Vaping can be dangerous. What you need to know.

Vaping has recently killed several Americans and landed hundreds in hospitals with lung illness. Novant Health pulmonologist Dr. Richard Pomerantz discusses e-cigarettes, a popular, unhealthy craze sweeping the country.

Transcript:
Cliff Mehrtens 0:06

Welcome to Novant Health Health Healthy Headlines. This is Cliff Mehrtens. Vaping, the term for using electronic cigarette has exploded in popularity recently, especially among teenagers and young adults. vaping devices are sleek, high tech and they're often barely noticeable, but their dangers are undeniable. Nearly 400 people in the United States have been hospitalized recently, and seven deaths have been connected to vaping. For some insight into e-cigarettes and vaping we talked to know from health pulmonologist Dr. Richard Pomerance, he'll talk about the effects of vaping can have on you whether e-cigarettes can help you quit regular cigarettes if you're trying and the risk involved with adding ingredients to your e-cigarette, be sure to stick around to the end for list of terms, the vapers used to describe what they do, and some of the equipment they use. You can find stories like the US and hundreds of others by searching Novant Health and Healthy Headlines. Thank you for listening.

What are some of the effects you've seen and heard about with vaping?

Dr. Richard Pomerance 1:08

So with electronic cigarettes, what has been described is a syndrome where people have very common respiratory complaints, cough, shortness of breath, low grade fevers, occasionally nausea, diarrhea, those type of things, it then progresses to give more pronounced respiratory problems that actually require the person to be hospitalized, need to be placed on oxygen, sometimes on a ventilator. And we call that lung injury. A lung injury encompasses the the lung disease that we're seeing. And we see that with other things. But the CDC has just come out with guidelines as to how to describe these cases. Specifically, they call a case as either a confirmed case or probable case. So in before, they used to talk about investigating a certain number of cases, but not going to describe that anymore. It's either going to be confirmed or probable cases. And the only difference there is that if you have recently used an e-cigarette and come down with a respiratory illness, that is not explained by other things. Specifically, it's not an infection. And it's not another condition that can cause these kind of problems. They're going to call it either confirmed or probable case.

Cliff Mehrtens 2:21

Are e-cigarettes less, we've established that they're harmful, are they less harmful than a tobacco cigarette?

Dr. Richard Pomerance 2:30

We don't know that right. Now. The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the case that have been described are not only with a flavoring product in there, but also for people which are using not commercially made product. So these are products, which people will take the one time use a container and actually go ahead and refill it. There's people that are selling things on the street, which have special blends, and that's particularly thought to be dangerous. So the specific CDC guidelines, which I really would like to make sure that everybody hears are that if you are, if you're a minor, you should not vape use an e cigarette or any, any form of it. That's across the line. Second one is that pregnant woman under no circumstances should use these products either. The third one is that adults that are not currently using a tobacco product should not start on using an e-cigarette or vaping. And then the last one to be any current user shouldn't buy any cigarettes or any of those products off the street.

Cliff Mehrtens 3:41

I saw some CDC stats that said in 2018, almost 21% of middle school and high school children had tried an e-cigarette within the past month. Is that a startling number to you? And if so why?

Dr. Richard Pomerance 3:54

It is startling there's a high crossover between using these products and actually going on to smoking, which I'm much more familiar with the ill effects of as as the medical community. So it is startling to think that one in five children are already using a product with a higher incidence of leading them to actually smoking cigarettes.

Cliff Mehrtens 4:14

Someone comes to you and they're trying to say for instance, quit smoking. What would you recommend them to say, "Hey, Doc, thinking about these e-cigarettes" for all the reasons that we hear about "...you won't see me you won't smell me, I can do it."

Dr. Richard Pomerance 4:28

It's conversation, I have 10 times a day.

There's no evidence right now that suggests that it's a good idea to do it that way. There's been some minor evidence that it might help certain people. But given the safety concerns that we have, we don't recommend it at all. We There are all sorts of great ways of actually working towards quitting smoking, it's something which might not be able to be done by that person alone, they really should seek out help. Now they're asking a medical professional, they're already on their way. The State of North Carolina for example, as do other states have resources available online, which are very good. So there are all sorts of great resources available Lung Association has resources that are available as well. The part that's that I really find troubling is people that will use these products go back and forth to cigarettes when it suits them. So they're in their workplace. And they think that they can vape, although many workplaces will now not allow that. And it's simply prolongs their effort. And they believe that that's a safer alternative, they're not smoking as much, therefore it's safe. When that's really not the case, I do want to alert you to there's other ways of using these products, which are particularly dangerous, though. There's things called heard, there's a method that people use called dripping, which is where they take an e-cigarette, the filling of it, and they'll drip it onto the hot coils of the actual e-cigarette and then vape it in gives them a particularly potent amount. So it's a really big effect that they'll have. But dripping, unfortunately is particularly dangerous they have seen that associated with some of these cases of lung injury. And there's also dabbing, in which they will just take the substance that's inside the the e-cigarette, oftentimes add other things and just heat it up alone outside of UV, even using an e-cigarette using like a lighter or something like that. And then going ahead and inhaling that really kind of dangerous activities. Clearly never a good idea. The the more worrisome trend is the THC and the CBD oil vaping. Those are associated with a higher degree of this particular lung injury that we're talking about now, which is in the news. But this has been around for a number of years.

Cliff Mehrtens 6:43

Is that because of the intensity of it that it can get into your bloodstream or lungs quicker, I add it to my electronic cigarette. Therefore, a higher concentration is inside me quicker?

Dr. Richard Pomerance 6:55

Well, anytime in which it's being added ou...