Smoking hookah just as bad for your heart as cigarettes

Washington, Aug. 4: Smoking hookah is just as bad for your heart and circulatory system as cigarettes are, a new study reveals.

Companies that make the water pipes advertise them as safe alternatives to combustible tobacco smoking.

While shisha, the sweet sticky tobacco used with hookahs, may not contain many of the carcinogenic additives in cigarettes, mounting evidence suggests they are water pipe tobacco is still not safe.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA) found hookah smoking had the same short- term cardiovascular effects as cigarettes, suggesting the long- term risks are probably comparable, too.

Smoking hookah is not safe according to new research showing that using a water pipe to smoke tobacco hardens arteries just as much as smoking cigarettes

For the last several decades, tobacco companies have had no choice but to admit that their hallmark products — cigarettes — are dangerous.

But that hasn't stopped them from pushing other products.

Their campaigns seem to have worked, particularly among teenagers who are smoking e- cigarettes and hookah more and more.

Now, about 10 percent of teens are thought to use hookah, accounting for about half of all the smoking that the age group does, according to a British Medical Journal study published earlier this year.

“We know that flavored tobacco products are frequently the first kind of tobacco product used by youth,” lead study author Mary Rezk- Hanna said.

One of the major issues with hookah is the fact that the tobacco is flavored with fruit, candy and alcohol flavors, making hookah the most popular flavored tobacco product among this audience.'

These young people and adult users alike may be unwittingly vulnerable to just as many toxic chemicals and physical stressors as cigarette smokers are.