@ AndriaD , your comments about asthma getting a tad worse with vaping has me nervous now about trying to convert my wife. As a teen at home in England she had to use an inhaler daily and only smoked a little bit of cigs. At 18 she moved to Canada, met me and began a pack a day habit. Her asthma was about the same with one major event (wow, that scared the crap outa me.. I thought she was goners), but about 6 months after being in Canada her asthma started clearing up and perhaps a year after just never bothered carrying any more inhalers. That was 20 years ago. We suspect it may have been some environmental trigger that just isnt here ?
Now, still smoking and with me trying to twist her arm into converting to vaping.. Im concerned with your own experiences.
Do we get an Rx for inhalers just in case ?
Well, 2 things come to mind: first, anyone who knows they have bronchial asthma really needs to always have a rescue inhaler (albuterol) handy, because there are SO MANY different triggers, and an asthmatic never wants to find themselves without a rescue inhaler. I know they're expensive nowadays, but they cost a lot less than a trip to the ER.
Secondly... my experience seems to be somewhat unique; almost every other asthmatic who's switched to vaping that I've talked to/heard from, has experienced a dramatic lessening of their asthmatic symptoms. I really have no idea why that hasn't been true for me. For a while I thought it might have been because after a dual-use relapse, I had to use WTA in order to get rid of cigarette cravings, and after I started using that was when my asthma really took a turn for the worse. I've been off it completely for over a month now, so maybe it's too early to tell anything... my asthma might be a little better than when I was using WTA, but it's been such a short time, I can't really say for sure.
My asthma was always very mild, and for the last 20 yrs of my smoking, I was smoking only about a pk a day, rather than the 2-3 pks a day I smoked before I started taking it outdoors; I suspect that the theobromine that they put into cigarette tobacco was functioning as a mild bronchodilator for me, since that actually is theobromine's pharmacological effect, and I wasn't smoking a great deal. Also, there's the fact that my asthma was adult-onset, after I had already been a smoker for 10 yrs -- until I quit and started vaping, I had never experienced asthma as a non-smoker, so I really had no idea what it would be like.
I'd say it's at least worth a shot, and experiment with different proportions of PG and VG -- I personally find that VG gives me something that feels like a hairball in my chest, that I can't cough up to save my life, so I have to stick to about 85% PG -- but some asthmatics experience just the opposite, that PG bothers them but VG doesn't. I think it's a really individual thing. I do know that my morning asthma and cough-up session has almost completely disappeared; I may cough up just a small amount, once, after hitting my albuterol inhaler, and then I'm fine, I can start vaping right away, though I always had to wait at least a half hour after rising before I could smoke. My asthma does seem to be slowly improving... but it's taking its sweet time. Perhaps after I've been off cigarettes for 5 yrs, it will have diminished to the point that I barely notice it; I can't say.
Andria
