You may not know what vaping is but you might have seen it around you. Vaping is a form of electronic cigarette people choose to smoke when they want to quit smoking. Among its features, vaping will make smokers’ face disappear amid white, cloud-like smoke.

Vaping is new to the market. It is considered to be safer than smoking real cigarettes. Still, not much is known about this product and most people wouldn’t be able to tell you if vaping is safe or whether it’s better to quit smoking without using this alternative.

What people do believe is that vaping is a better alternative to smoking. This is why many are choosing to opt for vaping when they decide to quit smoking. In doing so, they won’t suffer from painful withdrawal symptoms and go back to smoking cigarettes. But is it really a better alternative?

Over the years, the list of health risks cigarettes bring with them has been firmly established. Cigarettes have over 70 cancer-causing agents in them. Once inhaled, the chemicals inside the cigarettes will “impact every organ they come in contact with and several organs they don’t even come in direct contact with.”

The list of diseases caused by cigarettes is a significant one. Cigarettes can cause everything from coughs to cancer. Seven million people in the world die every year from cancer caused by smoking cigarettes.

When it comes to vaping, the health risks seem far milder. At least, nothing has been found so far to raise alarm in the short time this product has been on the market. The only health risk that has been associated with vaping is that of dependence on nicotine.

One study, published in 2015, tried to present vaping as a risk hazard. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that when vaping is smoked in high temperatures, a chemical called Formaldehyde is produced. The chemical is a carcinogen and it can be inhaled by the smoker.

And yet, this study also showed that when vaping is done in lower temperatures, this chemical isn’t produced. Moreover, it seems that people don’t enjoy the taste of vaping when it is smoked at very high temperatures. Accordingly, the carcinogenic risk here is low.

Still, we cannot file vaping as safe. The product hit the market in the mid-2000s. Accordingly, there isn’t enough data and studies on the long-term effects of vaping on the body.

For now, all research has proved is that electronic cigarettes are 95% safer than real cigarettes. This is according to a report published by the UK’s Department of Health. A report that was published by Public Health England.

Even the American Heart Association (AHA) has commented on the safety of electronic cigarettes. In a 20-page statement published in 2014, the AHA stated that e-cigarettes are safer than tobacco. It also said that they could help smokers quit smoking real cigarettes.

“E-cigarettes either do not contain or have lower levels of several tobacco-derived harmful and potentially harmful constituents compared with cigarettes and smokeless tobacco… [e-cigarettes] present an opportunity for harm reduction if smokers use them as substitutes for cigarettes.

And yet, even with these statements, caution is still being practiced with electronic cigarettes. The latter are rather new to the market. Nobody knows if it’s a struggle to quit vaping. Nobody knows the effects vaping can have on the body.

It’s hard to quit smoking. It’s hard to quit any form of addiction for that matter. But when you do decide to quit, ask yourself, isn’t it better to quit cold turkey without the need to depend on something else?

Rather than choosing vaping to quit your bad habit, have you considered changing your habits and how you deal with life? In changing the way you deal with stress, the way you celebrate and the way you unwind, you can change your needs too. Maybe this way, you won’t crave a cigarette to loosen up, to relax, and to experience relief.