By Sadia Choudhury
Although preliminary evidence suggests that “vaping” tobacco is not as dangerous as smoking tobacco, either method still has its risks. First and foremost, any style of burnt tobacco consumption can encourage a dangerous amount of smoking that can be life-threatening, or slowly damage your lungs. E-cigarettes heat the nicotine, add the flavors and other chemicals to create a gas (aerosol) that many teens inhale. Many people may not know this but there have been recent outbreaks of injuries to the lungs that are associated with vaping. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that there have been “60 deaths in patients with e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI).”
We have discovered that both smoking and vaping affects your heart, but do we know exactly how this works? Well, the nicotine in both vapes and cigarettes simultaneously raises blood pressure and increases the flow of adrenaline, which increases the heart rate, a combination which can cause a heart attack. Thus, it is best to start quitting the use of nicotine before it becomes too late to do anything about it.
Smoking becomes a challenging habit to quit due to the presence of nicotine, which is an addictive drug. Over time, regular usage of nicotine—at first awkward— starts to feel extremely normal where the brain notices how an exact release of burning chemicals would overpower the emotions into feeling calm and good. Although feeling relaxed may sound intriguing, there are undesirable side effects that should not be ignored. Smoking leads to a thinning of the cerebral cortex and this alteration is crucial because it is this part of the brain that is responsible for thinking skills that utilize memory and sensory functions. Despite the cerebral cortex thinning naturally as we age, people who smoke may experience an acceleration in this thinning, which influences how the mind and body will function later in life. The ability to think competently before we speak or do something relies on a healthy brain.
Dr. Karama, who is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Canada’s McGill University, has written, “For those who had smoked the average number, it took roughly 25 years for complete recovery of the affected areas of the cortex. Those who smoked less than average recovered faster, while those who had smoked the most still had a long way to go to recover at age 73.”
According to some studies, the average amount of cigarettes smoked by any regular smoker is 196,000, which equates to a smoking period of 26.9 years. The time needed after quitting for successful physical recovery to happen was around 25 years. This indicates that it would take most of your life just to heal the affected areas around the cortex, and that would only be for people who have smoked less than the average number. Smoking may trigger a psychological sense of relaxation or “loosening up”, but it also produces very harmful effects that can take years to recover from, even if one is lucky enough to achieve a full rehabilitation.