We all know that smoking conventional cigarettes negatively influences your health. It is extremely bad for your lungs, heart, throat, and mouth, while it can also set your oral hygiene back quite a lot.
These negative effects on one’s health have deemed smoking socially unacceptable, and it is now illegal to openly market smoking in most countries. Still, many people have kept the habit, while some have tried to quit smoking regular tobacco and replace it with vaping.
Vaping is a relatively new trend, and when it comes to vaping effects on teeth and gum (and overall health), there hasn’t been much research conducted to this point, and the ones that have been done, turned out to be mostly inconclusive.
So, is vaping bad for your teeth and gums? Let’s see what data Smokey News has found.
Vaping Effects on Teeth – Bacteria
As far as smoking regular tobacco is concerned, the most harmful substances in this product include:
- Nicotine
- Tar
- Hydrogen cyanide
- Formaldehyde
- Arsenic
- Lead
- Ammonia
- Radioactive elements, such as uranium (see below)
- Benzene
- Nitrosamines
- Carbon monoxide
- Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
Vaping products and liquids, on the other hand, don’t typically contain these substances and chemicals. One of the major issues with regular cigarettes is that bacteria thrive in an environment in which tar and nicotine reside, i.e. your mouth. When you smoke tobacco, tar and nicotine stick around within and around your mouth for quite a while (typically until you brush your teeth and rinse your mouth with a mouth-wash).
This is not the case with vaping products.
The main ingredients in vaping liquids include:
- water
- propylene glycol
- vegetable glycerin
- nicotine (should you opt for juices that contain this substance)
- e-liquid
- flavoring
This means that harmful bacteria that come from smoking are less likely to be generated and take residence within your oral cavity. If the e-juice you are using contains flavoring, you have nothing to worry about because those products have all been approved by the FDA and typically resemble those that most food manufacturers add to their food products. They are made to merely mimic the taste of fruits, plants, or tobacco.
None of the aforementioned ingredients have been proven to cause bacteria- or mold-related risk for vapers.
This brings us to our next question: does vaping stain your teeth?
Vaping Effects on Teeth – Staining
Again, we must juxtapose vaping with regular smoking. Tobacco stains your teeth due to the presence of nicotine and tar. Vaping products do not contain tar, while the presence of nicotine is ultimately your prerogative as you are free to choose between a vaping juice that packs nicotine and the ones that don’t. It is also a matter of the overall amount of this substance – the more nicotine you include in your juice, the more likely your teeth are to end up yellow.
To put it simply, if you opt for the vaping product that contains no nicotine, the risk of teeth stains and discoloration is close to the minimum.
Vaping Effects on Teeth – Dry Mouth
What vaping does cause, however, is dry mouth. Some users have reported that this activity is able to produce the dry mouth effect, which is pinned to the fact that most vaping devices feature a coil that is heated during the act of vaping, and thus the heat is, alongside the smoke, inhaled and distributed throughout the consumer’s mouth.
What was your experience with vaping and mouth hygiene and health? Is vaping bad for your teeth? Feel free to leave a comment below, and make sure to visit Smokey News Fort Lauderdale vape shop website for some great deals on vaping products!