Score: 5, Funny

      Vape only homeopathic nicotine.

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    2. Re:Wow. Just WOW! by Tatarize · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The important bit is that when compared they should be compared with cigarettes not with nicotine-less ecigs or dummy e-cigs. And you will find that cigarettes kill 400k people a year. Whereas e-cigs will kill a couple people with heart attacks and stimulant linked deaths and maybe a doofus screwing up and overdosing through utter stupidity, but you will *never* get to 400k deaths in a year.

      Add to this the fact that this research will be used to attack e-cigs and this research will end up causing many thousands of deaths that otherwise would have been prevented. Any valid determination should find e-cigs are on par with vaccines and clean water. They are gutting traditional tobacco products to the life saving result of what is going to be millions of people in short order.

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    3. Re:Wow. Just WOW! by coastwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

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    4. Re:Wow. Just WOW! by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Look, anybody who isn't completely in the dark knows that nicotine is bad for one's overall health (it is a naturally occurring pesticide, after all). We don't really need studies to know that.

      In practice, e-cigs are a cigarette replacement, hence the name. Comparing them to cigarettes is thus the most important benchmark for serious inquiry about their health effects.

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  2. Newsflash by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Consuming a stimulant causes stimulant effects.

  3. A biological marker by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    is an indicator of a state or situation. For example c-reactive protein (one of the substances mentioned in the paper) is a marker of inflammation. It's actual function is to signal the immune system to clear out dead cells (both our own and bacterial).

    Ischemic heart disease is an inflammatory disease; therefore if you are developing ischemic heart disease, you will find high levels of inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein.

    However it seems to me it's a bit of a logical leap to do something which transiently increases inflammatory markers and then assume that means the subject's chances of getting a specific inflammatory disease are increased. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the paper.

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  4. Markers eh? by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the markers was increased adrenaline. As in the stuff that helps athletes perform their best. So no ecigs, no exercise, got it.

    But as for the rest, some people who would otherwise keep smoking will use ecigs instead. Some who would start smoking will use ecigs instead. That's bad how?

    As for helping you quit, ecigs helped me quit. After a number of years vaping, I found that I just wasn't interested in the nicotine anymore. No drama, no nail biting, no eating the entire refrigerator, nothing. Just no more interest in nicotine.

    That's the part that really hacks them off, I sinned by smoking and they want to see some serious suffering as penance.

    1. Re:Markers eh? by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's the part that really hacks them off, I sinned by smoking and they want to see some serious suffering as penance.

      A former smoker thanks to vaping here as well.

      Not only that, but it hurts the bottom-lines of Big Tobacco and the healthcare industry, and thus the amount of money politicians receive from BT's & HCI's PACs and lobbyists, as well as reducing State and Federal tobacco-tax receipts.

      Culturally it also reduces the number of people that it's socially-acceptable to discriminate against, harass, shame, threaten, intimidate, segregate, and generally persecute.

      "The Spice^W^W^W^W^WTobacco must flow!"

      These are simply the tobacco and healthcare "Guild Navigators'" representatives telling the politicians that they'll live out their days in a pain-amplifier if the flow is threatened, and those politician's attempts to send in the cultural Harkonnens and Imperial Sardaukar.

      Strat

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  5. "duh" by markdavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >" Middlekauff brought 33 healthy non-smokers and non-vapers into the lab. On three different days, one month apart, the participants [...] and found that the participants had high levels of adrenaline in their hearts after they smoked the e-cig with nicotine"

    Seriously? This is supposed to be impressive, useful science or something? So people who don't use nicotine consumed it and had typical, known, short-term heart rate changes after using that stimulant? And since none had any tolerance, the reaction was probably strong, right?

    Now repeat that experiment with people who don't use caffeine and have them consume that stimulant instead and measure heart rates and heart adrenaline levels. Wow, what a coincidence!

  6. So just nicotine research then by Titanek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the broadside to vaping? Surely this study extends to nicotine gum, nicotine patches, and nicotine sprays as well.

  7. Anti ecig people are stupid by rossz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Compare ecigs to tobacco when looking at the health issue since the overwhelming majority of ecig users are former smokers.

    The anti-smoking people are becoming irrelevant, which worries them. So they chose ecigs as their new target. There is a push to ban ecigs in all places that tobacco smoking is banned. That would include my own apartment where smoking is banned on the entire property. If this stupid law gets passed, I'll have to walk outside and off the property to the street to vape. I might as well light up a real cigarette if I'm going through that much trouble.

    "It's the smell!" It's odorless, you moron, unless I get a flavored kind, then it will smell like vanilla or berries. That shit you cooked for dinner last night for dinner was far more offensive.

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