How Vaping Can Help You Quit Smoking?

Quitting smoking is one of the best things that you can do to yourself. It’s not easy but vaping can help you achieve it. Vaping will provide you nicotine with fewer toxins that come from burning tobacco in a traditional cigarette. Over time, you will get accustomed to a lesser nicotine strength and eventually you will quit smoking. So, let us see why you should quit smoking and how vaping can help you.

DANGERS OF SMOKING

Smoking is one of the biggest causes of deaths in the UK with approximately 78,000 deaths every year. It accounts for almost 70% of lung cancer deaths in the UK. In addition, it causes several other cancers. It damages the airways and small air sacs in your lungs, which worsens over time, and leads to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). It also leads to several other ailments like reduced immunity, bad breath, stained teeth, reduced fertility, high risk of arthritis, and many more.

METHODS OF QUITTING SMOKING

There are a number of methods to quit smoking, such as, cold turkey, nicotine replacement therapies, medications, vaping, etc. Although, unproven, but it is widely believed that vaping is the most effective method to quit smoking with less side effects. Many people have claimed that vaping has helped them to become smoke free. Let us look into these methods to understand how vaping stands out.

Cold Turkey Method

Cold turkey method involves quitting smoking abruptly without using any medication, quitting product or professional support. All you use is your ‘willpower’ to combat the cravings. Usually people set a quitting date on their own and try to overcome cravings by avoiding situations or changing routines. Although, it is popular and free, but the success rate is fairly low.

Medicines And Therapies

Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) usually involves replacing the nicotine that you get from a cigarette with other sources like gums, lozenges, inhalers, mouth sprays, etc. These products ensure that you get your dose of nicotine but without smoking. They can be easily purchased from a supermarket. These are helpful in the short run but in the long run they too fail.

Vaping

Vaping is not just about nicotine; it is about habit. When you have been smoking for very long, it becomes a part of your routine. Unlike other means, vaping allows you to keep your routine with same nicotine strength, but with much lesser toxins that come from burning tobacco. It also addresses the behavioural aspects of smoking that smokers miss after quitting.

How Vaping Is Better

Quitting a bad habit abruptly hardly works. But, replacing the same habit with something similar and much less harmful does the trick. Vaping allows you to keep your routine, like taking cigarette breaks and socialising with friends, which other ways fail to do. This helps in continuing vaping for a long term until you are completely free from smoking.

Is Vaping Safer Than Smoking?

There are different beliefs and opinions about vaping. While some think it is as bad as smoking, others feel that it helps with quitting smoking. In a 2014 study by Professor David Nutt and his colleagues, it was found that vaping carried only 4% of the harm of cigarette smoking. Another 2015 study by Public Health England found that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes. The UK Royal College Of Physicians also conducted an independent review in 2016 and concluded that health risks of vaping are not more than 5% of those arising from smoked tobacco products.

It is evident from the above experiments that vaping is almost 95% less harmful than smoking. Almost all the harm from a cigarette comes from tar, carbon monoxide and other toxins from combustion of tobacco, which is not the case with vaping. Since vaping is relatively new so its long term effects cannot be known today, but the effects in last decade and a half shows that it is much safer than smoking.

Is Vaping Costlier Than Smoking?

The short answer is ‘NO’. Vaping is much cheaper than traditional cigarettes in the long run. Although, a few high-end vaping kits may appear expensive in the beginning, but they too are cheap over a year’s time. For your understanding, let us consider a chain smoker who smokes a pack every day. An average pack of 20 cigarettes in the UK costs around £11, which means around £4,000 a year.

But when he switches to vaping and buys a high-end starter kit, it would be around £75-80. Now, the e-liquid needs to be changed every 30-40 days and the cost of a 50ml bottle would be around £15. So, the cost for a year would be around £170. Considering other costs like coil and batteries replacement, customisations, and other miscellaneous cost it will total to around £600 a year.

Therefore, it is evident that vaping can easily save you around £3,400 a year.

Switching Successfully To Vaping

Switching to vaping from smoking takes some time to get used to. In the initial days, you might feel a lot more irritated due to your cravings, but you need to be kind to yourself. You must maintain a firm belief that you can do it. In addition, you must set a realistic goal and talk to others who have achieved it. Here are a few tips that will be helpful in your journey to switch to vaping.

Trial And Error

It is natural to take some time to find the right device with perfect nicotine strength that suits your needs perfectly. You need to try a lot of different combinations to reach the one you like.

Nicotine Management

You must understand the e-liquid’s composition to ensure that the nicotine strength is less or same as what you were smoking. Gradually decrease the strength until it is almost negligible.

Surviving The First Week

The first week will be a challenging one. Convince yourself by saying that you are still smoking, only the device is different. Avoid or plan stressful situations that trigger you into smoking.

Habituating

The purpose of vaping is to continue the habit of smoking with a much safer alternative. With time, you should be able to keep your routine, socialise as usual and habituate to a new device.

The Long Term Goal

A lot of people take around 3 months to fully stop smoking and switch to vaping. In the long run, most people quit vaping too in around 12 months. It is advisable to set a realistic goal in the beginning itself. While vaping is much less harmful than smoking, it is not completely harmless. Therefore, you should set a long term goal to quit vaping too. But do not rush and take your time to become smoke free!