Speakeasy

Bravo...

Hey Joe, Good to hear from you too. My new job really keeps me away, I'm afraid, but I still check out the forum all the time. I don't post as much as most of the other regulars, but I make up for it in the length of my posts. The effects of smoking on cardiovascular health is what it's all about, huh? You know as well as I how terrible smoking makes us feel over the years. It certainly doesn't take a doctor or study to tell us that smoking has damaged our bodies. But it really is difficult to find a study done on how nicotine alone can hurt us. Most studies assume that nicotine is delivered through tobacco, so it talks about the harm that "smoking" does. What I try to look for are those studies done with regard to NRTs. Because they take out the tobacco side-effects. Unfortunately, we find when we read these reports that the study was done by the company that makes the specific NRT. But, even though this may be true, we can still see that these NRTs are much safer for us than smoking. NRTs are marketed and intended to help us quit smoking for good, as I'm sure you know. These products were never meant to be an alternative to smoking, but rather a way to help us quit using tobacco, so the studies that are done are focused on this specifically. The question is never really raised about what the effects would be if someone chose to forever use the patch as a means to avoid tobacco without battling the addiction. E-cigs aren't marketed as a NRT though. They are meant to be an actual alternative to tobacco, providing all the relaxing and stimulating qualities of nicotine without the harmful side effects and nasty other effects of tobacco. This is what has everyone in such a turmoil, huh? I do, however, commend you on your ability to quit the nicotine, and would never say that your not better off for having done it. One less thing to worry about.......

I hereby would like to offer my services as forum counselor to the many posters out there that seem to have a problem with over-purchase. Our suppliers, I fear, may have some concerns about me interfering with your presumably over-ordering tendencies, but I'm here to help. As evidence to my ability to counsel I offer this as proof of my ability to stretch a buck. Since quiting analogs, and switching to vaping in late October, I have spent a grand total of $300 dollars on my e-cig supplies. I am a very heavy vaper and I use the 510. I have never used anything else, as a matter of fact. I'm going on my 5th month of vaping and I'm still using the same batts and attys that I got in october. I've only had one atty go bad so far, because I didn't know the batt button was pressed... Must admit tho, I'm gettin' pretty serious about pickin' up a new spade.....

WAY TO GO DR. J!!!!!! It sure is great to have you on our side.....

Hey Hardwired, Glad to read that you've recovered as well as you have from your stroke. It sounds like you've learned a very valuable lesson about health, so don't feel too bad about your past. We all tend to learn the hard way, it seems. In searching for answers to all these questions, each of us find many conflicting things about whats known and whats not known about nicotine, tobacco, and the e-cig. The more you look on the internet, the more confusing it gets. If the report or document came from a supplier of a product in any industry involved with nicotine, it will be worded to slant the opinion to benefit that product. Any decent skeptic knows this already. If the report or document came from an independent scientific review, it most times was funded by a manufacturer or supplier of a product, and it can also be so filled with scientific jargon that it's hard to understand it fully. One thing your never going to find is a honest statement that reads, "You will be safe if you use/don't use this product/chemical/food/car/hand cream/ad nausium"... I've read a lot of crap about nicotine. I've smoked for almost 30 years. I work in a hospital that specializes in substance abuse. I've been a nurse for 25 years. I know a gazillion doctors, pharmacists, counselors, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, and patients. Every person, EXCLUDING THE DOCTORS, that I talk to has a very different opinion about smoking and vaping. Every one of those opinions are based not only on their professional experience, but also on their personal experience. However, every one of the doctors I speak to about the e-cig has just one question. "Does that silly little thing keep you from smoking cigarettes? If yes, then use it, because tobacco is KILLING you!" When I ask a physician about nicotine, they ALL say the EXACT SAME THING!!!!!!!!!!!!! nicotine doesn't kill. In your comment, Hardwired, you wrote, "Is my addiction to nicotine, and the process of delivering it to my bloodstream by vapor inhalation, any less harmful to my neurological state? Unfortunately, no one can say with any real certainty. No long term data has been collected with respect to this. The hypothesis was presented in this thread about the stimulative effect nicotine as a vasoconstrictor has on the body's arteries...which honestly scares me." I know that you went through a very serious event when you had your stroke, and I understand how comments about vasoconstriction can sound scary. Most people, after going through things like what you went through, want to educate themselves about their illness and try to learn as much as they can. I applaud this! I respect very much your wanting to know more. It's what all health care professionals want to see. So please know that by no means do I wish to make it seem as if what you know about stroke or smoking is wrong. But the comment you wrote, that I just quoted, is what moved me to write this reply. OK look, your not going to get a complete, healthy understanding of what vasoconstriction REALLY means to YOUR health by just googling it. One needs to really study anatomy and physiology to a pretty advanced degree in order to be able to fully contemplate how it may effect you personally. Lol, I'm not saying that your incapable of grasping it, bud. I'm just saying that it's really technically advanced crap that involves not just A&P, but pharmacology, cardiology, and a whole bunch of other ologies as well. So lets just keep things simple, OK? You said nobody can say with certainty how this stuff will effect you. But your wrong. Your doctor can tell you. Your doctor has all the ologies down pat. He/she is a living, breathing, walking, talking google machine!! Your doctor is your go-to guy. With regards to certainty, nobody can predict the future. You could stop using nicotine today, jog 15 miles a day, eat carrots and celery exclusively for the rest of your life and still drop dead of a heart attack 10 years from now. The next time your at work, ask everyone if milk is good for you or bad for you. I'll bet you don't get a clear answer. Hell, I grew up before the invention of bottled water. Does that mean my life span has been shortened? Am I supposed to think that tap water can hurt me? My dog drinks from the toilet, and he seems OK. There have been COUNTLESS studies done on nicotine for years!! Science knows GOBS of crap about nicotine. Nicotine is sold over the counter in all 50 states. It can be found in a patch form, a pill form, a gum, a lozenge, inhalers(both oral and nasal), and in tobacco. Tobacco, however is the only form that has been linked to over 400,000 deaths a year. Nicotine is EXTREMELY hard to overdose on, if not impossible, as long as you use it in the manner in which it was intended to be used. If nicotine had a chance of killing you, you would need a prescription for it. Hell, Chantix has a higher chance to be more harmful than nicotine by itself. Thats why you need a doctor to prescribe it. The electronic cigarette, in the opinion of most doctors, is nothing more than another alternative form of nicotine replacement therapy. It's the same as the gum or the patch. If your doctor has suggested to you that you should use a NRT, then your doctor should have no problem with you using an e-cig. But don't take my word for it. Ask your doctor. Get on the phone right now and call his clinic. Tell the lady that you have a question for the doctor and that you want him to call you back. He'll call ya. I have some other posts that you might like to read about nicotine. Just click on my profile and check out some of the topics I've posted about it. We're all here to help in any way we can. You really have found a great place to connect with other vapers..... In the weeks to come your gonna start to feel great. As far as your fear of vasoconstriction goes, I'll leave you with this. The 400 nasty chemicals found in tobacco has wreaked havoc on your cardiovascular system. Nothing even comes close to harming you in the way that smoking has. As I'm sure your aware, stroke can happen for many different reasons, including hereditary reasons, so why YOU had a stroke, only your doctor can tell you. But probably the one best thing that YOU can personally do to lesson the chance of it happening again is to stop using tobacco. If that silly little thing keeps you from smoking analogs, then us it, cause damn...... Simple, huh?

I'm so sorry to hear about this coming friday. I just want you to know that I will be thinking about you this weekend. I freakin' HATE snow...

Man, what a RICHARDHEAD!! People like this deserve a good swift kick in the face. I would accuse him of trying to get me fired. I would tell all the other employees to really watch what they say and do around this guy. The least he could have done is approach you and tell you what he thought before saying something in front of the boss. If he would have done that to me, I would never forget it. I'm sorry, but especially in todays economy, I don't have a shread of patience for someone who starts petty crap at work.

Why did she refer to the Cardiologist, Brian? High blood pressure? I'm on meds for high blood pressure, thats why I ask. Well, hang in there, it could be worse. It could be snowin'..

Hey Brian, I'm not exactly sure what it is your getting at, bud, lol. But I'll try to help if I can. I'm personally not aware of a debate about the half-life of nicotine. The PDR (Physician's Desk Reference) we keep in the ICU at work specifically states that the half-life of nicotine is 2 hours. Not 48 hours. I mentioned in my last post that some liberal estimates say that the half-life is 40 minutes. This estimate is generaly found in studies done by anti-smoking lobbys and makers of NRTs. The reason for this may be because they hope to show how the tobacco industry uses nicotine addiction to make us smoke/buy more cigarettes. Most physicians and scientists you ask would probably say "around two hours". I pasted the pharmacokinetics of nicotine I got from Wikipedia (which is correct) below. As far as what happens to nicotine after you die, I don't know. Because the liver and kidneys shut down when the rest of you does, I would assume that nicotine would have a better chance to stick around a lot longer, although I don't know how long it takes to degrade on its own. "Pharmacokinetics As nicotine enters the body, it is distributed quickly through the bloodstream and can cross the blood-brain barrier. On average it takes about seven seconds for the substance to reach the brain when inhaled.[citation needed] The half life of nicotine in the body is around two hours.[11] The amount of nicotine absorbed by the body from smoking depends on many factors, including the type of tobacco, whether the smoke is inhaled, and whether a filter is used. For chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, snus and snuff, which are held in the mouth between the lip and gum, or taken in the nose, the amount released into the body tends to be much greater than smoked tobacco. Nicotine is metabolized in the liver by cytochrome P450 enzymes (mostly CYP2A6, and also by CYP2B6). A major metabolite is cotinine. Other primary metabolites include nicotine N'-oxide, nornicotine, nicotine isomethonium ion, 2-hydroxynicotine and nicotine glucuronide.[12] Gluconuration and oxidative metabolism of nicotine to cotinine are both inhibited by menthol, an additive to mentholated cigarettes, thus increasing the half-life of nicotine in vivo.[13]" I wish to make something clear here about half-life. The reason I brought this up in my previous posts was to try to demonstrate just how hard (damn near impossible) it is to overdose on nicotine by smoking tobacco and vaping nicotine liquid. Some people may not understand what half-life means. When we use the term half-life, we're talking about a compound's effective duration. So, 2 hours after you smoke, the effects nicotine has on the body start to decline. 2 hours after that all the nicotine from that smoke 4 hours ago has been metabolized. If you smoked or vaped NON-STOP you would make yourself dizzy and nauseated, and probably stop smoking or vaping long before you could accumulate enough nicotine in your system to be fatally toxic. Here's what wiki says about toxicity. Notice how it says that it is impossible to overdose on nicotine by smoking alone. The LD50 of nicotine is 50 mg/kg for rats and 3 mg/kg for mice. 40–60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans.[40][41] Nicotine therefore has a high toxicity in comparison to many other alkaloids such as cocaine, which has an LD50 of 95.1 mg/kg when administered to mice. It is impossible however to overdose on nicotine through smoking alone (though a person can overdose on nicotine through a combination of nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and/or tobacco smoking at the same time).[42][43] Spilling an extremely high concentration of nicotine onto the skin can result in intoxication or even death since nicotine readily passes into the bloodstream from dermal contact.[44] The carcinogenic properties of nicotine in standalone form, separate from tobacco smoke, have not been evaluated by the IARC, and it has not been assigned to an official carcinogen group. The currently available literature indicates that nicotine, on its own, does not promote the development of cancer in healthy tissue and has no mutagenic properties. However, nicotine and the increased cholinergic activity it causes have been shown to impede apoptosis, which is one of the methods by which the body destroys unwanted cells (programmed cell death). Since apoptosis helps to remove mutated or damaged cells that may eventually become cancerous, the inhibitory actions of nicotine may create a more favourable environment for cancer to develop, though this also remains to be proven.[45] The teratogenic properties of nicotine have not yet been adequately researched, and while the likelihood of birth defects caused by nicotine is believed to be very small or nonexistent, nicotine replacement product manufacturers recommend consultation with a physician before using a nicotine patch or nicotine gum while pregnant or nursing.[45][unreliable source?] Women who use nicotine gum and patches during the early stages of pregnancy face an increased risk of having babies with birth defects, says a study that looked at about 77,000 pregnant women in Denmark. The study found that women who use nicotine-replacement therapy in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy have a 60 percent greater risk of having babies with birth defects, compared to women who are non-smokers, the Daily Mail reported. The findings were published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Hey MD, just thought I should make a clarification. Nicotine is quickly filtered from the body, thats true. 2 hours for someone with a high metabolism. But the bad news is that cotinine, which is a metabolite of nicotine, can be detected in the body for up to 10 days, depending on the individual. Thats what any tobacco drug test looks for. Even non-smokers have cotinine in their system, but nicotine use substantially increases the amount of this metabolite. So the short answer is a person would have to abstain from any nicotine ingestion for at least a week or so before their cotinine would drop to normal levels. Hope this helps....

Great topic, MD... So this new policy only effects new-hires? You mean that people who already work there are allowed to smoke? Sounds like a stupid idea then. How can they enforce it? I wonder if it has something to do with insurance benefits? I know that a lot of insurance companies are demanding higher premiums for smokers and it could be that the hospital doesn't want to be paying for medical treatment that are associated with smoking. They'll be banning fat people from working there next. Either way, I think Brian has a damn good point. If it's legal for adults to use tobacco, then I don't see how this isn't a form of discrimination. Might as well ban people who use alcohol too

I noticed that a lot of the comments mentioned how the e-cig looked like a real cigarette, and how other comments focus on how the process promotes the act of smoking. Other commentors came right out and lied, saying that the e-cig stinks "just like a real cigarette". I can't understand how these people can be so offended by smells. How about that perfume, or worse, that B.O.? So what? Should we ban insense too? And what about the comment that says, "it models an unhealthy behavior"? Why is that so bad but standing on your head and drinking beer straight from the tap is concidered "cool"? Or why don't we ban Mcdonald's and candy? Doesn't that model an unhealthy behavior?

Very good point...

"Your stupid if you smoke cigarettes. Your even stupider if you smoke e-cigarettes. If your going to kill yourself softly, best to use the real one." "The e-cigarette is modeling a negative health behavior." "All forms of smoking and nicotine ingestion should be banned!" These are just a few of the comments made by people at Goucher College, in Baltimore Maryland. Late in 2009, the faculty, staff, and students were asked to take part in a survey that asked if the electronic cigarette should be included the school's smoking ban. I think that what this survey shows says a great deal about what the public perception is on the e-cig. 470 people responded to the survey. 64 were faculty members, 97 were other staff members, and another 309 were students. 160 people responded that the e-cig should not be included in the smoking ban (12 faculty, 23 staff, and 125 students). 310 people responded that the e-cig should be included in the smoking ban (52 faculty, 74 staff, and 184 students). The result was, obviously, that e-cigs were included in the smoking ban. But whats most important, in my opinion, is that the survey actually published all the comments that were made by the people surveyed. I think it offers a very valuable insight into what folks are thinking in regards to vaping. I also think it shows just how powerful the right to vote really is, and just how dangerous the ballot can be when put into the wrong hands, Anti-smoking pundits and the FDA have basically dragged the electronic cigarette through the mud. So, what should we do about it? What can we do to change the public's perception (anything)? Vaportalk.com is a FANTASTIC start, I know, but can we do more? Lets hear some ideas. Lets hear what you guys think about what we need to do. Positive approaches would be helpful, guys. Running around screaming "Kiss my ---" and "Suck my -----" doesn't work. Even if all we manage to do is show how stupid using the word "stupider" is, it would be a positive thing.

FTJoe, I agree with what your trying to say, and I surely don't feel offended. Nor should you be, bud. I whole-heartedly agree that to err on the side of caution is very prudent. Your point is well argued, and well taken. I must admit that I may have pushed it a bit when I wrote that using the e-cig exclusively would cause one's health to improve in EXACTLY the same manner as if one quits all together. However, from the evidence being presented so far I can't find too much to be worried about. There is a lot of really bad press out there, Like this idiot, and the FDA sure isn't helping, either. It's good to be skeptical, but I'm convinced that when all the smoke clears the e-cigarette will be exonerated completely. But thats just my opinion.... If you haven't watched the Dr Baron's interview yet, you should. Here is the link again: Dr. Baron Dr. Baron is the Chief of staff at UCLA Medical Center. The reason I advice you to watch his interview is because he is VERY reputable. I realize that he is being interviewed (and possibly paid) by an e-cig company, but what he says about nicotine sums up very well what science says about nicotine. Other appropriate links: New Zealand Study Nicotine info UK research on e-cig carts Study done on PG With regards to your comments on how long nicotine remains in the system, and insurance testing, let me say this.... I have found several varying results concerning nicotine's half-life. The most conservative estimate that I've found says that nicotine's half-life is 2 hours. The most liberal opinions state that nicotine has a 40 minute half-life. The reason for this discrepancy seems to involve the individual. Some people metabolize nicotine faster than others. Thats why some folks smoke a great deal more than others. I smoked about 2 packs a day, but a friend of mine only smoked half of that a day. She may have metabolized nicotine slower than I did. But my reason for bringing up the short half-life of nicotine was to help illustrate how difficult it would be to OD by smoking or vaping. Nicotine is metabolized very rapidly in our system. The symptoms you wrote about (increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, et al) are associated primarily with TOXIC quantities of nicotine. Yes, your pulse goes up a little while you smoke, but not to any harmful degree. Certainly not nearly as much as it does just climbing a flight of stairs. Testing for nicotine is done by measuring cotinine, which is the primary metabolite of nicotine, because nicotine goes through our system so quickly. Look, most addictions are harmful to a person, I understand that. Alcohol or drug addictions can ruin a person's life. Gambling or even sex can become harmful addictions. If you want to argue that ANY addiction is harmful, well you certainly have a strong point. But what I'm saying is if nicotine, by itself, taken in normally low doses, is in fact "virtually" harmless (like caffeine), then why should we see it as potentially bad for us?