Because of its pleasant flavor and aroma as well as the fact that most individuals only smoke hookah rarely, hookah smoking is frequently misunderstood for a healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes.
However, there isn’t a healthy smoking alternative. In addition to carrying hazards like lung illness, heart disease, and cancer, hookah smoking is not healthier than cigarette smoking.
Hookahs have been used for many years in historic India and Persia. These days, hookah smoking is frequently done in groups, either at home or at cafes or lounges.
What Is Hookah?
Smoking tobacco that has been flavored and sweetened is done with a hookah, a type of water pipe.
Other names for hookah include:
- narghile
- argileh
- shisha
- hubble-bubble
- goza
The tobacco chamber, water chamber, and one or more flexible tubes that extend from it allow numerous individuals to inhale simultaneously. The pipe is typically rather large.
Tobacco for hookah is frequently flavored with flavors like coconut, mint, or coffee, and is frequently sweetened with molasses, fruit pulp, or honey. Tobacco’s flavorings sweeten its flavor and scent, making it particularly enticing to young people.
It’s vital to remember that hookahs can be used to smoke marijuana, hashish, and herbal shisha in addition to tobacco. There are many different sizes of hookahs, and it’s simple to conceal small, 8-inch-tall ones in toilets, cars, and dorm rooms.
How Hookah Works
A bowl with burning charcoal is put on top of the flavoring tobacco in a hookah’s tobacco chamber. Aluminum foil with perforations separates the tobacco from the charcoal.
Smoke is produced as the tobacco heated by the charcoal. The smoke is drawn through the water chamber of the hookah when someone inhales through the stem (hose), cooling it before it enters the lungs.
Through a flexible hose that is passed from one user to the next, the smoke is breathed.
Is Hookah Smoking Safer Than Smoking Cigarettes?
Smoking a hookah is not less dangerous than smoking cigarettes.
The water in the hookah does not filter out the harmful substances in the tobacco smoke, and using a hookah does not make the tobacco any less dangerous than smoking a cigarette. Because they inhale a lot of smoke during a single session that might last up to 60 minutes, hookah users may actually breathe in more smoke than cigarette smokers do.
Between 7 and 22 milligrams (mg) of nicotine are found in a typical produced cigarette, with the smoker absorbing roughly 1mg of that amount.
The nicotine content of a typical hookah bowl is equal to that of a pack of 20 cigarettes.
Because inhaling through the water pipe necessitates a harder and longer drag or inhale, hookah smokers may inhale more of the extra pollutants, such as tar and heavy metals, present in cigarettes.
Hookah Smoking Health Risks
Although studies on hookah smoking are still in their early stages, data suggests that it is dangerous in numerous ways:
- High levels of harmful substances, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals, and cancer-causing substances, can be found in hookah smoke (carcinogens). In actuality, hookah smokers are more exposed to smoke and carbon monoxide than cigarette smokers are.
- Hookah smoking has the same negative health effects as cigarette smoking, including heart disease, lung cancer, and mouth cancer.
- Smoking a hookah delivers almost the same amount of nicotine as smoking cigarettes, which could result in dependence.
- The same risks that come with passive smoking apply to hookah smoke.
- Babies born to pregnant women who smoke hookah risk having low birth weights.
- Inappropriate cleaning of hookah pipes used in hookah bars and cafes puts customers’ health at danger.
Hookah Myths
Certain hookah bars may promote the non-tobacco products they sell as having no negative health consequences. This is untrue since the smoke still contains toxic substances like carbon monoxide and other poisons.
Other untruths regarding hookah use include:
Smoking hookah is not addictive.
The extremely addictive substance nicotine is included in hookah smoke.
Harmful substances are filtered by the water in hookah smoke.
Harmful substances are not filtered out by the water in hookah smoke.
Because cigarettes employ heat, they “burn” the lungs, whereas hookah smoke is milder and does not burn.
Even after cooling down, hookah smoke can still harm the heart and lungs.
Electric Heat Hookahs
Newer hookah models now available from manufacturers employ electric heat rather than charcoal. These manufacturers refer to them as “e-charcoal heat sources” and frequently promote them as a safer option to conventional charcoal hookahs.
Experts now know relatively little about the health dangers associated with electronic tobacco products, though.
Early research on the components of e-charcoal smoke is being conducted by a team of chemists at the University of Cincinnati. According to the study’s findings, e-charcoal smoke kills 80% of lung cell samples 24 hours after exposure.
Compared to the higher-toxin charcoal the team examined, which kills 25% of lung cells, this risk is more serious. 10% of the sample lung cells were found to be killed by the lower-toxin charcoal.
The researchers draw the conclusion that e-charcoal hookah choices might be more harmful than their charcoal equivalents.
These preliminary findings now require confirmation by more published scientific studies.
Takeaway
Hookah smoking does not provide any health benefits and carries various serious health hazards, despite the fact that some people think it is a safer and more socially acceptable alternative to tobacco smoking.
Other persons who use hookahs run the risk of breathing in secondhand smoke. Therefore, it is preferable for people to avoid smoking tobacco products, even by using a hookah, to limit the risks of harming the lungs and other organs.