Daivings.lv warns - smoking is harmful to your health! Decompression sickness In this case, smokers may have more severe injuries.
Disputes about the health effects of hookahs are now a common topic in various media, but over time, a serious regularity has crystallized. There are very few who form their opinion objectively in this area, the smokers themselves do not stop praising the hookah, but opponents openly deny it, invoking some mystical research that is absurd in their assumptions alone, but sometimes they also get support.
The most popular of them, of course, is that smoking 1 hookah is equivalent to smoking 200 cigarettes. And it takes and preaches and republishes, without even thinking about whether a person can actually smoke 200 cigarettes and how he should feel afterwards… To my delight, not everyone thinks so; for example, experts from our National Agency for Narcology report that "studies have shown that because hookah tobacco is not burned but heated, less carcinogens are produced in its smoke." At least one much less objective opinion. On the other hand, the Riga Addiction Prevention Center calmly postulates that tobacco in a hookah burns at a temperature of 300-900 degrees (!) And therefore causes various paranormal effects. And the fact that it is “proven that hookah - hookah smokers more often switch to psychotropic drugs” ”
Most of these "studies" seem to have arisen simply from the author's own hatred of hookahs as a phenomenon. When I just started to get excited about hookahs, it was a rarity in Latvia and people, especially the elderly, mostly thought that it was only for drug use. Now that the public understands (at least most, hopefully) this difference, fighters need to come up with something new. Here is the result. 200 cigarettes, teenagers pull every day and do not die, but still, 200 and through.
The myth of 200 cigarettes stems from the fact that the volume of smoke generated in one hookah smoking is equivalent to the smoke of 200 cigarettes, but it is not necessary to draw demagogic conclusions from this that the amount of nicotine in the smoke is proportionally equivalent to 200 cigarettes. A closer study was carried out some in Germany before, the result was that hookah smoke from one tobacco portion of nicotine is about as much as 2-3 cigarettes. At the same time, the smoke is much softer and does not damage the respiratory mucous membranes, because 95% contains water vapor. In addition, water attracts tar and other impurities (even more impurities are attracted by milk when used instead of water).
I myself have been involved with hookahs for more than six years. During this time, I have actively corresponded with connoisseurs of different levels of affairs near and far abroad, gathering knowledge about the pros and cons, different traditions, methods and interesting techniques. I am currently running a forum on hookahs - www.shishaclub.lv. In fact, given my own experience and the dynamics of habituation, I think that combating hookahs is only really beneficial for cigarette salesmen. Because psychologically, often for those who start smoking a hookah, cigarettes start to seem disgusting - and it would be much healthier if people made that choice, if they can't give up altogether. But someone who does not want to allow it noticeably wants to proclaim hookahs outside the law and continue to make a living from the legal nails of the coffin…
It is gratifying, at the very least, that domestic specialists do not go to such extremes as their Russian counterparts, who published the "full chemical composition of cigarette smoke" in the anti-smoking campaign - a list of more than 600 units. It seems insane. But it's a technique just for those who read the first few names, then look at the volume and run to drown. Examining the names closer to the middle, the list failed like an old yard. Carrot oil, carotene, celery seed extract, caramel color, coriander extract, cola nut extract, etc. What do drug addicts smoke?
In conclusion, I would like to say that it is not the case that hookahs are completely harmless. Tobacco is harmful to human health in all its forms, but if only those who are willing and not really capable of combating smoking, any exaggerated anti-propaganda will always turn into direct propaganda.
Jerry Stern, ShishaClub.lv
