Vaping and Bronchitis in Winter
If you smoke, you’re clearly weakening your lungs’ immune defences. In smokers, the tiny cilia in the lungs are damaged — even though they’re meant to help stop invaders such as viruses from getting into the lungs. So the lungs defend themselves in a different way: in smokers, they constantly produce mucus, which also helps fend off viruses. Quite literally, the viruses get stuck in the mucus.
But all that mucus can also trigger a stubborn cough, or develop into chronic bronchitis.
Put simply: smokers are more prone to bronchitis in winter. As soon as it gets colder, the coughing starts. And because the mucus isn’t easily cleared, smokers are generally more likely to end up with a stubborn cough in winter. They don’t get the flu more often than everyone else — but they do cough!
Once you quit smoking and switch to vaping, the bronchi tend to improve noticeably fairly quickly. This clear improvement also has an effect on winter coughs and bronchitis. Vapers usually get functioning cilia back relatively quickly, so they don’t cough any more or less than anyone else.
Whether the sensational headline from a few years ago, “E-liquid makes viruses mutate”, is actually true, why poor little mice had to be used for it, and how scientifically sound the article from an American magazine really is, is another matter. Most former smokers find that, as vapers, they are largely spared those winter coughing fits — and above all bronchitis.
