There’s a world of difference between smoking traditional cigarettes and vaping. Find out how they differ and learn more about their health considerations.
If you’re thinking about switching from smoking cigarettes to vaping, you might be wondering what their key differences and health considerations are. Knowing what these are and what they mean for your health can help you make the best choice for yourself.
Smoking vs Vaping: Key Differences
Let’s begin by exploring the key differences between smoking cigarettes and vaping.
Smoking
When you smoke a cigarette, you inhale smoke produced by burning tobacco and paper. The temperature in the burning end can reach higher than 600°C. However, when you take a drag, it increases to more than 800°C. These high temperatures help produce the thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Vaping
Unlike cigarettes, vaping devices do not burn tobacco. Instead, they use power from a battery to vapourise e-liquid that has soaked into wicking material in the coil. E-liquid contains a mix of vegetable glycerine (VG), propylene glycol (PG), flavourings, and nicotine (optional). When using a vape, you inhale vapour either into your mouth and then your lungs (mouth-to-lung or MTL) or directly into your lungs (direct-to-lung or DTL).
Smoking vs Vaping: Health Considerations
Smoking also differs from vaping when it comes to health considerations. Let’s take a closer look.
Smoking
The tobacco smoke produced by a burning cigarette contains more than 6,000 different chemicals, of which more than 60 have been proven to cause cancer. Some of the chemicals in cigarette smoke include nicotine, carbon monoxide, tar, arsenic, benzene, and formaldehyde.
In addition to causing cancer, cigarettes can cause heart, circulatory, and respiratory diseases such as stroke, heart attack, emphysema, and vascular dementia. Smoking kills one person in the UK every five minutes.
Vaping
Research has found that, while not risk-free, using vaping devices exposes you to fewer harmful chemicals than cigarette smoke. Vapers had significantly lower levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, volatile organic compounds, and other toxicants that can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease, and lung disease. The overall nicotine levels in vapers were either lower or similar to those of smokers.
Vaping devices have been used as smoking cessation tools by millions of people in the UK. A study found that, of the five million people who stopped smoking in the last five years, 2.7 million said they used a vape to quit.
Explore Alternatives to Smoking
When it comes to choosing between vaping or smoking cigarettes, vaping is better for your health, even if it’s not entirely risk-free. It’s also a helpful way of cutting down your nicotine intake if you’re interested in quitting smoking and, later, using nicotine. Explore a range of vaping devices as potential alternatives to traditional smoking at Legion of Vapers. No matter what your preferences are, there are vaping products to suit you.
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