What are the dangers of hookah

Hookah is a traditional Chinese way of smoking. People in ancient times loved to smoke in this way. Smoking with a hookah, where the smoke passes through the water and has a mellow flavor, is a favorite smoking method for many old smokers. After being filtered with clean water, hookah can remove most of the toxic substances and has the effect of sterilization and disinfection. It does not smell smoky or choking, and is an elegant and charming fashion product. Now many young people also like it. We all know that smoking is harmful to health, but we don’t know much about the harm of hookahs. Let’s analyze the principles and hazards of hookahs below.

How to smoke hookah

Hookahs are different from other tobacco products in that they use the residual heat from burning coal to make the smoke rise.

When smoking, the user needs to place burning charcoal on the tobacco to help it burn. The box used for smoking a hookah contains water at the bottom and tobacco on top. The smoke from burning tobacco is filtered through water and then passed through a straw to smoke hookah.

The principle of hookah

When people use Arabic hookahs to smoke hookahs, they mainly use the siphon principle, which is the principle of communicating vessels. The pressure applied to the liquid in a closed container is equal everywhere. The siphon is filled with water, without any other objects, the water level at the end is high, and the water outlet is closed with the palm of your hand or other objects. At this time, the pressure inside the tube is equal everywhere. After everything is arranged, open the water outlet. Although the atmospheric pressure on both sides is equal, the water level at the end of the water is high and the pressure is strong, which pushes the incoming water to continuously flow out of the water outlet.

When using an Arabic hookah, first fill the bottle with water, enough to cover the filter copper tube by about one finger. Then put a thin filter copper tube on the upper part of the entire hookah and insert it into the water bottle and tighten it. Then put a plate on the hookah, and then put on the smoke groove and put in the tobacco. Finally, wrap the entire smoke groove with the tin foil with a small piece of tin foil, poke some small holes on it, put the burnt charcoal on the tin foil, insert the smoking tube and start smoking. This is the siphon principle of the Arabic hookah.

What are the hazards of smoking hookah

Water pipe smoking (WTS), which includes nargileh, hookah, shisha, bubble smoking, etc., has long been seen as a "safer" form of smoking and is considered less harmful than smoking cigarettes. However, according to the survey, the results clearly show that the harm of WTS is comparable to or even worse than smoking cigarettes.

The researchers say this is the first study to assess lifetime and past-year associations between WTS and psychiatric prescription drug use.

A total of 986 high school students attending public and private high schools in Beirut (Lebanon) were included in the study. Schools were selected using proportional random sampling from a list of all schools provided by the Ministry of Education.

The results showed that nearly half (45%) of the students had tried WTS and 25% had tried smoking cigarettes. Adjusted analysis data showed that WTS was associated with increased odds of using sedatives/anesthetics (OR=3.22; 95%CI, 1.25-8.25), analgesics (OR=4.31; 95%CI, 2.02-9.17), and insomnia drugs (OR=8.31; 95%CI, 2.37-29.20). For cigarette smoking, the association was weaker or even nonexistent, except for stimulant medication (OR = 5.29; 95% CI, 1.55-18.05).

The researchers note that these findings should be followed up to better understand the unique risk factors and motivations associated with WTS and how they relate to NMUPD in order to find more effective intervention programs and policies to support positive health decisions among young people.