Vaping and your heart
What is vaping?
A vape, or e-cigarette, is a device that you breath in vapour (steam) rather than smoke. There are many different types of vapes, and different flavours available. The vapour contains many different chemicals that can cause damage to your health.
Is vaping addictive?
The vapour in vapes contains nicotine, the addictive chemical used in cigarettes. This means vapes are still considered addictive.
Does vaping affect your heart?
Vaping can increase your blood pressure and heart rate.
If you have pre-existing heart conditions, all nicotine products are discouraged. Nicotine increases heart rate and impacts how effective your treatment is.
Quitting vaping will benefit your heart health and reduce your risk of other long-term health problems.
Vaping vs smoking
Is vaping better than smoking cigarettes?
Vapes, or e-cigarettes, are less harmful than regular cigarettes.
Vaping may be recommended to people trying to quit smoking. This is because they can be used to help you manage your cravings for nicotine. This works by slowly decreasing the nicotine levels over time, until you can be nicotine free.
As vapes use vapour rather than smoke, vaping exposes you to less toxins than cigarettes, such as tar or carbon monoxide. But vaping is not risk free.
Vapes should not be used by non-smokers or young people.
Quitting vaping
What are the benefits of quitting vaping?
Choosing to quit vaping will improve your health and mood.
There are many benefits to quitting vaping, including:
- reducing your risk of developing cardiovascular disease
- reducing blood pressure
- feeling less stress and anxiety
- saving money.
How can I quit vaping?
If you have used vapes to successfully quit smoking normal cigarettes, you should consider quitting these as well.A common way to quit vaping is to gradually reduce the nicotine content in your vape over time. This makes it easier for your body to adjust to lower nicotine levels, until you can stop vaping completely.
Find out more on how to quit vaping.
Get support
You're more likely to quit if you have support:
- Find NHS Stop Smoking Services near you or call the Smokefree National Helpline on 0300 123 1044 (England only). Support is also available in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland.
- Call our Heart Helpline to speak to one of our cardiac nurses.
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Understanding your heart health
