It is not a secret that vaping has become more popular as an alternative to traditional smoking. Vaping devices come with many different flavours and are often marketed as a healthier option, and many individuals who engage in physical fitness activities may wonder if it is safe to vape while working out.
Can you indulge in the habit of vaping and still achieve optimal performance during your workout sessions? Let’s find out by understanding the relationship between vaping and exercise.
Vaping vs. Smoking
Both vaping and smoking deliver nicotine to bodies. This can have several effects on the body, especially on your heart and lungs. These factors can influence your workout performance and overall health. While smoking involves burning tobacco and inhaling the resulting smoke, vaping utilizes electronic devices to heat a liquid that contains nicotine, producing a vapor for inhalation.
The Effects of Vaping on Working Out
Unlike smoking, vaping only contains small amounts of nicotine and doesn’t form other harmful byproducts from combustion. This means it is less harmful. This is why most fitness enthusiasts choose vaping as an alternative to smoking.
Blood Pressure and Heart Rate
Cigarettes, when lit up, produce additional chemicals that are harmful to your heart. Smokers have an increased heart rate and blood pressure because their arteries are already constricted.
Cigarette chemicals also have hardened walls of blood vessels. This makes their heart works harder by beating faster. A number of former smokers commented about how they always needed to stop mid exercising to catch their breath. This problem lessened when they switched to vaping.
Unlike smoking, vaping doesn’t produce harmful byproducts that are formed through combustion. This makes it an ideal option for those who are starting to quit smoking and working on improving their health.
Lung Function and Blood Oxygen Levels
The carbon monoxide, tar, and other chemicals you get from smoking cigarettes limit and harden the vessels in your lungs. This makes it hard for the red blood cells to deliver oxygen to your lungs and muscles.
Not enough oxygen can easily affect your overall fitness performance since you need to stop most times to get enough time to breathe properly.
Since vaping only uses vapor, it does not contain any tar that can coat the lungs. It also doesn’t replace oxygen with carbon monoxide in your blood. This way, the red blood cells can still deliver oxygen to your muscles effectively.
Appetite and Nutrition
One of the effects of nicotine is minimizing one’s appetite. So if you want to bulk up, smoking can definitely hinder you from hitting your goals.
For anyone who wants to lose weight, the minimal amount of nicotine in vaping can help in controlling the amount of food intake. However, proper eating habits are still highly recommended to power your body through workouts.
In conclusion, if you are serious about being a professional athlete, it may be better to stop vaping and smoking altogether since both methods still deliver nicotine to your body.
However, if you are only a casual fitness enjoyer, vaping is generally better than smoking. There are a lot of testimonials of smokers who after changing to vaping, experienced a significant change in their workout performance. The most common comment is not getting easily winded while doing cardio exercises.