Doctor compares smoking, vaping and nicotine pouches to see what is worse for health with clear winner
A doctor has said there's a clear winner when it comes to the most harmful habit between smoking, vaping and shoving nicotine pouches into your gums.
The market for each of these products is huge so there's evidently a lot of demand for all of them, which isn't helped by the fact they all contain highly addictive nicotine which makes people want to keep coming back for more.
However, the health hazards of each product were different and one is clearly worse than the others.
Dr Rayyan Zafar explained to Metro that while all three contained nicotine and were best avoided there was one clear winner when it came to being most harmful, which would mean someone addicted to them would come out the clear loser health-wise.
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Unsurprisingly, the doctor said that the most harmful of the three was cigarettes 'by a very large margin', and it's to do with the way you consume it.
If you have a cigarette habit presumably you're not eating them, you're smoking them, and smoking is very bad for you as burning tobacco and all the various chemicals they put in cigarettes produces lots of carcinogens.
That's going to absolutely mess you up on the inside as smoking is linked to all manner of cancers and other health conditions which end up with the smoker finally being the one lit up in a crematorium.
As the doctor put it there was 'no safe level of cigarette smoking' and even lighting up just a few times could lead to 'disproportionate cardiovascular harm'.
That's not to say vaping or nicotine pouches were a healthy habit either.
Cigarette smoking may stand head and shoulders above the other two as the most harmful habit but vaping can cause a plethora of its own health issues as many people have discovered to their detriment.
Studies on people who vape have found it reduced their red blood functionality, meaning oxygen wasn't getting around their body like it should.
Researchers also found vapers suffered from inflammation of the blood vessels, and the number of children being admitted to hospital for vaping-related illnesses has been increasing over the past few years.
A number of vapers have been hospitalised in a seriously unwell condition after vaping such a significant amount they did themselves major damage.
As for nicotine pouches, Dr Zafar said these 'may be the least harmful' of the three but stressed they were still bad for you.
Information on just how harmful they can be is thin on the ground since they're relatively new and more studies need to be conducted, but researchers have found gum irritations, mouth ulcers and white lesions where the pouches have been placed among the harmful consequences.
Swallowing one of the pouches also risks nicotine poisoning, so definitely don't do that.
The doctor also didn't like how nicotine products were being marketed in ways he fears 'encourages users to start low'.
Ultimately, his verdict was that if you're switching from cigarettes to another nicotine product that's probably going to be 'a substantial reduction in harm', but the healthiest thing is not to use any of them at all.
Joe Harker