Alabama's Morning News with JT
Mary Blake lets us know if vaping is dangerous
Vaping, obviously, one of the big industries right now and millions of dollars made and a lot of people are vaping in all ages, too, and younger people jumping on the vaping bandwagon more than I've ever seen. Mary Blake joins us now, healthy living expert and also clinical research associate. Mary, welcome in. Thank you for being here. Hi. Thank you for having me. Good morning. So, a lot of people say, "Well, I'm trying to quit smoking cigarettes. I'm just going to vape and that'll clean things up. Plus, I like to smell a blueberry." So is that the best decision to be making? Well, in part, vaping is, I guess, it would be considered the first immediate step down from cigarettes. However, there is a big problem with that type of marketing saying that, "It's safer alternative to smoking because what happens is they don't always give you all of those ricks factors, all the chemicals and additives that are put in those vape devices." And then when people are vaping constantly all the time, just saying it's smoother, safer than eventually you just end up in the same wheelhouse as smoking a cigarette light as well. Yeah, let's talk. You mentioned the chemicals and stuff that are used to make vape and the smoke or the liquid that you used. A lot of times these things are made in different parts of the world. Do we really know what's coming in with them? Are they regulated? Are we on top of what these things are? And even if we are, what are the potential damages to your lungs if, in fact, you do get a "good vape"? Right, great question. So, some of the chemicals, unfortunately, like you were saying, do not have any federal regulation. They will put in anything as far as formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, butane, ammonia, acetone, and, of course, high levels of nicotine. And essentially what happens is it can cause symptoms like vasoconstriction of the heart, diarrhea, anxiety attacks, different types of palpitations, and the acilia, which are the hairs inside of the lungs, they end up getting stuck, like the car, the chemicals, it ends up actually making them stuck in the lungs, so when they're trying to eliminate that period in viruses, they're not able to do that, so you're easier to get sick. Yeah, I would think anything going into your lungs except what, you know, kind of God wanted us to be doing is breathing, you know, air and oxygen. Any additive, no matter what you're putting in there, cigarette smoke, vape smoke, marijuana smoke, pollution in the air, ozone, whatever, the lungs, you know, have a certain way of combating that and dealing with it naturally, God gives us our immune system. But with that said, if you're piling it on all the time, I mean, I've heard of popcorn lung and this doesn't look really nice from vaping, it's just bad news all around, isn't it? Yeah, so exactly what you were saying. We are made with some natural immunities just to help fight the day-to-day stimulants and pathogens that we come into contact with and that we have light blood cells that do handle small amounts of those types of things, however, when you're constantly introducing a foreign substance into your body or heading metal or bacteria or the smoke or different chemicals, then it does have a key look to the effect and unfortunately, can cause long-term damage if used over time. Yeah. Is there anything, you know, that's related to vaping that you feel is okay? So if you take a look at the natural of chemical tobacco, which, you know, obviously get such bad rap, historically, it does have some medicinal, spiritual and political indications, a lot of them were used by Native American shamans historically and they were used in only ceremonial or small amounts since it does come from a natural herb, something like that, it would have properties that could be used in a small amount and only on certain occasions. Yeah. Probably what we do now is we way over concentrate it so instead of using the leaf, we take the chemical out of the leaf and then we're smoking it every day. Yeah. So that's where the problem is. Every day is the problem for sure. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, vaping. I would say all in all. Probably not as good as you think it is.