Hookah Causes Cavities?

[GThookah]

So my friend who smokes with me pretty regularly say 2 to 3 times a week went to the dentist recently. After the dentist inspected his teeth, he asked him if he smoked. My friend replied that he did. Then the dentist told him that his cavity was cause by a "nicotine burn" Now this doesn't make sense b/c the nicotine in shisha is so low, has anyone heard of this?

[leadpipecinch21]

haven't heard of it, but it wouldn't really surprise me...smoke wreaks havoc on your teeth...

[OPR234]

"In addition to the harmful pathological effects of tobacco use (both smoking and chewing), smoking is also associated with a range of unpleasant physical changes in the mouth and teeth."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1305372.stm


I just googled it real quick and thats one thing I saw, you could probably find real research somewhere if you were that interested.

[mushrat]

Problems with hookahs and teeth have been brought up before...

http://www.hookahforum.com/index.php?showt...&hl=dentist

Just another good reason to brush and floss after every bowl

[chinamon]

Now this doesn't make sense b/c the nicotine in shisha is so low

well that depends on what you're smoking.
unwashed stuff has high nicotine.
and some people are more susceptible to cavities.. like how some people are more susceptible to cancer than others.

[Sonthert]

I've always wondered, this is completely crazy-talk, more or less, but I've observed that tobacco consumption in less developed countries tends to cause fewer health effects, at least from what I've heard from smoking with Arabs. Is it true? Can't be sure. As countries develop, tobacco related illnesses increase. Whats the relation. Only the most cursory knowledge in this matter, I wonder if fluoride and nicotine can't mix to make a carcinogen. Toothpaste and smoking cause cancer (????). My father, who smoked for over 60 years...had no teeth since WWII...just dentures...so he didn't brush and he was fanatically against fluoride.

What I have heard is that people who have alkaline mouth chemistries don't get cavities...when the streptococcus pyogenes secretes its acid that will wreck our teeth, alkaline saliva will neutralize it. Acidic saliva will aid it. People with acidic mouth chemistries have very nice looking teeth...people with alkaline mouth chemistries buildup a protective layer on their teeth called tartar. Nicotine has an antiseptic quality, too, so I can't help but think (although I'm not a dentist) that smoking might tend to prevent cavities...of course dentists say otherwise, so...Also, depending on which brand you smoke, most brands don't have nicotine in anyways...so he may be talking out of his ass anyhow...

Look at it the other way, dentists are people, too. A dentist who doesn't like smoking sees you, and you tell him you smoke. He finds a cavity, and its a natural tendency for him to attribute it to something. If you brush and floss regularly, he can't blame dentistry for failing you, so he might tend to blame something he doesn't like anyways.

[Brownman18]

been smoking a year and ive been told last week i have excellent teeth as usual

i brush twice a day i dunno i drink lots of milk lol


i guess its possible. i smoke maybe 3 bowls a day i used to smoke 7-8 bowls a day everyday when i started for like 8 months

[Johnny_D]

It's too random to make a proper conclusion.

As Sonthert alluded to earlier, Different people will have different mouth chemistries. Genetics also have a huge
impact on it as well as your dental history.

However I am willing to believe that smoking is probably not very good for your teeth. But this comes back to the very basic fact that smoking really is not very clever at all. Period. Ever.

I had perfect teeth up until I hit 16. Then all bloody hell let loose. Was it my fanatical love of smoking or a basic change in chemistry as i was getting older? Or my genetic's kicking in? Or a combination of all of the above.

Simple solutions, as ever, will out - Brush your bloody teeth twice a day. Drink Milk!

JD - Simple

edit - speeling

[anathema]

Nicotine burn? I don't feel the effects of nicotine so I guess I won't be getting cavaties due to smoking. And burn? Hookah smoke is much cooler so I don't get how it burnsssssssssssssssssssssss unless it's used in a different manner.

The doctor should have told your friend that he has a cavity caused by smoking BEFORE your friend plead guilty to smoking.

[Tim]

The nicotine is so low? Depends on what you're smoking. When you get that nice buzz going when you first start smoking, that's caused by nicotine. Ever get that nice buzz from smoking a cigarette? Hell no. Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit. Good brands (the ones that I like) have 0.5% nicotine. If you figure that's 25cg (centigrams or 1/100 of a gram) per 50g, that's quite a bit. I don't have the ability to measure the actual amount of nicotine in the smoke, but take a look at what this study had to say about nicotine...

"The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

If you figure a cigarette weighs about 1g, then the nicotine content is only .02% per cigarette. That's less than any brand of shisha out there, except fucking Soex. So the nicotine content of shisha isn't as low as you might think. But I've never heard of nicotine burning. Clearly the tar content of cigarettes and maybe shisha if smoked enough could do that to teeth, but certainly not the nicotine. Then again, I'm no expert.

[hookah hippie]

I've always wondered, this is completely crazy-talk, more or less, but I've observed that tobacco consumption in less developed countries tends to cause fewer health effects, at least from what I've heard from smoking with Arabs. Is it true? Can't be sure. As countries develop, tobacco related illnesses increase. Whats the relation. Only the most cursory knowledge in this matter, I wonder if fluoride and nicotine can't mix to make a carcinogen. Toothpaste and smoking cause cancer (????). My father, who smoked for over 60 years...had no teeth since WWII...just dentures...so he didn't brush and he was fanatically against fluoride.

What I have heard is that people who have alkaline mouth chemistries don't get cavities...when the streptococcus pyogenes secretes its acid that will wreck our teeth, alkaline saliva will neutralize it. Acidic saliva will aid it. People with acidic mouth chemistries have very nice looking teeth...people with alkaline mouth chemistries buildup a protective layer on their teeth called tartar. Nicotine has an antiseptic quality, too, so I can't help but think (although I'm not a dentist) that smoking might tend to prevent cavities...of course dentists say otherwise, so...Also, depending on which brand you smoke, most brands don't have nicotine in anyways...so he may be talking out of his ass anyhow...

Look at it the other way, dentists are people, too. A dentist who doesn't like smoking sees you, and you tell him you smoke. He finds a cavity, and its a natural tendency for him to attribute it to something. If you brush and floss regularly, he can't blame dentistry for failing you, so he might tend to blame something he doesn't like anyways.

Your pondering led to my pondering. Perhaps, that like you said, tobacco consumption in less developed countries tends to cause fewer health effects, maybe because the less developed countries haven't yet been able to detect the damage done by smoking tobacco

[Allia22]

Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit.

Ok, if that were true, I'd be puking my guts out after 5 hits on a hookah. The smoke from a cigarette is burning plant matter, the "smoke" from a hookah is, for all intents and purposes, vaporized glycerine/molasses/honey/corn syrup/whatever is covering the tobacco depending on brand, but definitely not the actual source of nicotine like in cigs.

[Tim]

Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit.

Ok, if that were true, I'd be puking my guts out after 5 hits on a hookah. The smoke from a cigarette is burning plant matter, the "smoke" from a hookah is, for all intents and purposes, vaporized glycerine/molasses/honey/corn syrup/whatever is covering the tobacco depending on brand, but definitely not the actual source of nicotine like in cigs.

True. But because of the volume of the smoke and higher amount of nicotine, you're probably getting as much as a cigarette's worth of nicotine in one pull. I've heard it said several times that smoking a hookah is like smoking a few packs of cigarettes at a time. But the "experts" never say it like it is. It's like smoking a few packs worth of cigarettes nicotine-wise. You're not smoking cigarette tobacco, and therefore not inhaling all of those chemicals. I'm just talking about nicotine here. Edited September 9, 2007 by Tim

[Skarredmind]

OH NOES!!! Smoking is bad for me!?!?! I am so happy to have teh intrawebs to tell me this news! I might take up a harmful hobby otherwise!!

And Tim, you misread something somewhere... because there is no way that that is true.

Anyway, I have a nicotine loaded, orange soda flavored, bowl of death waiting for me to add the coals

[Tim]

OH NOES!!! Smoking is bad for me!?!?! I am so happy to have teh intrawebs to tell me this news! I might take up a harmful hobby otherwise!!

And Tim, you misread something somewhere... because there is no way that that is true.

Anyway, I have a nicotine loaded, orange soda flavored, bowl of death waiting for me to add the coals

Don't blame me. Blame it on the news. Don't know if you get the "news" out there wherever you are, but I've seen quite a few pieces about it and heard this mentioned before. Like I said, the experts keep telling half-truths. If it is true, it must only refer to the nicotine. A bowl shisha contains no cigarette additives and very little tar (so little that "0.0%" will suffice for most brands), but it does contain a lot of nicotine. If you take a look at my numbers for the nicotine content, you'll see that 10g of shisha contains 5cg of nicotine. A cigarette contains about 20mg. Lets compare that. 20/1000 grams < 5/100 grams. That's how you can tell there's so much nicotine in shisha. I'm not lying to you, or trying to deceive you. Those are the numbers. Numbers don't lie. I'm not saying don't smoke a hookah because of that. I only buy brands with at least 0.5% nicotine. I'm just saying that there is a lot of nicotine in shisha. But I've never heard of nicotine causing cavities (I think that's what I was originally trying to point out?).

Edit: Oh yeah. Going back to that math, you're right in saying that the experts are wrong on the amount of nicotine, it's only about 4 cigarettes worth IF YOU WERE TO BURN IT. But we're just heating it up. So that means that some more of the nicotine is preserved. And that's where the math ends. I can't give you an estimate on the amount of nicotine in 10g of shisha once you actually smoke it. And like I said, until I get enough money to either buy the equipment to measure that or pay someone to do it for me, we might just never know. So start sending me your donations, people. Edited September 9, 2007 by Tim

[Gaara]

The nicotine is so low? Depends on what you're smoking. When you get that nice buzz going when you first start smoking, that's caused by nicotine. Ever get that nice buzz from smoking a cigarette? Hell no. Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit. Good brands (the ones that I like) have 0.5% nicotine. If you figure that's 25cg (centigrams or 1/100 of a gram) per 50g, that's quite a bit. I don't have the ability to measure the actual amount of nicotine in the smoke, but take a look at what this study had to say about nicotine...

"The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

If you figure a cigarette weighs about 1g, then the nicotine content is only .02% per cigarette. That's less than any brand of shisha out there, except fucking Soex. So the nicotine content of shisha isn't as low as you might think. But I've never heard of nicotine burning. Clearly the tar content of cigarettes and maybe shisha if smoked enough could do that to teeth, but certainly not the nicotine. Then again, I'm no expert.

If it's as you say or similar reports, then how come Hookah isn't addictive since nicotine is the cause of addiction? Like me, I know people who have been smoking regularly for years and can stop smoking for months without any withdrawl symptoms? You can't do that with cigs.

[Tim]

The nicotine is so low? Depends on what you're smoking. When you get that nice buzz going when you first start smoking, that's caused by nicotine. Ever get that nice buzz from smoking a cigarette? Hell no. Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit. Good brands (the ones that I like) have 0.5% nicotine. If you figure that's 25cg (centigrams or 1/100 of a gram) per 50g, that's quite a bit. I don't have the ability to measure the actual amount of nicotine in the smoke, but take a look at what this study had to say about nicotine...

"The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

If you figure a cigarette weighs about 1g, then the nicotine content is only .02% per cigarette. That's less than any brand of shisha out there, except fucking Soex. So the nicotine content of shisha isn't as low as you might think. But I've never heard of nicotine burning. Clearly the tar content of cigarettes and maybe shisha if smoked enough could do that to teeth, but certainly not the nicotine. Then again, I'm no expert.

If it's as you say or similar reports, then how come Hookah isn't addictive since nicotine is the cause of addiction? Like me, I know people who have been smoking regularly for years and can stop smoking for months without any withdrawl symptoms? You can't do that with cigs.

Why not? I did. I can still smoke cigs and stop. I think it really depends on the person when it comes to addictions. My belief is cigarettes become a habit into which people vent their problems and stress. Like I said, I'm not try to lie to you, I'm just doing math. Read some of my posts farther down.

[Skarredmind]

Don't blame me. Blame it on the news. Don't know if you get the "news" out there wherever you are, but I've seen quite a few pieces about it and heard this mentioned before. Like I said, the experts keep telling half-truths. If it is true, it must only refer to the nicotine. A bowl shisha contains no cigarette additives and very little tar (so little that "0.0%" will suffice for most brands), but it does contain a lot of nicotine. If you take a look at my numbers for the nicotine content, you'll see that 10g of shisha contains 5cg of nicotine. A cigarette contains about 20mg. Lets compare that. 20/1000 grams < 5/100 grams. That's how you can tell there's so much nicotine in shisha. I'm not lying to you, or trying to deceive you. Those are the numbers. Numbers don't lie. I'm not saying don't smoke a hookah because of that. I only buy brands with at least 0.5% nicotine. I'm just saying that there is a lot of nicotine in shisha. But I've never heard of nicotine causing cavities (I think that's what I was originally trying to point out?).

Dude... you are comparing apples to oranges...

Let's use your numbers here

"The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

If you figure a cigarette weighs about 1g, then the nicotine content is only .02% per cigarette. That's less than any brand of shisha out there, except fucking Soex. So the nicotine content of shisha isn't as low as you might think. But I've never heard of nicotine burning. Clearly the tar content of cigarettes and maybe shisha if smoked enough could do that to teeth, but certainly not the nicotine. Then again, I'm no expert.

so using averages and your numbers 1 cigarette has about 20mg nicotine and weighs 1g.

So if we are going to assume equal weights, then we have 10 cigs vs 1 10 gram bowl of shisha.

Since 1 cig has 20mg, ten obviously has 200mg

You said

Good brands (the ones that I like) have 0.5% nicotine. If you figure that's 25cg (centigrams or 1/100 of a gram) per 50g, that's quite a bit.

Since you are changing common denominators, I will adjust it to make it easier to read. 250mg of nicotine to 50g of shisha, bringing them to the same levels to make it clear 10g of shisha would have 50mg of nicotine.

Now. Let's compare who has more:
10 grams of cigarette tobacco (10 cigs worth) = 200mg
10 grams of hookah tobacco (1 bowl) = 50mg

To me it looks like the hookah tobacco has less...

Now since you've already realized that not all of that nicotine makes it into the smoke

However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

So we'll assume a filtered cigarette and we'll average .6mg per cigarette which means that in 10g you get 6mg total ingested.

You have no info on the amount actually ingested from the hookah tobacco... which would be what we really needed to determine the difference.

Since we don't have that, I will follow the logic you used.

Smoked 10g of cigarettes you ingest 6mg of nicotine
Since we don't have numbers for the smoked amount for the hookah tobacco we can't compare.

The conclusion you draw 6mg > than 50mg so hookah is way worse.

Of course for this to work you would need to EAT the shisha..... Since that's not how MOST of us do it I suspect your numbers are WAY wrong.

All of this, of course has nothing to do with the teeth thing, but like you said, numbers don't like, just the person using or misusuing them.

[Alademuerte]

The nicotine is so low? Depends on what you're smoking. When you get that nice buzz going when you first start smoking, that's caused by nicotine. Ever get that nice buzz from smoking a cigarette? Hell no. Because of the huge volume of smoke you pull when hitting a hookah, you probably get about 1 cigarette's worth of nicotine from each hit. Good brands (the ones that I like) have 0.5% nicotine. If you figure that's 25cg (centigrams or 1/100 of a gram) per 50g, that's quite a bit. I don't have the ability to measure the actual amount of nicotine in the smoke, but take a look at what this study had to say about nicotine...

"The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg (0.6-1.0 mg/kg, 1-2 drops) i.e. the quantity contained in 2 g of tobacco (equivalent to 2 common blend cigarettes; 15-25 mg of nicotine per cigarette). However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette, with smoke of most nonfiltered brands containing 1.2 to 2.4 mg and filtered brands between 0.2 and 1.0 mg."

If you figure a cigarette weighs about 1g, then the nicotine content is only .02% per cigarette. That's less than any brand of shisha out there, except fucking Soex. So the nicotine content of shisha isn't as low as you might think. But I've never heard of nicotine burning. Clearly the tar content of cigarettes and maybe shisha if smoked enough could do that to teeth, but certainly not the nicotine. Then again, I'm no expert.

If it's as you say or similar reports, then how come Hookah isn't addictive since nicotine is the cause of addiction? Like me, I know people who have been smoking regularly for years and can stop smoking for months without any withdrawl symptoms? You can't do that with cigs.

As Tim said, cigarettes are a thing that people latch on to for how should i say, comfort? True, nicotine causes dopamine to be increased in the body (and adrenaline), dopamine leaves people feeling happy or relaxed.
Ironically, so does cocaine.. But cocaine is illegal and nicotine isnt. Heh, crazy government.
But people use cigarettes as a crutch to release their frustration/stress and make themselves feel better instead of using other methods of stress management.
I believe addiction to a cigarette is a mind set. I use to smoke Cigarettes, and one day I was just decided I didnt want to.
Did I throw out the pack of cigarettes to keep myself from smoking them? Nah, they are actually still in my car. I dont smoke them, but oh well.


And I'm not trying to be an ass or get into an argument with you Skarredmind, but who has a 10g bowl??

The smallest bowl I have come across is the Egyptian Shallow Bowl, which holds less then the average bowl, and it holds 12g.

The bowls I smoke out of can hold up to like 80g or so....

[anathema]

True. But because of the volume of the smoke and higher amount of nicotine, you're probably getting as much as a cigarette's worth of nicotine in one pull. I've heard it said several times that smoking a hookah is like smoking a few packs of cigarettes at a time. But the "experts" never say it like it is. It's like smoking a few packs worth of cigarettes nicotine-wise. You're not smoking cigarette tobacco, and therefore not inhaling all of those chemicals. I'm just talking about nicotine here.

The fatal dose of pure nicotine is approximately 40-60 mg ... However, the smoke contains less than 3 mg per cigarette

So that means a few packs, usually a "couple" is two, a "few" is three or more. We'll just use 1 pack. Also, less than 3 mg means 2-3 right? We'll just use 1 mg.
1 pack = 20 cigs
20 cigs x 1 mg = 20mg

I've smoke 2-3 bowls of unwashed moassel before, how come I haven't died? I'm a god.

[guyt]

Any form of smoke is a solid "dissolved" into the air. As the temperature decreases the solubility decreases. So hookah smoke. which can be up to 100 degrees F cooler than cigarette smoke isn't able to hold as much nicotine as cigs. It's not how much is in the tobacco as much as how much can be effectively inhaled. The cooler your smoke the less stuff it can hold. It makes it feel thick but in reality there is a lower concentration of particles in the air.

And the cavity stuff is almost for sure just a coincidence. If your friend also smokes cigs, cigars, marijuana or anything else that is most likely the cause of the cavity.

[ghostofdavid]

Where is that SammyDDS guy at? He might be able to tell us.

[[LB]]

yall know that feeling when you wake up in the morning after a long night out smoking and were too beat to brush your teeth? yea that cant be good.

[Tim]

Any form of smoke is a solid "dissolved" into the air. As the temperature decreases the solubility decreases. So hookah smoke. which can be up to 100 degrees F cooler than cigarette smoke isn't able to hold as much nicotine as cigs. It's not how much is in the tobacco as much as how much can be effectively inhaled. The cooler your smoke the less stuff it can hold. It makes it feel thick but in reality there is a lower concentration of particles in the air.

And the cavity stuff is almost for sure just a coincidence. If your friend also smokes cigs, cigars, marijuana or anything else that is most likely the cause of the cavity.

So you're telling me smoke from the molasses or honey gets you a buzz? That's cool. Hey, Foxie. We're smoking honey from now on. Lets ride over to Walmart right now.

[Tim]

Or you factor in smoking to your time it takes ready to go work and not brush your teeth. Especially after smoking Z. >_<