As misinformation abounds, and our recent article showed, even doctors are confused about the health benefits offered by switching from smoking to vaping. This is especially true when applied to chest issues such as COPD and wheezing. Naturally, this can cause concerns, but the scientific evidence is strong and continues to amass.
In our recent piece, we detailed how a global survey found that 74% of doctors didn’t understand that nicotine does not cause cancer or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). It isn’t like the government hasn’t been doing its best to communicate the findings from solid independent research.
Following the release of Nicotine vaping in England by the Office for Health
Improvement and Disparities, Dr Jeanelle DeGruchy, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England commented, “Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking so the message is clear, if the choice is between smoking and vaping, choose vaping. Quitting smoking is one of the best things you can do for your health.”
The “message” the government is giving out isn’t based on opinion, it is grounded in strong science informing evidence-based decision making.
For example, the paper “Health impact of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: current and emerging evidence” produced by a team at the University of Catania.
The team conducted the evidence review because despite “evidence from analytical chemistry and exposure studies demonstrating that chemical production in [vape] emission aerosols does not pose a major health concern”, people still claim vaping poses a danger.
They highlighted that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) committee, “agreed that, because many of the harmful components of cigarettes are not present in e-cigarettes, switching to nicotine-containing e-cigarettes was likely to be significantly less harmful than continuing smoking”.
In a similar paper, Professor Riccardo Polosa said, “emerging clinical evidence suggests that e-cigarettes use in patients with COPD can help [them to] abstain from long-term smoking with clinically relevant health gains.”
One of the other common lines of attack is the mistaken claim that vaping causes wheezing. “Current cigarette and electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) were associated with elevated wheezing,” wrote the authors of one poor quality study. The team missed the fact that the cohort reporting wheezing happened to be smoking as well as using electronic cigarettes – the other cohort, non-smokers only using vapes, did not report any issues.
This error was picked up by a team from Georgetown University and the University of Michigan, in their work ‘Assessment of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems With Cigarette Use and Self-reported Wheezing in the US Adult Population’ who replicated the study to verify the results.
“In this cohort study,” they concluded, “exclusive [ecig] use was not associated with an increase in the risk of self-reported wheezing. However, a small increase in risk between [ecig] use and wheezing was reported by individuals who use cigarettes. This study adds to the literature about the potential health effects associated with [ecig] use.”
The takeaway from this is that the evidence shows that chest problems are caused by smoking are not by ecigs. Switching to vaping removes the toxins leading to chest issues and research demonstrates health improvements.