What Happens When You Quit Smoking and Start Vaping?
Understand the health benefits, cost savings, and potential challenges in this informative guide for those looking quit smoking and start vaping.
When you decide to quit smoking, you may wonder about alternatives to help quit. Vaping has emerged as a popular substitute due to its reduced harm potential and similar sensation to smoking.
Let’s shed some light on what happens when you quit smoking and start vaping.
Benefits of Quitting Smoking
Quitting smoking has a number of benefits, from improving health to saving money and enhancing quality of life. Here’s a closer look at some of the major benefits.
Health Benefits
The health benefits you can achieve once you quit smoking are profound.
For example, within 24 hours of stopping, your oxygen levels are recovering and the level of carbon monoxide in your blood is reduced by half. After one year, your risk of heart attack is halved compared to that of a smoker.
And after 10 years, your risk of death from lung cancer is halved compared to a smoker.
Saving Money
By quitting smoking, you will also make significant financial savings. Cigarettes have become increasingly expensive due to taxation and regulation, now averaging over £13 per packet, while vaping is relatively cheap by comparison.
When you switch to vaping, you’ll have to make an initial investment in a starter vape kit or one of our cheap vape kits, but in the long run, the cost of vaping is much, much lower than smoking.
Other Benefits of Quitting
In addition to the numerous health and financial benefits, quitting smoking also results in improved physical appearance (no more yellowing fingers and teeth!).
Plus, you’ll have a better sense of taste and smell, and the elimination of second-hand smoke will benefit those around you.
Is Vaping Good for Quitting Smoking?
Vaping has proven to be a useful tool for many ex-smokers, with many having undertaken the journey to quit smoking and start vaping. But how do e-cigarettes compare to smoking in terms of safety, ease of quitting, and cost?
Is vaping safer than smoking?
Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians, among a growing number of government and medical bodies, estimate that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking. This is because e-cigarettes don’t burn tobacco and don’t produce tar or carbon monoxide, two of the most damaging elements in tobacco smoke.
Does vaping make it easier to quit smoking?
Vaping can help in the quitting process because it satisfies the hand-to-mouth action and the nicotine addiction that smokers are used to.
In fact, a 2022 Cochrane study recognised by the UK government and the NHS showed that vaping is the most effective smoking cessation aid,
A project undertaken by the Royal College of Physicians found e cigarettes prove far more popular and successful than nicotine replacement therapy in helping people to quit smoking, while the health hazard from long term vapour inhalation is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm of exposure to traditional cigarettes.
Furthermore, according to NHS England, research suggests people quitting smoking are roughly twice as likely to stop smoking completely with the use of e cigarettes rather than using other nicotine replacement products, such as patches or gum.
To ease the transition, you may consider using nicotine salt E-Liquids, which can deliver nicotine more efficiently and with less irritation compared to standard “freebase” E-Liquids.
If making the switch to vaping is one that would be beneficial for you, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Vaping.
Is vaping cheaper than smoking?
Yes, vaping is much cheaper than smoking; it can save you over £4,500 per year depending on your set up. The initial cost of a vape kit will be offset over time by the lower cost of vape juices and pods/coils.
For those just starting out, disposable vapes offer unparalleled ease-of-use and absolutely zero maintenance, but they’ll cost you more over time than a refillable vape kit will. Regardless, disposables are still cheaper than smoking.
Vaping vs Smoking: The Health Effects
Cigarette smoking involves the inhalation of over 5000 different chemicals, at least 70 of which cause cancer. Tobacco smoke is particularly abundant in harmful chemicals such as tar and carbon monoxide, which can increase the risk of lung disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other real health risks such as heart disease and lung cancer.
Electronic cigarettes, in fact, contain none of these cancer causing chemicals. The only recurring ingredient that e-cigarettes share with regular tobacco cigarettes is nicotine, a chemical relatively harmless to health that doesn’t induce disease.
A 2022 study led by academics at Kings College London reviewed international evidence and determined that “vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking tobacco”.
All in all, using e cigarettes significantly reduces the exposure to the potentially harmful chemicals that tobacco smoking releases.
What Happens When You Quit Smoking and Start Vaping?
It’s not just about breaking a harmful habit when you quit smoking and start vaping. It’s also about your body’s journey towards recovery and healing. Here’s what you can expect.
Health Side Effects of Quitting Smoking
When you quit smoking and start vaping, your body begins to heal from the effects of tobacco in as little as 20 minutes from your last cigarette (your pulse will already be returning to normal). Within a few days, your sense of taste and smell will start to improve, and you may also find improvements in your breathing and physical fitness as time goes on.
Smoker’s Flu
As your body adapts to the absence of numerous toxins it had been regularly subjected to, you may experience some seemingly counterintuitive recovery symptoms. This phenomenon, often referred to as “Smoker’s Flu,” can cause a sore throat, coughing, and headaches, among other bothersome symptoms.
For many recent ex-smokers, the post-quitting cough is the worst symptom and may pervade for a few weeks. This cough occurs because the cilia in your throat—tiny hairs which help filter out dust and mucous while breathing—which have been damaged by cigarette smoke are finally beginning to regrow.
Many new vapers who have just transitioned from smoking attribute this cough to vaping. It’s probably not related to vaping. The cough should wane within a few weeks of quitting; if it doesn’t, you should seek advice from a healthcare professional.
However, these symptoms are temporary and signal that your body is recovering.
You can read more about this in our other article, Why Does Vaping Make Me Cough?
Will my lungs heal if I quit smoking and start vaping?
While some of the damage caused by smoking may be irreversible, your lungs will start to heal once you stop smoking, and your lung function will improve.
Switching to vaping can be part of this process, as it doesn’t expose your lungs to the harmful tar (and +7,000 other chemicals) that smoking does.
Breaking the Cigarette Smoking Routine
Ever since humans first cultivated a relationship with tobacco, their habits have become indoctrinated into the smoking society. Hand to mouth action. Bathing in foggy vapours. A kick in the throat. An airy sensation in the head. It looks cool, right?
However, these habits factor into a routine, and it is this continual routine that has become almost as addicting as the nicotine itself. Many of those who quit smoking and start vaping have had no success with nicotine patches, or gum, because it doesn’t fill the habitual hole that smoking leaves behind. They can lead to withdrawal symptoms, and a subsequent return to smoking cigarettes.
Here’s where vaping comes into play. Acting as a smoking cessation, an e cigarette will give you all of the same sensations that traditional cigarette use gives, yet without the ingestion of thousands of health damaging chemicals.
Vaping is not necessarily a safe alternative for your body. But when it comes to breaking the stronghold of tobacco products, using e cigarettes can save lives.
Vaping Is Less Harmful than Smoking, But It’s Still Not Risk Free
When it comes to breaking a smoking habit, vaping is a practice that can drastically help. However, due to the relatively recent advent of e cigarettes, there are some unknowns surrounding our electronic companions.
People often fear what they don’t know, and when it comes to vaping, it must be said that it is impossible to know what effects they may have in the long term. This has been a reason often used to discredit vape products, despite clear evidence of their success in diminishing tobacco habits.
What Do We Know About Vaping’s Long Term Effects?
The main factor we do not know is how chronic ingestion of propylene glycol affects the respiratory system.
It is one of the two chemicals that make up the base of every E-Liquid in a vape, along with vegetable glycerin.
However, like vegetable glycerin, which is a clear liquid made from vegetable oils and actually offers many health benefits, propylene glycol is a chemical widely used.
It is found in various coffee based items, sweeteners and dairy products.
With regard to inhalation, a 2018 study found that small doses of inhaled propylene glycol showed no pulmonary function deficits in 10 healthy men and women. Research suggests that the ingredients which make up an e cigarette appear to present no significant hazard. As stated before, it is yet to be determined whether their continued usage will present future issues.
Secondhand Smoke
Passive smoking brings about its own health risks, and is especially harmful for those who have less developed respiratory systems. According to research conducted by the NHS UK, children who share a household with a smoker are more likely to develop asthma, chest infections and meningitis.
In addition to this, adults who breathe in second-hand smoke regularly are more likely to get the same diseases as smokers, due to the volatile organic compounds present in cigarette smoke.
These volatile compounds do not exist in e cigarette vapour. Yes, there are other chemicals involved. But none of these release the potentially harmful substances that traditional cigarettes do.
How to Quit Vaping When You’re Ready
The age of e-cigarette use has seen many people quit smoking and start vaping. Adult smokers and young adults alike have stopped their tobacco use in favour of vaping, and frankly, the evidence cannot be denied that e cigarettes are an effective means to dissuade smokers from their chemical burning rituals.
But its hard to say vaping is a healthy alternative. It remains difficult to tell exactly how persistent, daily e cigarette use affects the body in the long term.
It would be prudent for former smokers to, eventually, stop vaping. But its a gradual process.
We would recommend setting certain times of the day to use e cigarettes, and slowly reducing these sets over a period of time. A set vaping routine can sound boring to some. For those who aren’t fans of set timings, another good tip would be to gradually reduce the strength of the E-Liquid, before potentially getting some prescribed NRT.
But relax, there’s no rush, stopping smoking cigarettes is already one of the biggest achievements someone can take in the protection of their health.
We have an article on how to quit vaping when you’re ready.
Summary
Quitting smoking is one of the best decisions you can make for your health, and vaping has become a popular and effective tool to help quit smoking. When you quit smoking and start vaping, you’ll likely notice many positive changes, from health improvements to money savings.
It’s important to remember that vaping is a tool to quit smoking and should be used responsibly by adult smokers only. Be sure to consult with a healthcare professional before starting your journey to quit smoking, as they can help guide you in the process, provide helpful tools for your journey, and help track your progress.
