E-smoking 'less harmful to smokers' hearts'
Smokers can improve their heart health, within weeks of switching to vape e-cigarettes. This was demonstrated by the largest experience of its kind.
The study, which lasted for a month and included 114 smokers, suggests that e-cigarettes can reduce heart attack and stroke risk.
The research team, at the University of Dundee in Scotland, confirmed that e-cigarettes are "not safe", but only less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The British Heart Foundation said stopping smoking is the best thing you can do for the health of your heart.
The chemicals in traditional cigarette smoke cause the arteries to narrow, as fatty deposits collect in them, increasing the risk of a fatal blockage.
Smoking eventually doubles the risk of a heart attack.
But the researchers said the current evidence about vaping is "extremely scant".
So the researchers monitored people's blood vessels a month after they switched to e-cigarettes in this trial.
They focused on how blood vessels expand when a wave of blood rushes through them, by measuring what is called 'dilation by flow'.
The more blood vessels are able to dilate, the healthier. The results of the "dilation by flow" measurement are closely related to the long-term risk of heart attacks and strokes.
The results, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, showed the following:
- Healthy non-smokers had a stretch score of 7.7 percent.
- Smokers scored 5.5 percent.
- But those who switched to e-cigarette nicotine for a month achieved a score of 6.7 percent.
Hence, the switch to vaping put these smokers halfway toward healthy aneurysm scores.
But this study is too short to fully prove whether this improvement can be sustained in the long term, or whether vaping can save lives to a certain degree.
It should also be noted that vaping smokers did not get natural results.
The British Heart Foundation says 50 people die every day as a result of heart problems caused by smoking.
The charity said: "Stop smoking is the best thing you can do for the health of your heart."
Professor John Britton, director of the British Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham, said: 'This randomized trial provides clear evidence of a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in people who switch from regular smoking to e-cigarettes.
He added: "The finding of the study, that vaping is less harmful than tobacco smoking, is intuitively correct based on the range and lower levels of emissions, which are known to be present in e-vapors compared to tobacco smoke."
Source:
Article on BBC Arabic
November 16, 2019
https://www.bbc.com/arabic/science-and-tech-50445956