Is Switching to E-Cigarettes the Right Choice?

  • Written by News Feature Team



One of the largest sources of preventable deaths in Australia (and right across the globe), cigarettes are associated with a broad range of health conditions including, but certainly not limited to, coronary heart disease, strokes, lung cancer and type-2 diabetes, along with respiratory infections such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.

Smoking – A Deadly Habit

Although the government and health professionals have tried their best to reduce the number of Australians who take up this deadly habit, people are still taking up smoking every day. In 2014-15, 2.6 million adult Australians (which is 14.5% of the adult population) were daily smokers, which fortunately is a 16.1% decrease on the previous year. While these reduced numbers are good news, we’ve still got a long way to go as tobacco is still responsible for around 6 – 7% of the disease and injury burden in Australia.

So, what’s caused the reduction in tobacco smoking? Increased awareness of the dangers of smoking is one factor and increases in the price of cigarettes another, but one of the biggest contributing factors to the decrease in Australia’s adult smoking population is electronic cigarettes. Investing in a quality electronic cigarette and purchasing e-juices from a reputable vape shop online is a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes, something many ex-smokers have found in recent years. What’s more, it’s also more affordable, which has further fuelled its popularity among Australians.

The Health Risks of Smoking

If you haven’t yet switched to electronic cigarettes and you’re still puffing away on a ‘coffin nail’, it would be a good idea to take note of the following risks. Many people have found that increasing their awareness of the inherent dangers of smoking provides them with the motivation to switch to a far healthier alternative.

  • Tobacco contains thousands of harmful chemicals, at least 70 of which cause cancer. These poisons include carbon monoxide which deprives your heart, lungs and other vital organs of oxygen. It also contains tar, which is a sticky substance that coats smokers’ lungs, further decreasing their ability to breathe properly and provide their body with the oxygen it needs.

  • Smoking has been proven to cause type-2 diabetes. Diabetes can cause disability or death, often by kidney disease and/or nerve damage, and it’s one of the most lethal health conditions among Australians in the modern era. If you have type-1 diabetes (insulin dependent diabetes), smoking decreases your body’s ability to control its blood-sugar levels.

  • The carcinogens in tobacco can bring on strokes, with smoking responsible for 30% of all strokes in Australians under 65. When not fatal, strokes can cause disabilities by damaging the brain, usually by restricting normal blood flow which causes blood to leak into the brain.

  • Smoking is also responsible for 30% of heart disease in Australians under the age of 65. It puts you at 2 – 3 times the risk of suffering a cardiac related death than a non-smoker by reducing your blood’s ability to carry oxygen while raising your heart rate and blood pressure.

  • 80% of all lung cancer cases in Australia are due to smoking, making it the most common cancer type caused by tobacco. Your smoking puts other people at risk by forcing them to breathe in the carcinogens in your cigarette smoke, putting them at great risk of lung cancer.

With statistics like these, it can’t be denied that taking up smoking is one of the worst things that you can do for your health, but what if you’re already a smoker? Fortunately, there is an excellent alternative to smoking, which is vaping, the process of drawing on electronic cigarettes filled with an e-liquid (these are available in many flavours to suit everyone’s tastes) that uses propylene glycol or vegetable glycerine (or both combined) as a carrier for the pharmaceutical grade nicotine.

It won’t be denied that consuming nicotine isn’t good for your health, however, its harmful effects pale in comparison to the deadly compounds contained in tobacco cigarettes. Moreover, although it’s still early days to give decisive evidence on the health effects associated with vaping, most medical professionals are in agreeance that vaping is far better for one’s health than smoking. In fact, many GPs advise their patients to switch to electronic cigarettes from tobacco cigarettes because switching to e-cigarettes is the right choice to make for so many health-related reasons.

Whether you’re a five-a-day, a ten-a-day or a pack-a-day smoker, switching to electronic cigarettes will save you money, improve your health and it could also save your life. Don’t be another statistic, make the switch to e-cigarettes and start enjoying better health today.