Every blog entry about vaping should start with the same message, which too often goes unsaid -- if you don't already smoke, you shouldn't take up vaping. After all, vaping is not risk-free -- even if the UK's National Health Service has deemed it 95 percent safer than smoking. And, to put it bluntly, why get yourself addicted to nicotine?
That said, while everyone who smokes should switch to vaping for a myriad of health and financial reasons, female smokers who decide to vape instead should expect a number of benefits only enjoyed by those with two X chromosomes.
It's all about the oxygen
A major part of being a healthy person is getting enough oxygen to your cells. Poor oxygen levels in skin cells, for example, can lead to premature wrinkling and dry skin.
This starts with your lungs, obviously, and both smoking and vaping involve inhaling something other than air. But a 2013 American study showed that while a session of smoking lasting only 15 minutes damaged the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen in 30 test subjects, vaping sessions had no significant impact on lung functioning.
This is huge, because smoking's damage to lung functioning is a big part of the reason that smoking causes people to age prematurely. If vaping doesn't affect lung functioning, it stands to reason that switching to vaping can reduce the premature ageing, and the attendant wrinkles and unhealthy-looking skin, caused by smoking.
If oxygen's journey to our cells starts in the lungs, the next leg of the voyage is our blood vessels, and there's good news here, too. One of the biggest studies ever done on vaping vs. smoking, the VESUVIUS study funded by the British Heart Foundation in 2019, found that smokers who switch to vaping experience improvements to their vascular system -- in other words, their blood vessels' ability to transport blood throughout the body -- within one month.
And here's the kicker -- the improvements in vascular health were much more pronounced in women than in men! Also, it didn't matter if the women in the study used vape juice that contained nicotine or not -- the improvements were the same.
What about fertility?
It's widely known that smoking is a no-no for pregnant women. Here's where I want to be very clear -- pregnant women shouldn't vape, either. It's still risky for the mum-to-be and the developing foetus. However ...
In comparison to smoking, vaping is far less harmful to a woman's reproductive health, according to the most current research.
The bottom line is, if you're trying to conceive, you shouldn't smoke or vape, and you DEFINITELY should do neither if you're pregnant. But for a female smoker who wants to improve her chances of conception, vaping is decidedly the better option.
The good news for female smokers who just can't kick their nicotine habit even while pregnant is that the number-one most harmful substance to a developing foetus from cigarettes is carbon monoxide. Vaping doesn't create carbon monoxide (or tar, for that matter), leading the NHS to say, somewhat extraordinarily:
If using an e-cigarette helps you to stop smoking, it is much safer for you and your baby than continuing to smoke.
What about older women?
Vaping isn't just a safer option than smoking for women in their reproductive years. In fact, studies on menopausal smokers suggest that vaping is much safer.
Women's ovaries slow down producing the primary female hormone, oestrogen, in menopause, but guess what? They can continue to produce male hormones in women in their 80s! This hormonal imbalance can lead to two outcomes women definitely don't want -- growing facial hair and going bald. Study after study has shown that smoking makes this hormonal imbalance much more acute.
However, studies also conclude that nicotine isn't the culprit -- it's the large number of toxic chemicals created by burning tobacco. Alternative nicotine delivery systems, such as vaping, don't carry the same risks because while vapour has harmful chemicals, it doesn't have nearly as many as tobacco smoke.
Conclusion
Vaping doesn't confer any health benefits to non-smokers -- if you're not a nicotine user, you shouldn't take up vaping, as it does carry some health risks. But if you smoke, switching to vaping is a no-brainer -- particularly if you're a woman, of any age.
Stephen “Tex” English: tex@thejuicewarehouse.co.uk; Insta: @tex_vapes
