Pixabay
A study found that vaping can be extremely harmful to your heart and if you smoke cigarettes as well as vape then your chances of a heart attack increase exponentially.
According to researchers at the University of California San Francisco, vaping nearly doubles the risk of a heart attack. But if you smoke traditional cigarettes as well as e-cigarettes then your chances of a heart attack increase by nearly five times. The eye-opening research was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Wednesday.
Researchers analyzed medical data of 69,452 American smokers aged 18 and older between 2014 and 2016. Of the 9,352 current and former e-cigarette users who participated in the survey, 3.6 percent had suffered a heart attack.
Of those who vaped daily, 6.1 percent had a heart attack. It should be noted that e-cigarettes did not become widely available in the U.S. until around 2009. People who smoke cigarettes daily but do not vape are 2.7 times more at risk of having a heart attack.
Vapers experienced a heart attack nearly twice as much as non-smokers. Those who smoked daily were three times as likely as to have suffered a heart attack than people who didn’t vape or smoke at all.
The study found that 66 percent of those surveyed used both e-cigs and conventional cigarettes. “Dual users,” or people who both vape and smoke were 4.6 times more likely to have a heart attack than those who didn’t use any nicotine products.
RELATED: Vape Pen Explosion May Have Caused Florida Man’s Death
“Most adults who use e-cigarettes continue to smoke cigarettes,” said Dr. Stanton Glantz, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, in a press release. “While people may think they are reducing their health risks, we found that the heart attack risk of e-cigarettes adds to the risk of smoking cigarettes.”
[protected-iframe id=”0497f0bfa2b0be19bfb24e6b0221062b-97886205-93291949″ info=”https://giphy.com/embed/26DNfsNQaxh3Fobvy” width=”480″ height=”480″ frameborder=”0″ class=”giphy-embed” allowfullscreen=””]
Studies in animals found that vaping could stiffen the heart and blood vessels, potentially increasing the risk of heart disease and heart attacks.
This comes only months after another study that said e-cigarettes could raise cancer and heart disease risks. Researchers from the New York University School of Medicine said vaping was “dangerous” and should not be promoted as safe. The study found evidence that suggests that vaping and e-cigs can damage and alter DNA, which can lead to cancer.
“We propose that ECS (e-cigarette smoke) is carcinogenic and that e-cig smokers have a higher risk than non-smokers to develop lung and bladder cancer and heart diseases,” said the study’s author Moon-shong Tang, a professor of environmental medicine and pathology at NYU School of Medicine.
“The only way to substantially reduce the risk of a heart attack is to stop using tobacco,” Glantz said.
RELATED: NYU Offers Free Tuition For All Medical Students
[UPI]