Vaping and Health: What Do We Know About E-Cigarettes?
Vaping and Health: What Do We Know About E-Cigarettes?
Many questions remain about whether e-cigarettes are actually safe or simply less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, and debate rages about whether or how the devices should be regulated. But the ongoing uncertainty hasn't appeared to dampen their popularity.
Although researchers are still waiting on data about long-term health effects from e-cigarettes, Crotty Alexander has begun to provide some advice on the devices to her patients. "I don't like to use the word 'safe' with e-cigarettes," she says, "but I do tell my patients that they might be better off if they switched from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes."
For their part, Glantz and colleagues advise health care providers to read between the lines when a patient asks about e-cigarettes. "A patient who asks a clinician about using the e-cigarette for quitting smoking may be signaling readiness to quit smoking," they wrote in a May 2014 clinicians' brief. "It is most important to support the patient's quit attempt and to try to ensure that any advice given does not undermine the patient's motivation to quit smoking."
Interim Advice
Many questions remain about whether e-cigarettes are actually safe or simply less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, and debate rages about whether or how the devices should be regulated. But the ongoing uncertainty hasn't appeared to dampen their popularity.
Although researchers are still waiting on data about long-term health effects from e-cigarettes, Crotty Alexander has begun to provide some advice on the devices to her patients. "I don't like to use the word 'safe' with e-cigarettes," she says, "but I do tell my patients that they might be better off if they switched from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes."
For their part, Glantz and colleagues advise health care providers to read between the lines when a patient asks about e-cigarettes. "A patient who asks a clinician about using the e-cigarette for quitting smoking may be signaling readiness to quit smoking," they wrote in a May 2014 clinicians' brief. "It is most important to support the patient's quit attempt and to try to ensure that any advice given does not undermine the patient's motivation to quit smoking."
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