But do those risks hold true when it comes to e-cigarettes? Unlike their tobacco counterparts, e-cigarettes allow users to inhale nicotine and sometimes flavors without also inhaling the smoke, tar, and carbon monoxide found in traditional cigarettes. Because e-cigarettes are relatively new to the scene, we don’t yet have as much research about how they impact the body. Still, numerous studies already offer crucial insights about how vaping might affect both your risk of type 2 diabetes and your management of the disease.
What We Know About How Vaping Affects Diabetes Risk
Researchers already know that e-cigarettes are far from harmless. For instance, while their vapor may not contain some of the chemicals that traditional cigarette smoke does, they still can contain heavy metals and cancer-causing products, like acrolein, according to the CDC. Additional research presented in April 2017 at George Washington University in Washington, DC, showed that e-cigarette use is associated with a 42 percent increased risk of myocardial infarction, or heart attack, for which people with diabetes already have a heightened risk. Researchers are also trying to understand how vaping may affect diseases like diabetes. According to a study published in December 2016 in the journal Atherosclerosis, smoking e-cigarettes can lead to the mobilization of cells called EPCs (endothelial progenitor cells) to damaged blood vessels — a reaction that also occurs after people smoke traditional cigarettes. Over time, repeated and chronic mobilization of EPCs can actually deplete them, says Lukasz Antoniewicz, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Lower levels of EPCs are also associated with both cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. “Right now, tobacco companies and e-cigarette companies launch their products as safe and harmless even though there is a lack of evidence that these products are safe,” Antoniewicz says. The nicotine in e-cigarettes could also affect blood sugar. Research presented at a March 2011 meeting of the American Chemical Society suggested that nicotine caused hemoglobin A1C levels, the two- to three-month average of blood sugar levels, to rise by 34 percent. And those elevated A1C levels also indicate you may be at a higher risk of complications from diabetes, including eye disease, heart disease, and kidney disease, says Janet Zappe, RN, CDE, clinical program manager of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.
What We Don’t Yet Know
We don’t yet have all of the answers, and much of the research that’s been done thus far is preliminary and doesn’t meet the gold standard for research — that is, being published in a peer-reviewed journal, and conducted with a randomized, placebo-controlled model. Researchers are still trying to answer many questions, such as: How do e-cigarettes affect your heart? “The No. 1 cause of death for people with diabetes is cardiovascular,” Zappe says. We already know that smoking increases the risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease, she notes — but do e-cigarettes do the same, especially for people with type 2 diabetes? What are the long-term effects of e-cigarettes? Because e-cigarettes are relatively newer to the scene, we still need to understand exactly how they affect the body’s risk for disease.
Should You Vape if You Have Diabetes?
Even though research is ongoing, most healthcare professionals feel we have enough evidence to take action. Here’s a summary of their advice: Avoid e-cigarettes if you don’t already smoke. If you’re currently a nonsmoker, there’s no reason to start puffing e-cigarettes, given their potential complications with type 2 diabetes. Used appropriately, e-cigarettes may be a good transitional choice to help you quit smoking. Although the practice of using e-cigarettes as a stop-smoking tool is not an official guideline, preliminary studies suggest this approach may be effective. For example, a study published in April 2015 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that after 12 months, about 41 percent of smokers who had switched to vaping to help them kick their cigarette habit had managed to quit, and an additional 25.4 percent had reduced the number of cigarettes used. But don’t forget there are other proven safe ways to quit. “The most proven choices for quitting the nicotine habit are the patch, medication, and support groups,” Zappe says. While there’s no one straight path to quitting, the ultimate goal is to get people with type 2 diabetes off of cigarettes, and off of nicotine.
