I spent quite a while tonight pondering whether or not to make this thread, since I've seen some similar threads in this section result in the OP getting bashed into high heaven by very passionate e-cig supporters. But as you can guess I ultimately decided to make this thread to share my experiences and hopefully get some feedback from other e-cig users who may have had similar experiences. I suppose can handle a few knocks if they come lol
So here's my story...
About a year ago I decided that while I had no interest in trying to break my nicotine addiction, I did want to find a safer way to indulge this habit that would carry less risk than smoking cigarettes. This wasn't the first time I had made such efforts, since about 5 years before that I decided to switch to rolling my own cigarettes with American Spirit tobacco and bleach free rice papers rather than the pre-packed and chemical laden Camel and Pall Mall cigs I had smoked for the past 8 years. This went quite well and after an easy switch to rolling my own with American Spirit I ended up cutting back from 2 packs a day to 10 cigarettes a day without any real effort involved. I started smoking additive free tobacco and it just happened all by itself, my addiction was reduced. I was now a half a pack a day smoker and my lungs (and whole body really) felt a heck of a lot better. This was in 2005. Fast forward 5 years later to 2010.
At this point I was still smoking about 8 to 10 home rolled American Spirit cigs a day and through the experiences of various friends had discovered E-Cigs. The short version of the story is that I found this forum, spent a lot of time reading, and eventually bought a Joye 510 manual battery starter kit, a PCC for it, and a variety of tobacco flavored 6mg e-liquid samplers from Vaperite. Most were 50/50 VG/PG mixes and some were 100% VG. I vaped these regularly (substituting short vaping sessions for 3 or 4 of my daily cigs) for a few days before I started getting really bad itching sensations over my whole body. I stuck with it another week or two but the more I vaped the worse the itching got. When it eventually got to the point that I didn't sleep for almost 2 days due to severe itching denying me slumber I decided it was time to call it quits on the e-cig and go back to my American Spirit home rolls.
I did see a doctor about this and the best they could advise me is "You are having an allergic reaction to something in the ecig and you should stop using using it". And so I did.
Now at some point last fall, a good 6 months or so after giving up e-cigs and going back to my home rolled analogs, I decided to start taking a liquid vitamin D supplement. It was a liquid that was to be dripped into a beverage, anywhere from 2 to 6 drops a day, to boost Vitamin D levels. After taking it for a few days I developed the same type of whole body itching I had when I was vaping. I saw a doctor about this and the advice was the same as when I was vaping, "You're having an allergic reaction to something in it. Stop using it." And so once again I took my doctor's advice and stopped taking the supplement.
It wasn't until about a month ago that, when shuffling through my medicine cabinet, I saw the Vitamin D supplement still sitting there and for some reason decided to read the ingredients list again. I saw that the main base ingredient in it was vegetable glycerin, or VG as well call it, and a little light went on in my head. "Hey! I've seen that stuff before! That was the same stuff that was in my e-liquid and... oh wait... I get it now."
I'm not sure why I never put 2 and 2 together up until that point, especially since I read over the ingredients list for the Vitamin D supplement many times while trying to figure out what exactly was causing my itching when I was taking it. But in any case, now that I knew what I was most likely having a reaction to when vaping I decided to look into it again to see if I could get juice without VG in it to try out and see how it went. In the meantime I gave the old Vaprite juice I had laying around another try to see if I still had a reaction to it, and sure enough after vaping 3 or 4 cigs worth a day for a few days I started getting that horrible itching all over again. Needless to say I stopped right away when that started happening.
About 2 weeks ago, after posting about 100% PG juice options in the new member section, a really kind and wonderful local e-cig user contacted me and offered to give me a couple bottles of Liberty Flights 100% PG juice. So I took her up on the offer and gave it a go!
At this point I've been vaping 100% PG juice for about 2 weeks and I'm pleased to say that I have had zero itching problems. Unfortunately though, as happy as I am about not itching all over from my e-cig this time around, I am having some other problems that I'm finding pretty scary. And so now we come to the point of this thread.
All the problems I'm about to describe started off very mild and infrequent within a couple days after starting to vape again but have all gotten much worse over the past few days as I've continued to vape more each day. I started off by just replacing 2 or 3 of my daily cigarette smokes by vaping instead, but over the last week or so I've bumped it up to replacing roughly 6 to 8 of my daily cigs with vaping sessions so I'm now only smoking 2 to 4 analogs a day. So here's what's been going on...
The worst of the problems for me has been a constant tension in my chest, regular sharp pain in my chest and my left side (roughly around the spot where the kidney is located), and generally labored breathing. After smoking analogs for 13 years now I have never had chest pain like this nor have I ever had labored breathing like this. When I wake up in the morning now, and at regular intervals throughout the day, I've been having some pretty bad chest pains (usually right around the center of my chest but sometimes more towards the left side in the area around my heart) and my overall ability to breathe feels like it's been substantially reduced since I started vaping a couple weeks ago. I often find myself short of breath during leisurely day to day activities, which is something I never had happen when I was smoking analogs unless I was trying to run a decent distance. I did have my lung capacity evaluated by a doctor last year and was informed that my lungs were functioning at 98% of normal, which astonished the doctor given that I am a smoker of 13 years.
But more alarming than anything else though is the regular feeling of a stabbing pain in my left side right around where the kidney is located. It's really unsettling and is probably the biggest reason I chose to make this thread.
Another problem I've been having since I started up with the e-cig again has been mild to moderate anxiety. I did have an anxiety disorder for about 4 years of my life that was extremely debilitating (so much so that I couldn't work a job or hardly leave the house for anything more than short trips for 4 years) but though gradual desensitization and therapy without the aid of any medication I was able to overcome my anxiety problems and I have been completely anxiety free and living a normal healthy life for almost 3 years now. I had my life back again and never once had an anxiety attack or those feelings of panic I used to have all the time, that is until about 2 days ago when for just a few moments feelings of general anxiousness and panic came back. They faded relatively quickly, within 30 seconds or so, but I have had that feeling of anxious panic that used to occur before an anxiety attack pop up out of nowhere a couple times over the past 2 days.
This has surprised me greatly, since I've been through some pretty hard times since my anxiety problems went away (including the death of my father, who I was very close to) and never once did they come back. So I can't imagine it being caused by any psychological stress factors in my life, since I've been through some really tough times and never had the anxiety issues come back and there's really nothing stressful going on in my life right now, but now that I am vaping an e-cig regularly they've suddenly resurfaced. It's quite puzzling.
Lastly, I've also found myself coughing a lot and hacking up quite a bit of clear phlegm over the past week. This is highly unusual for me, because even though I'm a long time smoker I've kept my habit pretty minimal (8 to 10 cigs per day) since switching to home rolled American Spirit cigs 6 years ago and have never had a smoker's cough nor have I ever hacked up phlegm with any regularity unless I had a cold/flu. The past week it seems like I've been coughing constantly and hacking up clear phlegm just as regularly. It probably doesn't help at all that the 100% PG juice I've been vaping has been really abrasive on my lungs and throat and has really been rather painful to vape most of the time regardless of what equipment I try to use it with (standard & LR cartos, attys, regular Joye 510 batteries, a 3.7v box mod, etc.). Then there's also the matter of the constant sore throat I've had since I started vaping again, burning sensation in my lungs, and just feeling generally... well... crappy!
I am aware of the potential for dehydration from high levels of PG intake, so I have been making sure to drink lots and lots of water over the past few weeks that I've been vaping, and I haven't found myself feeling any more thirsty than usual. So I think it's probably safe to say that dehydration is not likely the cause of any of these problems.
And, well, that's my story up to this point! I know it was an enormously long read but if you got this far I do want to thank you for taking the time to read it and I really wanted to share it to see if anyone else has had any similar experiences. But don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying "If you vape these are the horrible things that will happen to you!". Not at all. What I'm saying is that these are the things that have happened to me and since the only thing I have changed in my life over the past 2 weeks is starting to vape again, I feel relatively confident that vaping is the cause of them. So again, this is just what I've experienced and your results may vary.
For now I think I'm going to give up vaping and stick to my home rolled American Spirit analogs for a few days, maybe as much as a week, and see how it goes. If the problems I've been suffering all go away than it seems likely that I may consider giving up vaping and just accept that I'll probably smoke cigarettes for the rest of my life. I was hoping to find a safer and healthier way to indulge my smoking habits, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if for me at least the cure might be worse than the disease.
Best wishes to all here and thank you again to those who took the time to read this small novel. Hopefully someone will be able to offer some insight into what might be going on and/or share any similar experiences that they may have had.
So here's my story...
About a year ago I decided that while I had no interest in trying to break my nicotine addiction, I did want to find a safer way to indulge this habit that would carry less risk than smoking cigarettes. This wasn't the first time I had made such efforts, since about 5 years before that I decided to switch to rolling my own cigarettes with American Spirit tobacco and bleach free rice papers rather than the pre-packed and chemical laden Camel and Pall Mall cigs I had smoked for the past 8 years. This went quite well and after an easy switch to rolling my own with American Spirit I ended up cutting back from 2 packs a day to 10 cigarettes a day without any real effort involved. I started smoking additive free tobacco and it just happened all by itself, my addiction was reduced. I was now a half a pack a day smoker and my lungs (and whole body really) felt a heck of a lot better. This was in 2005. Fast forward 5 years later to 2010.
At this point I was still smoking about 8 to 10 home rolled American Spirit cigs a day and through the experiences of various friends had discovered E-Cigs. The short version of the story is that I found this forum, spent a lot of time reading, and eventually bought a Joye 510 manual battery starter kit, a PCC for it, and a variety of tobacco flavored 6mg e-liquid samplers from Vaperite. Most were 50/50 VG/PG mixes and some were 100% VG. I vaped these regularly (substituting short vaping sessions for 3 or 4 of my daily cigs) for a few days before I started getting really bad itching sensations over my whole body. I stuck with it another week or two but the more I vaped the worse the itching got. When it eventually got to the point that I didn't sleep for almost 2 days due to severe itching denying me slumber I decided it was time to call it quits on the e-cig and go back to my American Spirit home rolls.
I did see a doctor about this and the best they could advise me is "You are having an allergic reaction to something in the ecig and you should stop using using it". And so I did.
Now at some point last fall, a good 6 months or so after giving up e-cigs and going back to my home rolled analogs, I decided to start taking a liquid vitamin D supplement. It was a liquid that was to be dripped into a beverage, anywhere from 2 to 6 drops a day, to boost Vitamin D levels. After taking it for a few days I developed the same type of whole body itching I had when I was vaping. I saw a doctor about this and the advice was the same as when I was vaping, "You're having an allergic reaction to something in it. Stop using it." And so once again I took my doctor's advice and stopped taking the supplement.
It wasn't until about a month ago that, when shuffling through my medicine cabinet, I saw the Vitamin D supplement still sitting there and for some reason decided to read the ingredients list again. I saw that the main base ingredient in it was vegetable glycerin, or VG as well call it, and a little light went on in my head. "Hey! I've seen that stuff before! That was the same stuff that was in my e-liquid and... oh wait... I get it now."
I'm not sure why I never put 2 and 2 together up until that point, especially since I read over the ingredients list for the Vitamin D supplement many times while trying to figure out what exactly was causing my itching when I was taking it. But in any case, now that I knew what I was most likely having a reaction to when vaping I decided to look into it again to see if I could get juice without VG in it to try out and see how it went. In the meantime I gave the old Vaprite juice I had laying around another try to see if I still had a reaction to it, and sure enough after vaping 3 or 4 cigs worth a day for a few days I started getting that horrible itching all over again. Needless to say I stopped right away when that started happening.
About 2 weeks ago, after posting about 100% PG juice options in the new member section, a really kind and wonderful local e-cig user contacted me and offered to give me a couple bottles of Liberty Flights 100% PG juice. So I took her up on the offer and gave it a go!
At this point I've been vaping 100% PG juice for about 2 weeks and I'm pleased to say that I have had zero itching problems. Unfortunately though, as happy as I am about not itching all over from my e-cig this time around, I am having some other problems that I'm finding pretty scary. And so now we come to the point of this thread.
All the problems I'm about to describe started off very mild and infrequent within a couple days after starting to vape again but have all gotten much worse over the past few days as I've continued to vape more each day. I started off by just replacing 2 or 3 of my daily cigarette smokes by vaping instead, but over the last week or so I've bumped it up to replacing roughly 6 to 8 of my daily cigs with vaping sessions so I'm now only smoking 2 to 4 analogs a day. So here's what's been going on...
The worst of the problems for me has been a constant tension in my chest, regular sharp pain in my chest and my left side (roughly around the spot where the kidney is located), and generally labored breathing. After smoking analogs for 13 years now I have never had chest pain like this nor have I ever had labored breathing like this. When I wake up in the morning now, and at regular intervals throughout the day, I've been having some pretty bad chest pains (usually right around the center of my chest but sometimes more towards the left side in the area around my heart) and my overall ability to breathe feels like it's been substantially reduced since I started vaping a couple weeks ago. I often find myself short of breath during leisurely day to day activities, which is something I never had happen when I was smoking analogs unless I was trying to run a decent distance. I did have my lung capacity evaluated by a doctor last year and was informed that my lungs were functioning at 98% of normal, which astonished the doctor given that I am a smoker of 13 years.
But more alarming than anything else though is the regular feeling of a stabbing pain in my left side right around where the kidney is located. It's really unsettling and is probably the biggest reason I chose to make this thread.
Another problem I've been having since I started up with the e-cig again has been mild to moderate anxiety. I did have an anxiety disorder for about 4 years of my life that was extremely debilitating (so much so that I couldn't work a job or hardly leave the house for anything more than short trips for 4 years) but though gradual desensitization and therapy without the aid of any medication I was able to overcome my anxiety problems and I have been completely anxiety free and living a normal healthy life for almost 3 years now. I had my life back again and never once had an anxiety attack or those feelings of panic I used to have all the time, that is until about 2 days ago when for just a few moments feelings of general anxiousness and panic came back. They faded relatively quickly, within 30 seconds or so, but I have had that feeling of anxious panic that used to occur before an anxiety attack pop up out of nowhere a couple times over the past 2 days.
This has surprised me greatly, since I've been through some pretty hard times since my anxiety problems went away (including the death of my father, who I was very close to) and never once did they come back. So I can't imagine it being caused by any psychological stress factors in my life, since I've been through some really tough times and never had the anxiety issues come back and there's really nothing stressful going on in my life right now, but now that I am vaping an e-cig regularly they've suddenly resurfaced. It's quite puzzling.
Lastly, I've also found myself coughing a lot and hacking up quite a bit of clear phlegm over the past week. This is highly unusual for me, because even though I'm a long time smoker I've kept my habit pretty minimal (8 to 10 cigs per day) since switching to home rolled American Spirit cigs 6 years ago and have never had a smoker's cough nor have I ever hacked up phlegm with any regularity unless I had a cold/flu. The past week it seems like I've been coughing constantly and hacking up clear phlegm just as regularly. It probably doesn't help at all that the 100% PG juice I've been vaping has been really abrasive on my lungs and throat and has really been rather painful to vape most of the time regardless of what equipment I try to use it with (standard & LR cartos, attys, regular Joye 510 batteries, a 3.7v box mod, etc.). Then there's also the matter of the constant sore throat I've had since I started vaping again, burning sensation in my lungs, and just feeling generally... well... crappy!
I am aware of the potential for dehydration from high levels of PG intake, so I have been making sure to drink lots and lots of water over the past few weeks that I've been vaping, and I haven't found myself feeling any more thirsty than usual. So I think it's probably safe to say that dehydration is not likely the cause of any of these problems.
And, well, that's my story up to this point! I know it was an enormously long read but if you got this far I do want to thank you for taking the time to read it and I really wanted to share it to see if anyone else has had any similar experiences. But don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying "If you vape these are the horrible things that will happen to you!". Not at all. What I'm saying is that these are the things that have happened to me and since the only thing I have changed in my life over the past 2 weeks is starting to vape again, I feel relatively confident that vaping is the cause of them. So again, this is just what I've experienced and your results may vary.
For now I think I'm going to give up vaping and stick to my home rolled American Spirit analogs for a few days, maybe as much as a week, and see how it goes. If the problems I've been suffering all go away than it seems likely that I may consider giving up vaping and just accept that I'll probably smoke cigarettes for the rest of my life. I was hoping to find a safer and healthier way to indulge my smoking habits, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if for me at least the cure might be worse than the disease.
Best wishes to all here and thank you again to those who took the time to read this small novel. Hopefully someone will be able to offer some insight into what might be going on and/or share any similar experiences that they may have had.
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