Quitting Smoking with E-Cigarettes

Vaping or smoking? Quitting smoking with e-cigarettes Most smokers know the cycle. You swear, “this is my last one,” and toss your remaining cigs into the nearest bin. Then, a few stressful days later, after a beer or a glass of wine, you end up bumming one anyway and think, “it’s been a tough week — I’ll treat myself to one.” Before you know it, you’re right back in the same vicious circle, and your attempt to quit smoking has failed yet again. An e-cigarette can help you finally move away from tobacco cigarettes and give you a real chance of quitting smoking for good. The term “swapping one addiction for another” often comes up here, and that’s not entirely wrong — but if you can’t do it without support, a less harmful alternative definitely makes sense! After all, switching to vaping at least means you’re no longer subjecting your lungs to smoke while you quit. Of course, there are countless ways to quit smoking — and statistically speaking, switching to vaping is the most successful. Current figures suggest that more than 18% of smokers manage to give up tobacco completely. Compared with conventional methods such as hypnosis, pharmaceutical nicotine replacement products and other approaches, e-cigarettes are well ahead of every other stop-smoking option, with a success rate of 18% versus 6%. The best thing you can do if you want to quit smoking? Get proper advice in-store! In almost every physical vape shop, you can try out different devices and flavours. That alone can make all the difference between successfully quitting smoking and facing another failed attempt. When you visit an e-cigarette shop, you benefit from the staff’s know-how, and you also get hands-on experience with the differences between the various devices. By the way, you’ll find our Dampfi stores in Basel, Horgen and Zurich’s Niederdorf district. There, we offer all the latest e-cigarettes and keep our favourite devices ready for you to test. If you can’t visit a vape shop, we’ve written a detailed guide for smokers switching to vaping on our blog, which can help you choose your first device. Of course, we’re always happy to help you by email or via our Facebook chat with anything to do with quitting smoking and vaping. Does switching to e-cigarettes really count as quitting smoking? Opinions are divided on this. But one thing is clear: once you stop smoking and switch to vaping, you can thankfully leave behind the typical problems that come with cigarettes. So if you use e-cigarettes exclusively, morning smoker’s cough, sore throats and the smell in your clothes, home and car become a thing of the past. What’s more, nothing is burned in an e-cigarette — the liquid is simply vaporised. That’s why using an electronic cigarette isn’t called “smoking”, but “vaping”. So yes, you can absolutely call it quitting smoking. The benefits of switching to e-cigarettes The health aspects After you quit smoking, smoker’s cough starts to improve after just a few days and, ideally, disappears completely after a few weeks or months. The risk of a heart attack drops significantly after just one year of quitting smoking and, after around 15 years without tobacco, returns to the normal level of a non-smoker. The risk of lung cancer drops significantly a few years after you quit smoking For you and the people around you Your clothes, car and home no longer smell of smoke once you quit smoking Your lung capacity starts to increase within just a few weeks of quitting smoking, and shortness of breath improves significantly You save a lot of money after quitting smoking — enough to easily treat yourself to a holiday after a year Your sense of smell recovers just a few weeks after quitting smoking, and food tastes even better The people around you are protected from second-hand smoke Is vaping healthy? People often ask us whether vaping is healthy. The honest answer is fairly obvious: our lungs are made for breathing air, not for inhaling substances such as smoke, vapour, nicotine and the like. However, many studies show that compared with smoking tobacco, the level of harmful substances is up to 98% lower. When you switch to e-liquids, substances such as tar, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, nitrosamines and many of the 4,800+ other harmful compounds found in tobacco smoke are practically absent; nicotine is optional. No more cigarettes — and eventually no more vaping either? This is a difficult question to answer, because everyone is different. For many people, the success formula is roughly this: Get advice or do thorough research online, buy your first device, and find a nicotine strength that satisfies you so constant cigarette cravings ease and your quit attempt is supported Once you’ve managed to stay off tobacco cigarettes after quitting smoking and only vape, the next goal is to gradually reduce the nicotine level in your e-liquid (if it contains any) down to zero. Once you’ve completed these steps, the next challenge is to say goodbye to vaping as well. Tried-and-tested stop-smoking aids can help here too, such as toothpicks or chewing gum. Of course, it’s important to take it slowly so you don’t relapse back to tobacco. A “relapse” to e-liquid containing nicotine is, it has to be said, absolutely fine — it’s still far less harmful than going back to tobacco cigarettes. The extremely insightful videos by Dr Bernhard-Michael Mayer, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Graz, are especially worth watching. About me - After three years of vaping and more than two years working as a sales advisor in the Zurich and Horgen stores, it was time for a change of scenery. Somehow, I ended up in the endless depths of the Dampfi office. There, among other things, I discovered an unexpected love of writing, so in future I’ll be bringing you plenty more posts — informative, pointless, funny, helpful and downright daft. Requests, suggestions and criticism are very welcome and can be sent to [email protected].