Is It Bad?

[TheMadnessAxis]

hey

new to forums , not to shisha "hookah over here"

im from kuwait , in the us right now as an exchange student , gonna be here for more 6 months

anyways

ive started smoking hookah for like a year now ... i used to do it like 4 times a month .... in a shisha bar ...

i got one for my self ... though i dont think ive should have done it ...

im doing it like 3-4 times a week ... is that good ? will it hurt ?

how often should i smoke it ?

im not really addicted or something , i just enjoy it when the time is right ... but lately ive been doing it alot compared to before ...

so is 3-4 times a week bad?

how often should i smoke it ?

thanks

[AKammenzind]

Completely personal pref. Sometimes I'll only smoke once every week or two... other times I'll spend a couple months smoking half a dozen bowls a day.

[TheMadnessAxis]

thanks , but i want to know how bad is it for my health , if it is bad im willing to quit the whole thing right now

i mean what kind of a harm can it do if i did it 3-4 times a week Edited November 8, 2008 by TheMadnessAxis

[SixPackSunday]

two words

search. function.

[TheMadnessAxis]

ive searched alot , i mean alot before i posted this thread

found nothing useful on google

i found that it can cause somethings , but they didnt say like if u did it this much , ull be harmed that much Edited November 8, 2008 by TheMadnessAxis

[erufiku]

Three words for you: no conclusive research.

To be perfectly frank, you are risking getting the same spectrum of diseases as if you smoked cigs, including lung and throat cancer. Now, you may be more or less likely compared to get them compared to smoking cigs... Nobody really knows. I mean all this bullshit about water filtering stuff, well, it doesn't filter jack as far as I know; or, at least, it doesn't filter a significant amount of the harmful particles.

To puff or not to puff... I'd say if you're a health nut, just quit it now. If you're normal, smoking once (or even twice) a week should not have a large negative impact on your health unless you are predisposed to respiratory problems.

[AKammenzind]

Three words for you: no conclusive research.

Agreed, that pretty much sums it up. Other than that, just remember the obvious: smoking is bad for you, and if that bugs you... you probably shouldn't be smoking.

[gaia.plateau]

Qualitative (Case Study: Me)
I smoke, on average, 20 hours a week, or once or twice a day.

I exert myself cardiovascularly about 10 hours a week, and haven't coughed once nor noticed any problems with my stamina. I exert my muscles about 8 hours a week, and haven't coughed once. If you consider sex to be both exertion of cardiovascular and muscular, amend those figures to about 20 and 18. Again, no problems.

I've been doing this for 14 months.

Quantitative
Not only has there been no conclusive results in the study of negative health effects from smoking narguile, but there has not been one, single, solitary, accurate test. Testers have all been scientists whom one can accurately imagine had never heard of narguile before the experiment, and have no idea how to cook it properly. In every study I've read, the conductors have cited particle readings in their subjects, which means that they were burning the moe'ssal whilst their subjects were smoking it. Which makes it completely irrelevant.

Once an unbiased conductor of these experiments either learns how to cook a bowl of moe'ssal or hires an experienced hookah smoker as an assistant, I'll listen and likely heed their findings. Until then, bollocks to all of it.

[engineonmute]

I've heard that its less tobacco than a cigar and less nicotine than a cigarette but that if you smoke a hookah too much it can give way for the temptation of smoking cigarettes.
The smoke is also inhaled with hookah, when I'm pretty sure its not with a cigar...
so you can do the math and figure out how bad it is.

[Hippo_Master]

I've been smoking for years, and i still keep in perfect shape. I recently had my lungs checked, because i have a tonsil infection currently and i wanted to be safe, and they are clean as a whistle oddly enough. I thought I would at least be a bit crusty..

[AKammenzind]

so you can do the math and figure out how bad it is.

No. Without studies we really can't. There have been no valid studies to my knowledge... every single one out there I've seen has at least one major flaw in it, rendering it completely useless to anyone but anti-smoking bastards. Suffice to say it's bad for you, and you should only do it so much as you feel is alright.

[engineonmute]

I've been smoking for years, and i still keep in perfect shape. I recently had my lungs checked, because i have a tonsil infection currently and i wanted to be safe, and they are clean as a whistle oddly enough. I thought I would at least be a bit crusty..

wow that's interesting. how much/often do you smoke?

[engineonmute]

so you can do the math and figure out how bad it is.

No. Without studies we really can't. There have been no valid studies to my knowledge... every single one out there I've seen has at least one major flaw in it, rendering it completely useless to anyone but anti-smoking bastards. Suffice to say it's bad for you, and you should only do it so much as you feel is alright.

more like estimate then i guess....
and i agree, there have been no valid studies. i mean there are studies, but they all vary a lot in results...

[inino]

i smoke every day. usually more than 1 bowl. on average about 4 hours of smoking ever day. been smoking for 4 years, every day for 2. i was a wrestler in high school and did other sports and things. it had a light negative effect on my health, but nothing that was really harmful. just a few extra coughs at the beginning of every season.

[CasSmo]

To be honest, I used to be very anti-smoking anything....until my girlfriend got me to smoke a Cuban cigar. And of course I read up before deciding to get her a hookah for her upcoming birthday and smoke it for the first time with her (which will be in 2 weeks).

First off, hookah is still bad for you. I would wager it's much less harmful to other smoking for reasons below.

Tar: How much tar is in the smoke is dependent on the temperature the tobacco (or whatever) is being burned at. I believe I read in an old study that at the hottest point, a cigarette can get around 800 degrees F. Cigars 600+-. Pipes 500+-. Shisha is indirectly heated around 200, give or take. Even before the water, you are going to get a lot less tar from smoking with a hookah.

Heat: The heat of cigarette smoke is harmful to the cilia in the lungs. The heat exchange in the stem and particularly through the water takes care of this problem for hookah smokers. Adding a diffuser will increase heat exchange due to increased surface area.

Other chemicals: Someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but after combustion of the additives in cigarettes, there are around 4000 compounds.

Filtration: Not sure about the compounds in hookah smoke, but anything water soluble (likely any polar molecule) will be filtered to some degree. How much I am not sure. Adding a diffuser will increase any existent filtration due to increased surface area.

Too lazy to google it, but there is a study saying how a person smoking hookah 20 minutes or less per day and a nonsmoker statistically have the same chance for displaying a particular marker for cancer. (Heavy hookah smokers showed statistical significance in the comparison to nonsmokers)
The WHO study on hookahs is an affront to proper research or experimentation. You can find criticisms of it. A shame that it's the most often cited research on hookahs.

[Canon]

only thing that hookah does to me is i cannot go running until about an hour after i smoke the hookah.

[CasSmo]

Shisha is indirectly heated around 200, give or take. Even before the water, you are going to get a lot less tar from smoking with a hookah.

Correction, it's not 200F, it's more like 212-302F. (100-150C)
It is still substantially lower. You don't try to actually char and burn the shisha like you do with other tobacco products. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the shisha is not actually being combusted (which would release additional heat).

[AKammenzind]

Shisha is indirectly heated around 200, give or take. Even before the water, you are going to get a lot less tar from smoking with a hookah.

Correction, it's not 200F, it's more like 212-302F. (100-150C)
It is still substantially lower. You don't try to actually char and burn the shisha like you do with other tobacco products. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the shisha is not actually being combusted (which would release additional heat).

The exact temp. probably depends on the coals, and your heat management... some shishas need more heat than others, and whether or not that makes any difference I'm honestly not sure. But yes, you are correct there.

[FactorE]

Hmm i can run right after a hookah session but not after smoking cigs.

[AKammenzind]

Hmm i can run right after a hookah session but not after smoking cigs.

Same. I think that has a bit to do with the heat of the smoke you're taking in. It's my understanding that cigs are in part so bad because the hot smoke will insta-kill some cilia in your lungs, and this might not be the case with hookah. Still probably gonna cause lung cancer down the road, but hey... whatever

[CasSmo]

Hmm i can run right after a hookah session but not after smoking cigs.

Same. I think that has a bit to do with the heat of the smoke you're taking in. It's my understanding that cigs are in part so bad because the hot smoke will insta-kill some cilia in your lungs, and this might not be the case with hookah. Still probably gonna cause lung cancer down the road, but hey... whatever

Yeah, if you smoke enough (of anything really), you could get cancer. If a person is worried about it, just save the smoking for rare occasions or just social gatherings.

Anyways, I went ahead and found out that nicotine is not considered a carcinogen. However, it does affect apoptosis (programmed cell death). Technically, we all have had cancerous cells, but the normal function is for those cells to "suicide". Nicotine can affect this normal function, but technically, nicotine itself does not actually induce cancer.

As for why you can run after smoking hookah and not after smoking a cigarette, I will just take a (hopefully educated) guess at it. Higher temperature combustion produces low CO, high CO2, high NOx. Low temperature combustion (which would almost certainly include cigarettes, cigars, and pipes) produces relatively higher CO, lower CO2, and lower NOx. So given that, the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke, in addition to the tar, heat, and other junk, would negatively affect your running. CO binds more strongly to hemoglobin than oxygen, so it affects your muscles getting oxygen to produce energy. (now here comes the more guessing part) Because you aren't actually combusting shisha, you aren't going to be producing much if any CO. The only carbon monoxide you might get is whatever might be coming from the coal (entrained with the surrounding air). I think CO may also be at least somewhat soluble in water, further decreasing it. So that's my theory work. Not sure exactly how accurate it is, but it seems plausible.