hi all!
This might help:
The Pill, Smoking, & Nicotine Replacement
As far as nicotine gum -- or the nicotine patch, for that matter -- is concerned, the risks do not seem to be as great as with smoking cigarettes. In properly selected women it may be appropriate to use a low-dose oral contraceptive along with nicotine gum or patches. If the woman has high blood pressure, is significantly overweight or has diabetes, however, the pill probably should not be used along with the gum or patch. This is a decision that can be made only by your own personal physician.
According to
this abstract, "Women who smoke and take oral contraceptives (OCs) have significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but the exact mechanisms for the increased risk are not known."
So it's unclear how
much of that oral contraception/smoking interaction risk is due to nicotine vs. other parts of smoking.
Nicotine constricts blood vessels (which can raise the risks of hypertension/clots/stroke/infarction), but there are other components of tobacco smoke that contribute a
lot to the cardiovascular risks of smoking, and almost certainly to the cardiovascular risks of smoking+the Pill.
So it makes sense that vaping reduces that combined risk.
Sorry this isn't a definitive answer -- it's just that
long-term intake of nicotine alone hasn't been studied a lot. There's no big bank of epidemiological studies out there like we have for smoking.
It's definitely worth asking your doctor about it if you're still concerned, especially if you have other conditions that make the interaction more dangerous (like the ones listed above). You might also be able to switch to a lower-dose pill.
For those women who are using the Pill solely for contraception, there are nonhormonal alternatives like the copper IUD (I'm quite happy with it).
