Heat-not-burn cigarettes are not a good alternative – they are still terrible for your lungs

Smoking is extremely harmful for your health and everyone knows it. Even people who are smokers usually do not deny the harmful effects of their habit. However, e-cigarettes are still up for debate. Some people argue that they are virtually harmless, while numerous studies have shown that vaping can actually help quitting smoking tobacco products. Now researchers from the University of Tasmania focused on a different kind of electronic smoking device – heat-not-burn cigarettes.

This new study shows that heat-not-burn cigarettes, better known as HNB’s, may be as dangerous to your health as e-cigarettes and traditional smoking cigarettes. Previously scientists focused on more common smoking devices, such as popular e-cigarettes, known as vapes. This is probably the first study to compare HNB cigarettes with e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco cigarettes and news are not great for smokers. Scientists analysed damage caused by a variety of different smoking devices and came to a conclusion that HNB cigarettes, e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco cigarettes all damage lung cells.

Much like traditional tobacco cigarettes, HNB’s could cause an epithelial-mesenchymal transition, which can result in lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other lung diseases. This is quite important, because people usually switch from traditional cigarettes to electronic ones trying to alleviate their health concerns. To a degree, electronic cigarettes can be less harmful that the traditional ones. However, people seem to think that they are completely harmless, which is simply not true. E-cigarettes or vaping relies on heating ‘e-liquids’, which have been proven to contain dangerous toxins. HNB cigarettes are still quite new to the market and they rely on simply heating actual tobacco. Because tobacco particles are not burned, people believe that adverse effects of smoking are avoided, which is not true.

Popularity of electronic smoking devices is rapidly growing at an unprecedented rate. These devices are very popular between young people, as well as those from lower socio-economic tiers. Dr Sukhwinder Sohal, lead author of the study, said: “Smoking is one of the leading causes of death and disability globally, and with the introduction of e-cigarettes in the last decade, the trend of nicotine uptake is not going to slow down in the near future”.

Smoking is unhealthy. This is a fact, proven by numerous studies. This should be a common knowledge ant it largely is. However, people think that just tobacco cigarettes are bad, which is not the case at all – all kinds of smoking are damaging for you in one way or another. Try quitting and if you don’t succeed – seek professional help.

Source: University of Tasmania