Search for tag: "vaping"

Dr. Gellner: Unless you've been avoiding all news reports, you know that vaping has become a huge problem in today's teen population. It's a problem both with the number of kids doing it and with what's in the vaping juice itself. I'll talk about why you should talk to your teens about not vaping on today's Scope. I'm Dr. Cindy Gellner.

Announcer: Keep your kids healthy and happy. You are now entering the "Healthy Kids Zone" with Dr. Cindy Gellner on The Scope.

Dr. Gellner: It's amazing how many times I'm asking questions about a child's tobacco use or exposure and the parents tell me, "Well, we don't smoke around the kids. We vape outside." Or I hear that parents have encouraged their teen to vape rather than smoke cigarettes. Most people know that cigarettes are filled with tobacco and they emit smoke. E-cigarettes or vape pens or mods which are used in vaping don't produce smoke, but more a mist that looks like water vapor.

When someone vapes, the pen basically heats up the juice or the liquid in the device, and then the user inhales the mist. The problem is that vapor is full of tiny cancer- and disease-causing chemical particles. Many parents are like, "Well, we don't use the kind with nicotine or let our kids use the kind with nicotine," which is the addictive substance in cigarettes, so they think it's a safer alternative.

There is one particularly popular vaping product JUUL, which looks like a USB flash drive, so it's easy to carry around and even hide, which is one of the reasons it's the go-to vaping device for middle and high school students. Vape juice also comes in fun flavors like fruit medley, double espresso, blueberry cheesecake, and cotton candy. Unfortunately, one flavor pod can have as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes.

So what's in the vape juice anyways? Well, the main ingredients are either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin. You've probably heard of propylene glycol before. It's the main ingredient in antifreeze. Yes, the kind you put in your car or that airports use to de-ice planes. In small amounts, the body is able to metabolize it. Too much of this will affect the nervous system, cause seizures, kidney problems or even abnormal heart rhythms.

Vegetable glycerin is a great moisturizer for your skin if put on topically,and it too can be okay to ingest. It's found in a lot of foods under the name glycerol. But inhaling it, the science is still out on that one. It does seem to be the safer of the two ingredients.

Generally speaking, unless you are inhaling a medication specifically designed to go into the lungs, inhaling anything in the lungs other than clean air probably isn't the smartest move.

The biggest toxins in vape juice are in the flavorings. Cinnamaldehyde gives a cinnamon flavor, and it's found in a lot of what we eat that's cinnamon. But note that cinnamaldehyde sounds a lot like formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is what dead bodies are embalmed in to preserve them. Cinnamaldehyde is a known skin irritant, which has been shown to inhibit mucous clearance when inhaled. Then there's o-Vanillin which tastes like vanilla but causes DNA damage. DNA damage leads to cancer. Another example is pentanedione, which gives a creamy or buttery flavor to the juice but has shown to cause lung fibrosis or stiffening of the muscles in the lungs.

Ask any pediatrician and they'll tell you vaping is dangerous and more and more kids are becoming seriously harmed or dying as a result. If you think your child may be vaping, talk to your pediatrician right away so they can help them to quit and learn the facts about how uncool vaping really is.

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Interviewer: How e-cigarettes affect your heart and it's not in a good way, and it might not be better than smoking after all. We're going to find out more about that next with cardiologist, Dr. John Ryan on The Scope.

Announcer: Health information from expects, supported by research. From University of Utah Health, this is TheScopeRadio.com.

Before we get into the conversation about e-cigarettes and how they affect your heart health, I think it's important that we say that cigarettes and e-cigarettes are linked to many different health problems. But today, we're just focusing on one particular and that's issues related to the heart. So, Dr. Ryan, how do e-cigarettes affect a person's heart health and are the threats real?

Dr. Ryan: I think the threats are real. I think the concerns are legitimate. One particular concern with e-cigarettes is that it's really re-normalizing cigarette smoking, nicotine consumption, and tobacco use within North America. Some of it, the science is uncertain. We are not sure of the long-term effects of e-cigarettes, either on heart or lung disease. And then legitimate concerns get raised because of this chronic exposure to nicotine, chronic and also varying exposure to nicotine. One of the particular issues there seems to be marked variation in how much nicotine is being consumed with each vape.

Interviewer: Because when you get the little vapor things, it tells you how many milligrams per whatever, but that's not regulated so we don't know if that's accurate or not.

Dr. Ryan: Exactly. And the anticipated is .05 is what's often quoted. It can really range up to 15 whereas where your cigarettes would be about two to three. So in that regard, there's variation there that's concerning. Also, some of the physiologic effects that e-cigarettes and nicotine consumption, in general, are concerning, in particular, high blood pressure, fast heart rate, endothelial dysfunction, which is the lining of the blood vessels of the heart, in particular, which can be a trigger for atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease.

And all of these things are affected by the nicotine consumption and, in particular, by the e-cigarette nicotine consumption as well as other chemicals that are in the e-cigarettes. And as you rightly pointed out, the regulation of this is difficult and not as robust as many physicians and scientists would like. And that just raises further concerns.

Interviewer: So you mentioned a lot of different bad things that can happen from e-cigarettes, and it's related to nicotine primarily, the raising your heart rate, the blood pressure, your blood vessels narrowing, high risk of hardening of the arteries. What does that do, then, that causes heart failure or heart attack or stroke?

Dr. Ryan: So a lot of it we don't know, first of all. That specifically raises concerns, but the issues, in particular, that are raised with high blood pressure, with fast heart rates, with narrowing of the blood vessels of the heart, the coronary arteries, as you mentioned, this puts extra strain on the heart. The heart obviously depends on blood flow in order to get oxygen, and in the setting of high blood pressure, fast heart rate, decreased vessel size, you do raise the risk of having a heart attack.

So the essential concern, in particular, is for heart attacks, that the use of nicotine, e-cigarettes, and cigarettes raises your risk of having a heart attack. And also, it's not necessary, and that's where I got back to the normalization of tobacco consumption and nicotine consumption within North America. This is not a necessary thing that we need to do. This distinguishes it from . . . and there's controversy of this as well, but diet consumption, fat consumption, etc. However, we do need to eat. We don't need to smoke and we don't need to vape.

Interviewer: So for sure, we know nicotine causes these negative effects to the heart.

Dr. Ryan: Exactly.

Interviewer: What about the other chemicals, like . . . I've heard the flavoring chemicals. Even if you're getting the dose without the nicotine, they've found that it can cause other diseases.

Dr. Ryan: Yeah, so the flavoring has recently been associated with what's called popcorn lung or bronchiolitis obliterans, which is a form of inflammatory and fibrotic lung disease. The reason this raises concerns is, first of all, lung disease, therefore, puts a strain on your heart. And secondly, if there's chronic inflammation, which we see in the setting of poor air quality and stress, it can result in triggering heart attacks or heart disease. So I think there are two main concerns with the chemicals that you bring up in terms of e-cigarettes.

Interviewer: If you've got a patient that's right in front of you now that smoked e-cigarettes, how would you convince them that they shouldn't? Because a lot of people get enjoyment out of it, or it's an addictive habit that they can't stop. It takes a lot of willpower to quit.

Dr. Ryan: Being sensitive enough in terms of convincing people to do things. Ultimately, I think you have to introduce the risks associated with the disease, the risks associated with the risk factors, and hope that they make an informed, educated decision about their habits. And so I try and present to them the uncertainty about e-cigarettes. I try to present them with some of the concerns that I have about e-cigarettes and nicotine consumption in general. And then, hopefully, when they leave the clinic and when they go home, they're able to access resources themselves and make good decisions themselves and be comfortable with the decisions they're making.

Interviewer: And I think, essentially, it comes down to this is something that you don't have to do to your heart.

Dr. Ryan: Exactly, yeah. You don't have to do it to your heart. You don't have to do it to your lungs.

Announcer: Have a question about a medical procedure? Want to learn more about a health condition? With over 2,000 interviews with our physicians and specialists, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find what you want to know. Check it out at TheScopeRadio.com.

updated: January 8, 2019
originally published: January 26, 2016