Time to step up, veteran vapers!

[kristin]

Again - NOT trying to prove that e-cigs make you healthier. Just trying to show that there are no significant or noticable, negative effects.

If the doctor checks your blood pressure, nose, throat, lung x-ray, breathing etc. and says, "Well, I can't find anything wrong with you that I can attribute to using the device/liquid." That's all I need.

If we have a significant snus-using population, comments about no noticable side effects from the snus use would be good, as well. Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Your doctor won't cooperate, Bob? Understand, I don't want him to proclaim that e-cigs are good for you - just to tell the truth if he sees or doesn't see any negative reactions to the e-cig use. Since you use so many other products, you may not be an ideal candidate for this paper, but who knows.

I'm trying to see if a year or more of using e-cigs show any signs of illness, damage or disease - NOT if they make people healthier.

Ideally, we'd have non-smokers use them and see if anything bad happens, but we all know that will never happen. So the next best thing is to observe if there are any negative reactions in the people who DO use e-cigs.

The reason I'm interested in people who have quit smoking the whole time is that they would be the closest to testing on non-smokers, NOT to show that they are healthier because of e-cigs.

 

[Kent C]

Wiz: You might get that lecture if you use the word "nicotine". I was explaining how I didn't smoke, but ... I used "this device that provides a measured amount of nicotine in a vapor." Freak out! Nicotine is a periodontist's no-no. Your gums don't get blood, they recede, you get "long in the tooth" and you impair healing of damaged tissue.

That was the lecture I got after puffing DVap's WTA liquid in her presence.

My doctor was more impressed but he wasn't a periodontist. I asked if I could demonstrate... he agreed. There was a young resident there as well.... asked her - yes.. And I demoed it for them. The intern/resident seemed in awe. Neither had seen or heard of them, which surprised me a bit. The Doc was just happy I wasn't smoking cigs anymore.

 

[kristin]

I have been smoke free for 8 months. It hasn't been easy and it is getting harder to keep the symptoms at bay. I know I'm not alone in this and I just wanted to warn you that there is a large group of us that have discovered that vaping e-juice alone isn't the complete solution. I'm going to win this war but it will not be due to e-cigs alone. Just go to the nicotine forum or the quitting forum to read what I am talking about. Nicotine is only one element in the puzzle.

I know - I've been following the "Nicotine, are we getting it" thread. Exactly why I've encouraged my husband to start using snus.

Anyhow, if you still get a good checkup, where the doctor can't find anything wrong with you attributable to the e-cig/snus, it still serves my purpose.

 

[a2dcovert]

I know - I've been following the "Nicotine, are we getting it" thread. Exactly why I've encouraged my husband to start using snus.

Anyhow, if you still get a good checkup, where the doctor can't find anything wrong with you attributable to the e-cig/snus, it still serves my purpose.

I'm interested to see how many replys you get to this. I would be very pleased to see even 50% success rate at e-cigs allowing users to quit for good. I'm hoping you get a good response.

I am going to get to a different doctor as soon as I can. There has to be a specific reason for the problems I am experiencing. It may have a worse effect on those who smoked for longer periods of time and the amount they smoked.

I can say that I have had absolutely no side effects from the e-cig. I have had a complete reversal of my breathing problems. I would bet good money that the success rate with e-cigs verses any other quit smoking program would be at least double. I think the best method now has only a 16% success rate. Consider how many smokers are out there the possibilities of saving 50 to 60 thousand lives a year is something that should get positive acceptance in the medical community.

 

[natura]

It's strange not to have more coming forward to post? Makes one wonder how long any of us will be successful. I still believe that I will. But the lack of response is sure surprising me.

Wonder how many active people post in that veteran forum

 

[kristin]

It's strange not to have more coming forward to post? Makes one wonder how long any of us will be successful. I still believe that I will. But the lack of response is sure surprising me.

Wonder how many active people post in that veteran forum

I'm hoping more will come out after the holidays!

 

[rsmith76]

I have been smoke free for almost 2 yrs. now, thanks to chantix, and my joye stick, mostly my joye stick. I recently went to my doctor for a sinus infection, and was informed of my high blood pressure. So now I am on blood pressure medicine, which has nothing to do with my e cig. My dr. was glad that I have given up on analogs, but has no idea that I vape. I went back today for a check up on my blood pressure, (I vaped like a fiend before I got there), my blood pressure was 120/70. His response was "that is perfect". I am 56 yrs. old which he attributes is causing the high blood pressure, which was 160/90. I have never felt better since giving up the analogs. I have no intention of giving up my vaping habit. I have been vaping for about 18 months. I highly recommend vaping to everyone I know. I have never had any serious health issues and hope to keep it that way. rsmith76

 

[LuckyCharm]

I haven't been vaping for quite a year yet, but March 14th this year was the day I got my first e-cig. Except for a roughly 4-day period when I had to change out a bad battery charger, I have been completely off analogs, and I hated every minute of that. I had previously smoked for decades -- one or two attempts to quit, mostly to please someone else, but no real desire to. Eventually I became hardened, and would actually get angry with doctors who tried to push the topic on me. "Stop talking about this, you're wasting my time, I am NOT quitting!" I told myself that I was still in the prime of health, even though I'd wake up several times nightly from coughing (of course, each wake-up necessitated a cigarette, even though I had to put on slippers and don a coat, since I haven't smoked in my home in some 15 years). Needless to say, the night coughs are gone. I can now keep up much better with my playful yellow Lab, and I'm not constantly putting burn holes in my clothes, car upholstery, etc. Oh, and no more nasty ashtrays to empty, either! How attractive that must have looked to the mailman and visitors, on my front porch.... Will post my blood pressure tomorrow -- right now I'm in the middle of a gnarly whole-house repipe and it's sky-high at the moment.

 

[CZEdwards]

Kristen, my seven month anniversary is day after tomorrow. I had a doc appointment about 5 days after I made the permanent switch, and a dentist appointment about 2 months after. Both were very positive then, and we'll see what my numbers look like when I have my next appointment.

My dentist was very encouraging; we talked about the problems with PG -- it's not the nicotine so much that causes periodontal issues, apparently, as PG -- she said kids on regular asthma nebulizer and inhaler treatment frequently have delicate gums and an increase in cavities. The PG dries the mouth and constricts the gums.

 

[deewal]

I have not had a cigarette since the 22nd August 2008. That is two days after i bought my first E-Cig. Before that i had been smoking approx 30-40 High Strength Cigarettes for 50+ years. I can't believe it. My Doctor is Astounded. I suffer from Hypertension (High Blood Pressure and have to take Medicine daily for the rest of my life. However after 3 months of Vaping my Doctor Cut down the amount of Medication i am taking as he said i did'nt need as much. I see my Doctor every three months. He is presently doing a series of tests on me as i have just told him that the MHRA are going to Ban E-Cigs in Britain.
He is Livid as the MHRA Consultation Paper according to their Website is aimed at the Public and Healthcare Professionals but he has not received it so he has asked me if i mind my Medical Records to be used as proof in the very long letter he is about to send them. He is also guiding me as to what i should write in my letter to them so we are "on the same page" so to speak. He is also in contact with Higher Officials in the NHS demanding that the MHRA write to him and them why he, as the Head of a Large Area Medical Practice, has not received this Document and only knew about it from one of his Patients. Whether any of this information from my tests will be usefull to you i don't know as i am British but it will be freely available to any interested party in the UK who wishes to use it as Medical Evidence.

 

[rtbob]

If anyone has had a Pulmonary Function Test prior to switching to e-cigs I would love to see another PFT perfomed after just six months of e-cig use. I would be willing to wager a large sum of money that when the tests were compared there would be a significant improval in all lung functions post six months of no analogs.

 

[asidrave]

i would have been at the one year mark if it was that i went back to analogs back in may of last year and then started vaping again this past january

 

[LuckyCharm]

If anyone has had a Pulmonary Function Test prior to switching to e-cigs I would love to see another PFT perfomed after just six months of e-cig use. I would be willing to wager a large sum of money that when the tests were compared there would be a significant improval in all lung functions post six months of no analogs.

I agree, but I don't know how many people could submit input. I have been banned from the VA due to my service dog.

~~Cheryl

 

[aubergine]

Kristin, I'd had that idea when I was first researching these to decide if I'd give them a try (much more than glad that I did.) I thought that since they've been around for some years now, a simple positive report on the health of 1-2 year vapers would be the best help, though not, of course, to be confused with definitive research.
After perusing these forums for some past weeks, though, I see some real difficulties with that.
One is simply the myriad of unrelated general health difficulties that unsympathetic/misinformed physicians might attribute, at least hypothetically, to vaping. Regular use of any product with no clear, long-term research is going to look suspect in diagnosing symptoms that can have many causes - headaches, gastrointestinal problems, etc. etc.. We've seen that in the health forum - people quite reasonably wonder if they should attribute all sorts of very possibly unrelated (though almost never very serious) problems to vaping. So if X says that his blood pressure is high, or she's been diagnosed with a brain tumor, or any of a myriad of allergy-type symptoms, whatever, there's no way to tease apart variables with certainty, however unlikely. Nicotine related issues that are predictable and well-documented in other products also need to be teased out.
The difficulties would also be compounded by the fact that the vast majority of vapers are ex-smokers (I assume you'd eliminate those who still smoke), with all of the effects of long-term smoking, many irreversible. There's lots of encouraging news put out by quit-smoking groups about these problems healing over time, and some are quite true, but in reality the small print is not so thrilling. Having worked hospice for 11 years I can't tell you how many of my lung cancer and COPD pts have suffered the double whammy of having quit smoking 5, 10, even 15 years before diagnosis. Quitting slows things down, but there you have it, alas.
That being said, seems to me that what people want to know, really, is that there are no new, serious, dramatic disorders that could be pinned on vaping with some reasonable certainty. Everyone knows about nicotine. People on the street want to know about the "other stuff" - PG, VG, inhaling so much vapor, food flavorings, Chinese jungle-fever bacteria... the "mystery" factor. That's what you're looking for I think - not the already abundant reports of success with quitting or the easily predictable actual health improvements related to any method of smoking cessation.

And it's still a very, very good idea, seems to me. I also wish that those who were there at the beginning could be rounded up, with conditions suffered or highly predictable prior to vaping duly noted and eliminated as vape-related.

Do people disappear from this forum because they get tired of talking about vaping 24/7, or because they then eliminate vaping and remain nicotine free, or eventually drift back to analog use, or what?

 

[aubergine]

PS - My own conclusion is that if there WERE any serious problems that show up within a few years, we sure as hell would have heard about it. The FDA would be thrilled to widely disseminate same, and I can't imagine that they haven't been searching. I'm not sweating it - and not smoking, either, miraculously, like so many in here. "I feel like a million" works for me.

 

[JDSupreme]

PS - My own conclusion is that if there WERE any serious problems that show up within a few years, we sure as hell would have heard about it. The FDA would be thrilled to widely disseminate same, and I can't imagine that they haven't been searching. I'm not sweating it - and not smoking, either, miraculously, like so many in here. "I feel like a million" works for me.

Oh ya we'd know! I probably wouldn't be typing on this forum right now. They would be all over that like white on rice.