What happens to your body when you are Vaping?

Though people have been smoking for many centuries, electronic cigarettes are just a recent 21^st-century invention. What could have been the purpose of their invention? Most probably, to help the serial smokers to quit smoking, gradually.

On the contrary, people, esp. the teens, have started getting addicted to the e-cigarettes, so much so that you might be hearing fresh news related to vaping, almost every day, you won’t miss it. The marketing of these USB-like devices as a truly safe smoking option is so perfect that people are buying them without any health worries, but are now paying the price for it.

A comprehensive study of all the side-effects of vaping is still to happen; mostly because it’s only in the last few years that they have become popular. But what all has been inferred by the happenings till now, the following effects seem certain:

• More cravings:

  According to experts, Nicotine is the third most addictive substance after Heroin and Cocaine. It becomes more addictive if you inhale it via an e-cigarette, as they are engineered to deliver nicotine faster to your brain. It’s natural that the more you vape, the more you will crave for it.

  The brains of teens will keep on developing till the age of 25, so they become more vulnerable to nicotine addiction as compared to adults.

• Lungs get affected:

  Quite a few researchers have concluded that vaping, whether with or without nicotine, affects the lungs; but they all had a small sample size for their study. It all depends on the additives in the e-cigarettes and the frequency of use. Nevertheless, you can suffer respiratory issues, damage lungs, shortness of breath, coughing, lung inflammation, etc.

• BP and heart rate spikes:

  Smoke the e-cigarette a few times and your blood pressure will shoot up, besides the heart rate. So it’s obvious that there will be long-term effects too, and those include heart disease, stroke, heart attack, angina, etc.

  The risks are higher for those who smoke both, electronic and conventional cigarettes. Vaping pumps the nicotine in your lungs quicker than the traditional cigarettes; hence, heart rate rises sooner than that in other addictions.

• You jump on the hype:

  When people have a craze about anything, they chatter about it a lot. The buzz spreads and it sort of becomes easy for you to jump on the bandwagon. You become curious and want to try it for yourself, and when you puff an e-cigarette, you feel a pleasurable high as the ingredients in them release the feel-good chemicals in your brain, like the serotonin and dopamine.

• Affecting the teeth and gums:

  The e-cigarettes have some aerosol components which contribute to the growth of bacteria on the teeth, which means you can get cavities. Research has found that vaping is a cause of gum inflammation and periodontal diseases. Over a period of time this can cause your gums to bleed and recede. Vaping can also irritate your gums, throat, and mouth.

• Burning eyes:

  Chemicals like acrolein, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, etc. can cause irritation to the eyes, and these are released in the air by vaping. You may feel a burning and watery sensation that will make your eyes dry and bloodshot after some time. The situation is worse for those wearing contact lenses. The increase in blood pressure can cause hypertensive retinopathy, a condition in which the retina’s blood vessels get damaged.

• Withdrawal symptoms:

  When you smoke, you get the drug effect and feel a pleasurable high; when the effect wears off, you miss something and crave it again; either to get the high effect again or to prevent the withdrawal symptoms. After the nicotine effect wears-off, you may feel nausea, sweating, irritability, headache, insomnia, etc. Thus, you may end up in a vicious cycle of addiction.

The problem lays in the fact that very few people vape with the intention for which it was made; which is to help them gradually quit the traditional smoking. Since vaping is quite a new phenomenon, the long-term effects of it are still to be studied. If you feel anything irregular after vaping, like any health symptoms, the best course of action will be to immediately visit your doctor.

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