So a co-worker (52-55 year old woman) went to the doctor today to get a ringing in her ears checked.
While she was there he asked if she was a smoker, she told him she had been for over 40 years but had recently switched to ecigs. She asked him if there was any benefit to doing this in which he replied.
Well you are getting the same nicotine, and implied the same cancer risk. Who knows whats in that juice you are using, and while it may smell better to the people around you it is the same or maybe worse than just smoking itself. Instead of puffing on that when you feel the need for nicotine do 5 mins of exercise(she is not obese) and the craving will be gone.
She now feels that ecigs are doing the same harm to her without the smell as her old analogs. He told her as long as any nicotine is in her body the risk is the same.
Now I have read and tried to explain it to her, but being 20 some years younger than her, she believes her doctor and I need some supplementary data to prove that while it is bad, it isn't as bad, or I fear she may just drop the ecigs completely. I need something I can print out to show her that while we all agree they aren't the best option they do have some merit to them.
Ask her how she FEELS. We can feel what smoke was doing to us. The coughing, raw throat and painful lungs. Also ask her if she thinks she'd go back to smoking if she quit the e-cigarettes. Ask her to use simple common sense - how can you take away or significantly reduce all of the chemicals that are believed to cause smoking-related diseases and still have it be as bad or worse than smoking? That's like believing that ice cream with all of the fat and sugar removed is just as bad for you as regular ice cream?? It makes no sense. There simply isn't anything in e-cigarette vapor in levels that are known to cause cancer or heart disease.
Her doctor also completely ignores the enjoyment factor. People don't just smoke (or vape) because of the nicotine or else NRT would be 100% effective. If she could have quit smoking by exercising for 5 minutes (if ANYONE could do that) then there would be a far better quit rate every year than 6.2%. Obviously, other methods weren't working and she'd still be smoking otherwise. He is an idiot for not considering this and his suggestion significantly increases her risk of relapsing to smoking. He is condemning her to keep smoking. For that reason alone she should get a second opinion.
My doctor told me the same, that e-cigs are bad because it's the nicotine that's harmful. I just kept my mouth shut and considered him uninformed.....here's his comment...."Unfortunately, nicotine is the main culprit and health risk, so if it contains nicotine, then the risk should be the same. If it doesn't have nicotine, what's the point? Better to check on a pencil or celery sticks! (As a former heavy smoker, I can relate though.)"
Any doctor who believes nicotine is the main risk factor for smoking-related diseases is not properly educated on the subject. Again, use common sense. If nicotine causes lung cancer, then why don't smokeless tobacco users get lung cancer as much as smokers? If nicotine causes heart disease, then why don't Swedish snus users have higher rates of heart disease than non-users? The only risk factor for nicotine is a slight increase in risk of heart attack in people
who already have heart disease or a heart condition, the same as the caffeine risk or strenuous exercise for those with heart disease, because it is a stimulant that can cause a sharp increase in heart rate and trigger an attack. Nicotine isn't anymore a heart disease or cancer risk than is caffeine.
I had a nurse practitioner who told my brother-in-law that nicotine causes cancer. (His wife worked as her assistant.) Other than having my kids see her for things like wart removals or needing a prescription filled, I can no longer trust her medical advice beyond simple things. General practitioners simply aren't specialists and they basically base their opinions on the same things we do - research they read about in the media. Ask a cardiologist or pulmonologist if they believe nicotine is the main cause of the smoking-related diseases they see every day. Show them the ingredients in e-liquid and see if they would still say exposure to those chemicals would have anywhere near the same effect on the heart and lungs that the chemicals found in cigarette smoke would. Asking a GP about the effects of e-cigarettes on your body would be like asking a podiatrist for advice about treating brain cancer.
