Vaping less harmful than smoking? It is just as bad

Author: Femke van de Vliert

Research supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has shown that long-term use of e-cigarettes affects blood vessel health. Vaping has similar effects on your blood vessels as smoking, thereby increasing the risk of heart disease. However, how damage to your vessels occurs is somewhat different. On top of that, it is shown that the use of both e-cigarettes and cigarettes can be more dangerous than the use of one of these products.  

Vaping has become a very popular trend in the last few years, especially among the youth. It was introduced as a tool to quit smoking. Nowadays, 3.1% of Dutch adults use e-cigarettes. Of these users, 72% is a dual user, which means that they use both cigarettes and e-cigarettes. It has been thought that vaping is less harmful than smoking, but the latest research shows otherwise.

The difference in vascular health effects between smoking and vaping is caused by the underlying processes in the cell which cause vessel damage. It is generally known that smoking cigarettes is harmful to the health of blood vessels. The University of California, with the support of the NHLBI, has recently published a paper in which it stated that combining smoking with vaping is even more harmful. Smokers and vapers show both increased presence of factors that contribute to thrombosis and inflammation. However, one aspect is only shown in the body of vapers and is probably the cause of the damage: the cells of the vessels produce more reactive oxidants. This is an indicator that the cells of the vessel are under stress. The stress could eventually lead to dysfunction of the blood vessel wall and an increased risk of future heart diseases.

The most worrying is that vessel damage found in vapers has a different cause than with smokers. “These findings suggest that using the two products together, as many people do, could increase their health risks compared to using them individually,”  said professor Matthew L. Springer, Ph.D., leader of the study.  “We had not expected to see that.”

One could now think that vaping alone is less harmful than smoking, but even that is evidently not true. Professor Springer and his group have proven that vaping causes vascular health problems as well as smoking cigarettes. “In our human study, we found that chronic e-cigarette users had impaired blood vessel function, which may put them at increased risk for heart disease,” Springer said. “It indicates that chronic users of e-cigarettes may experience a risk of vascular disease similar to that of chronic smokers.” Thus in hindsight, vaping is not as harmless as thought it was.