charleski
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Post by charleski on Mar 15, 2012 5:36:28 GMT
but the first time I used the bp monitor my mind got me into an anxious state so it course it went up lol.. doh!.. so I breathed, relaxed... and tried again and it was fine.. the only thing now is I'm addicted to checking everyone else blood pressure when they come round lol LOL. Ok, the trick to measuring BP is to take lots of measurements. Blood pressure naturally varies to accommodate demand (or things that are related to increased demand, like fear - if you see a lion about to attack you your blood pressure will go up, because you're going to be running very fast), so one single measurement really doesn't have much significance. The trick is to measure it many times over at least a week, and always measure it when you're physically at rest. You only get a true idea by looking at the average. As far as ecigs and the medical profession goes, unfortunately there's a lot of politics involved. For anyone who's interested, I'd recommend reading the paper that Phil Busardo linked on this page. It's written by a couple of academics involved in public health policy and towards the end they talk about the antipathy that the anti-smoking groups in the US have towards ecigs. (That's after they list a bunch of studies that show that ecigs are many orders of magnitude safer than smoking tobacco.) Though some of this may be ancient fall-out over the 'light cigarette' con that was tried by the tobacco companies, a lot of it is because ecigs are fundamentally a harm reduction rather than harm cessation measure. In other words, ecigs are a way of enjoying the act of smoking (which involves several factors, such as the physical sensation or 'throat hit', the flavour, and also involves taking nicotine) in a manner which won't give you cancer and COPD, rather than being a part of a program aimed at getting people to give up entirely (though there's no reason they can't used for that). It's an unfortunate, but very real, fact that there's a vocal element of the medical profession who are against any use of drugs by 'non-qualified' personnel if there's even a remote possibility of harm. And therefore they don't like the idea of people routinely medicating themselves with nicotine. All doctors of course, myself included, prescribe medication every day that can cause far more harm than ecigs - in fact we often prescribe it knowing that such harm will occur, in the informed opinion that it will be a lesser harm than the disease that it is treating. But sometimes people in the medical profession lose sight of the fact that doctors are not the only people capable of making an informed opinion. In a nutshell, the nicotine from vaping does carry some risk, but then so does crossing the street. It hasn't been around long enough for proper long-term longitudinal cohort studies, but every analysis shows that it's massively safer than smoking tobacco. It takes time to produce the full weight of scientific evidence needed to prove this safety, but all the preliminary data is very clear that every smoker who switches to vaping is removing a significant and major source of harm.
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charleski
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Joined:March 2012
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Last Online Mar 15, 2012 6:16:12 GMT
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Post by charleski on Mar 8, 2012 17:21:22 GMT
I would urge all other members now that Charleski has made himself known to us to show restraint and not pester him. Your first place to enquire about anything medical should be to your own GP or health professional. Ha, I did think twice before mentioning it. But I did so because the prospect of someone getting scared by a standard health warning and going back to cigarettes would be tragic. I'd be happy to give general advice, but obviously anything specific really does need a personal consultation with your GP.
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charleski
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Joined:March 2012
Posts: 3
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Last Online Mar 15, 2012 6:16:12 GMT
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Post by charleski on Mar 8, 2012 16:14:39 GMT
Just read that you cannot vap if you have high blood pressure! If you didn't smoke, then that would be true. Since you are looking at vaping as an alternative to smoking, it's false. Ideally, yes, as far as your blood pressure goes it would be preferable not to do either, but smoking tobacco will be far more dangerous than vaping. I would recommend that you start out using medium-to-low strengths of e-liquid (under 20mg) and keep an eye on how much you vape. One of the potential problems is that, because vaping is a radically less toxic experience than smoking, you end up vaping more than you need to satisfy your craving - there's no way I could chain-smoke as it would be too painful for my throat, but I could happily vape away for hours. Obviously, everyone is different, and to be safe it would be advisable to get a home BP monitor from your pharmacy. Check your resting BP while sitting in a chair and relaxed (measure it a few times on different occasions), then check the reading after having a couple of vaping puffs. I'm a doctor, BTW (only started vaping a month ago and been lurking here reading up about it). The warning about vaping and blood pressure is basically obligatory for anyone selling ecigs or any nicotine product.
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