Stoptober is a UK health initiative plan

October 22, 2018

to get people to quit smoking combustibles.  It's a pretty neat social movement where mutual support is provided by smokers for smokers to get off cigarettes.  The most notable thing about it is that the number one recommended smoking cessation method is to switch to vapes, which the program claims is in fact 95% less harmful than smokes. I'm writing about it here today in hopes of this kind of a health minded peer to peer trend going in the US, and a little bit of the research on why they recommend switching to vapes. 

The latest figures from the WHO show that smoking is still the number one preventable disease, killing seven million people globally each year.  Fortunately to counter that there has been a rise of electric cigarettes and eLiquid devices in the UK since their market introduction in 2006. In the UK, e-cigarettes are used by smokers to help them switch from smoking as well as by former smokers, and it is estimated that there are 3.2 million e-cigarette users in the UK alone.

Obviously with new technologies comes new concerns, and e-cigs and eLiquid device safety has been more than a bit of subject for debate. A St. George's University of London study assessed the effect of heavy smokers switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes for 28 days. Granted it was a small study of only 31 subjects, however the study measured several parameters including psychometric, cardiovascular, brain activity, quality of life, and biomarkers of toxicity.

Findings from the subjects who completed the study showed subtle but significant changes in psychometric parameters and a considerable reduction in biomarkers of toxicity. Additionally switching from combustible smokes to e-cigarettes and eLiquid devices reduced the craving to smoke and affected brain regions associated with addiction. Overall exposure to nicotine was also significantly reduced as well as tobacco specific nitrosamines, cigarette biomarkers of toxicity demonstrating prominent harm reduction following the switch.

Senior Lecturer Doctor Alexis Bailey, who has presented these preliminary results from his research on e-cigarettes at SRNT, the top nicotine and tobacco research conference, in Munich last month said: "Our preliminary findings support electronic cigarettes as an effective way of stopping smoking, quickly inducing beneficial changes in various measures of psychometric health and the craving to smoke."  Quite an interesting study and statement.  What do you think the future holds for the vape world? 

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