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Comment by dumbfoundded | Hacker News Reader

If you believe E-Cigs are harmless, there's an easy experiment you can do for yourself. Go on a run, time yourself. The next day, vape for 30 min and then go on the same run.

This is what got me to personally switch away from E-Cigs. Vaping would add an additional 30-sec to 1-min per mile on my runs. I try to only use patches or gum now. Still not great but it's a lot better if you're trying to stay in shape.

That being said, if you're only two choices are cigarettes and vaping. Obviously, choose vaping.

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I ride a bicycle daily and vape e-cigs. If anything I notice an increased performance immediately after vaping, I feel like I'm less tired and have more energy.

Overall this is an interesting topic because contrary to popular opinion many athletes use nicotine and find that it increases their performance: Nicotine [...] use is widespread amongst professional team/strength sports (e.g. American football, ice hockey, wrestling, bobsleigh, gymnastics, rugby, skiing) whereby active consumption of nicotine and nicotine-containing substances in-competition occurs in approximately 25–50% of such athletes [1].

The meta-analysis [1] found that two studies observed an ergogenic effect, one an ergolytic with the remaining seven reporting no change.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5684328/

Yeah, I never said I quit nicotine. Just switched to mostly gum.

It seems as if you were trying to maximize your performance, you'll ingest nicotine in a way that doesn't go through your lungs.

Those athletes have trained for years and have a heart that is well conditioned with strength and cardio. A normal person who is moderately physically active is nowhere near their fitness level. That’s why nicotine is a dangerous thing to gamble with. You might be fine, or you might have afib/vfib that leads to an MI. Rather avoid the risk. Plenty of more potent PEDs out there that don’t cause adverse cardiac events.

I cycle daily and vape. I feel when I vape more, my performance on a bicycle deteriorates very noticeably. My effective lung volume is noticeably lower.

> vape for 30 min

That seems like an excessively long time. I don't vape, but I have a few acquaintances who do. None vape for 30 minutes at a time - typically 5-10.

I imagine if you inhaled cold water vapor for a solid 30 minute time frame and ran, you'd see a similarly bad outcome. Doesn't mean it's bad for you.

I vape pretty heavy. If I am working from home, I can hit it a few times every 20 or so minutes. Thinking about vaping for 30 minutes straight seems unenjoyable.

I also work out, and often vape was I walk into the gym. I would say the thing I notice is that my heart rate is already a bit higher than I'd prefer. But once I started working out, my resting heart rate went down, and my breathing got way better. So, I'm not sure how much of that is attributed to vaping vs lack of fitness.

Careful, in addition to constricting/hardening blood vessels that is thought to lead to heart disease nicotine has other long term effects as seen in in this study of angiogenesis:

>In a series of experiments, the researchers found that nicotine could enhance new blood vessel growth in mice whose hind limbs were artificially starved of oxygen. They also found that lung cancer cells implanted into mice grew more quickly when the mice consumed nicotine in their drinking water. Mice susceptible to developing plaque in the arteries of their hearts also experienced more rapid plaque growth when exposed to nicotine than mice who were not exposed.

>The researchers believe nicotine works by binding to a receptor on the surface of endothelial cells that recognizes acetylcholine -- a chemical that nerve cells use to communicate with each other. Endothelial cells line the interior of blood vessels throughout the body. …

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2001/july11/nicotine.html

Nicotine is also, itself, a known carcinogen.

May I ask for a source on that? AFAIK the reason why cigarettes cause disease is because of the tar and all of the other byproducts of the Burning tobacco and that nicotine by itself is not the cause. I can't find a source of the top of my head but I smoked cigarettes for 4 years and enjoyed reading on them.

Ah, thanks HN community for correcting me!

> At present, it is not possible to draw a conclusion whether nicotine itself may act as a complete carcinogen.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4553893/

In case anyone on HN reads this as saying that nicotine is safe to use, the end of that article is fairly clear:

> Although more studies on health effects of nicotine in humans are required, based on in vitro and in vivo effects of nicotine, patients should be advised not to use nicotine products during cancer treatment unless it is temporarily needed to stop tobacco smoking.

Not according to the IARC.

https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-classifications

Similarly try running when you're a smoker vs a vaper.

I'd say vaping is a very good harm reduction path for smokers that hopefully leads to quitting altogether. It is definitely not harm free though. I just hope our society and laws don't go in a direction where people are pushed back into smoking.

Are most people in the type of shape that 30 seconds per mile variance day to day is surprising? I don't time myself, but I'd be surprised if any two of my sprints aren't this different normally.

Any dedicated smoker will subconciously try to run even faster, lest they be convinced of having made a mistake, sunken cost and all.

I run 5 miles 3 times a week. Usually on the same loop. I use the stopwatch app on my phone.

when i was in the army, i knew a few guys who swore by smoking before a fitness test. they'd suck down a cigarette just before the run and then pound out a quick 9 minute 1.5mi. it's not something i've bothered to test. i just found it interesting that they must have done something to put that idea in their head.

Water vapour has a similar effect.

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