Hookah - Bad For You?

[ilikemyusername]

man, the last time i smoked 3 packs i thought the next day i was going to die, but then on other days i smoke 3 bowls of shisha and i dont feel like i've come anywhere NEAR the 15 pack margin.

[f22a4bandit]

Bump for the carbon monoxide argument.

Smoking shisha is bad for you, but in my opinion, not nearly as bad for you as cigarettes. I smoked cigarettes for about 8 months before throwing in the towel. I wasn't addicted to them, I just had absolutely nothing else to do with my time. I hated feeling like if I walked 10 steps I was going to collapse, and I didn't enjoy the burning sensation in my lungs.

I had my hookah back then, but I didn't really do it that often. I switched back over to my hookah after quitting and the results were quite different from a cigarette. My breathing became less labored, and I didn't have the gunk build up like I did when I smoked cigarettes. I only smoke my hookah a couple of times a month. If I have any breathing issues it is because I'm procrastinating on getting back into a work out routine.

[echotc]

i really depends. I mean its not great for you, but some studies show that people who smoke pipe live longer. Taking slow deep breathes, similar to meditation, calms you. And stress is a major killer

[mIckeyG]

who wants to live long enough to wear diapers again.. i dont

Amen.

[An1m]

If anything, schools/colleges should educate kids about hookah and its potential dangers. People always hear about kids smoking cigarettes despite all the education afforded to them. Why not do the same for hookah? It is tobacco after all.

Strong first and only post. This guy lurked the forums, then made an account just to write this and disappeared back into the abyss from whence lurkedth.

On that note. Hookah is bad for me. The Jersey air is bad for me. At least I can enjoy killing myself with the hookah, my terrible air quality is just sad.

[sofubar]

I've worried over this a good few times, there's a lot of 'One Hookah session is equal to 1/3/5/7 packs of cigs, or whatnot. However, I came across a comment which I had never really thought about before, the article was just another generic 'Hookah is worse than cigarettes' with supposed research to back it up, but this chap has given me peace of mind.

I quote:

"Ahem. You say "In a one-hour hookah session, users consume about 100 to 200 times the smoke and about 70 times the nicotine as they do in one cigarette"

One cigarette typically contains 0.8mg of nicotine (Marlboro Reds)

So 70 times that would be 56mg.

However, looking at the LD50 of nicotine reveals that, "40–60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans"

Your "facts" are merely flawed and skewed propaganda - if they had any basis in reality hookah smokers would be dying from acute nicotine poisoning on a regular basis.

Some simple research would have saved you the embarrassment of publishing such drivel as if it were true."

Makes sense to me, although further research into nicotine poisoning reveals that regular cigarette smokers will have higher limits, I know I am not a regular cigarette smoker and so by the logic of this article, and most other somewhat anti-hookah articles, I should be dead.

My 2 cents!

Here is the actual article incase anyone is interested: http://www.collegian.com/home/index.cfm?ev...ea-23ba25b25819

[Bye bye now have fun]

im getting its higher. lets say my bowl is 20g (probably closer to 30) and its .5% that would be 100mg. and if its af then it would be 10mg which is still 10x.

[Charley]

smoking in any for is bad for your health.

that being said i have smoked since i was 14. I will be 30 in august. five years ago I discovered when I moved to Detroit to live with someone i thought i was in love with. she had a hookah I liked it so i started smoking it over the last 5 years I have went from a 5 pack a day cig habit to a 1 pack a day and 6-8 bowl hookah habit. I went from basically gasping for air to recovering most of my lung capacity and I am still cutting back on cigs and every time I manage to cut down more the more lung capacity I get back even tho the more i cut down on them the more hookah i smoke.

this is not the most scientific method but take a white piece of cloth and smoke one cig filtering the smoke through it then take another and have 5 yes i sed 5 full hookah sessions you will see the cloth from the single cig is 2x darker than the one from the hookah.

as for nicotine one cig for 5 minutes satisfies my addiction much more than a single 45minute hookah session.

now when cigs burn they burn at a very high heat between 400-700 deg C depending on if its at rest or a draw being taken from it.
the average pice of coal (depending on size) burns much lower than that about 120deg C at rest

when a cig burns it produces what is called heavy particals (smoke)
when you smoke shisha the coal makes it produce lite particals (again smoke)

heavy particals tend to linger in the air and settle on objects ( ie walls windows and yes the lining of your lungs)
where as lite particals dissipate relatively fast. (this is why you can go into a non ventilated room 10 minutes after someone smoked a cig in it and still see smoke in the air but the smoke will have already been gone if they had smoke a hookah instead.)
go into a house of a heavy cig smoker and look at a window closely one week after it has been cleaned you will already see a significant build up of smoke do the same with a heavy hookah smoker and you will see almost none.

heavy partical smoke also affects the bronchiole (the small tubes in your lungs) where as lite partical smoke only affects the larger tubes of the lungs.

In short all smoking is harmful to your health no mater what it is you smoke but some things are not as bad as others.

[contristo]

I run 4 miles a day and smoke at least a bowl of hookah per day.

I've been doing this for quite awhile and the two have never detrimentally overlapped. I actually run better than I did before I started smoking hookah. It's probably just my endurance building up, but the basic thing is that if hookah is so harmful, then i think i would have noticed at least minor effects when running.

as long as someone exercises 4-5 days a week, i don't think that drinking or smoking is really going to put you in harm's way. this is especially the case for hookah, which is so filtered that any effects would have to come from really over-doing it. just like drinking or smoking, its not difficult to know your limits

[ilikemyusername]

i had 4 bowls today, i dont feel like i smoked 2 cartons.