Take for example Drael's post. I have absolutely NO IDEA what Drael's medical qualifications are. Internet research may give the user the feeling that he/she knows a lot about a subject. I researched quite a bit myself but my conclusion was that I am unqualified to speak to the safety of *anything* we vape.
I have a degree in psychology, although alot of my understanding of pharmacology, particularly in regards to the brain, has been furthered by internet research (including scientific papers of course).
It appears, not alot is known about the exact activities of the non-nicotine alkaloids, and their cumulative contribution to the subjective and medical effects of smoking analogues.
We know these other alkaloids have nicotinic agonist effects, like nicotine, and probably also beta-endorphin effects, like nicotine and some, like anabasine and some others have mao inhibiting effects. Many of them have longer half-lives than nicotine as well (Anabasine and anatabine are 16 and 10 hours respectively)
Beta-endorphin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I only personally presume/speculate that the mao-inhibiting effect enhances the beta-endorphin effects because thats how mao-inhibition affects very similar brain actions - and it makes logical sense to me regarding the subjective effects. I have no proof, but it doesnt seem like a large assumption to me.
But .....thats really not the important part for what we are talking about here.
The important aspect is that too much mao inhibition can indeed be a bad thing. For example, drug/medication interactions. Thats rather well established, in the medical feild.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Smokers themselves have depressed levels of mao-a and mao-b.
Brain monoamine oxidase A inhibition in cigarette
It would appear this inhibition is not nearly as potent as anti-depressant mao-inhibitor medications. Which in itself, does not present much of a medical consideration.
If the level of mao-inhibition was higher than smoking however, that could influence its potential to interact with medicines and so forth. I doubt it would be nearly as much of a concern as some pharamaceutical drugs (like on that wiki link) however.
An example might be opiate pain killers. Say a wta vaper is injured and prescribed a pain killer. WTAs make you relaxed, and maoi's enhance the effects of opiates. Smoking itself has some minor effect on pain killers. If there was alot of non-nicotine alkaloids in an e-liquid, it could cause over sedation in this combination.
Or drinking might be another example. Or anti-depressants.
A person may have no current medical condition, and be on no medications, but without knowing the non-nicotinic alkaloid content, its not clear what to do if a medication is suddenly nessasary. The vendors would probably say "dont use if your on medication", because thats easier legally and ethically for them.
But in practice, if someone is using wta's, then gets injured and goes on painkillers, or whatever, it may not even occur to them there may be an interaction at that time (if indeed there is one because we dont know if the mao effect is stronger, weaker or the same as smoking).
Its the sort of thing you want to know is all.
Of course, we dont know for sure how efficiently they are absorbed via vaping.
But we have some science that tells us how effeciently nicotine is absorbed (roughly half that of smoking @ 16mg/ml in a ruyan e-cig), and these chemicals have very similar structures, so we could _guess_ that their absorbtion is similar. Even if the absorption is a bit different, some hints on the e-liquid composition would be much better than nothing, information wise.
And thats not sabotage on the part of the vendors, its vendors trying to prevent potential competition from copying their work (not the existing vendors so much, potential new ones). This sort of commercial secrecy is commonplace in business who develop methods, processes, or ingredients that are more unique.
Unfortunately for us, that means, consumers dont know whether to treat WTAs like smoking, medically, or whether they should strictly avoid all medications with potential mao interactions (as an example of how this information would be useful)
If you read that wiki page on mao-inhibitors, youll see what I mean. I mean, even if the levels are higher, its not going to be as bad as an Mao-inihibiting anti-depressant.... But it still could present a medical consideration, much the way drinking on certain medications is a consideration.
Like some similar commercial situations, it leaves things a little unsatisfactorily unclear for the consumer.
Of course there are some mysteries in and around the particular issues of bases, flavourings and so forth, but its not a total unknown - we have studies on vg and pg inhalation, and we have the gras standard, as well as a general idea of what might decompose or oxidise and such like (even if consumers arent considering all these factors, or its a little complex, they can think about it). Admitedly alot of e-liquid suppliers dont list their flavouring ingredients either, but while thats dissappointing from a consumer choice perspective, its still not exactly the same as this.
I am not suggesting that WTA's are more risky than regular e-liquids _at all_. We dont even know if they do have the same, or less, or more of a ratio of non-nicotine alkaloids than trade tobaccos.
What I am saying is that without information on this level of non-nicotine content, it makes us less able to make informed decisions, such as my above example of being injured....
I am not presenting any of this as a medical or expert opinion, its merely stuff I want to know, personally, as a wta user, so I can use that knowledge to make choices. You cant know everything. There are always uncertainties in life. But it helps to have what information we can, to make the best choices we can.
