Sheesha

Lifestyle Health & Fitness
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1

My husband smokes sheesha recreationally… There have been times when it was wayy more frequent than i would like but mostly it’s 4-5 times in a month.
i have grown up in a fairly smoking free environment.. No one in my immediate family smokes… Not even sheesha - at least not in front of me :stuck_out_tongue: so the dislike or rather slight weirdness is more out of being not used to it.
My question is, how harmful is recreational sheesha smoking? Is it worse than cigarettes? And what the hell is in a sheesha anyway?
2) i do feel like trying it just once just to see what the fuss is about.. Can i do that safely as a breastfeeding mother?
3) generally when we are out with a group of friends, there are a handful of smokers…Now they always sit on the otherside of table.. Where the wind direction is no where near the kids (anyone been to dou darya restaurants in Karachi? Never sat in smoking area of indoor restaurants like arizona grill at the villa)..but how harmful is slight exposure to sheesha on a very infrequent basis? Are the effects like that of passive cigarette smoke?
Like i can smell the sheesha in my husband’s breath… Is that bad for our baby?

Thanks in advance

2

Re: Sheesha

water pipe doesn't filter the toxins. Person would end up inhaling more toxins/carcinogens than cigarettes actually in a session which last like an hour with some belly dancing if you will (not always belly dancing part lol)

don't smoke it when you are pregnant or breast feeding. I don't know if the toxins get excreted in breast milk or whatever but why take the chance? But I reckon smoking while pregnant, you might get low birth weight babies.

Also, he would def get addicted, it has the same amount of nicotine as cigs. And passive smoking, yea kids could get affected. But its not like they would get critically ill, but not good for them either.

Better to be only sherlocked than sheeshalocked

3

Do they use real tobacco in sheesha? I always thought that it's some flavored non tobaccoyee stuff which is harmless.

Never tried sheesha btw

4

Re: Sheesha

yea as far as I know its tobacco alright but flavored. And people pass around hookah from friend to friend with the same mouth piece.

This is WHO report of sheehsha, Interesting stuff. It was created by a physician from Emperor Akbar for a less harmful way to smoke. Apparently not

http://www.who.int/tobacco/global_interaction/tobreg/Waterpipe%20recommendation_Final.pdf

5

Re: Sheesha

At our smoking cessation clinic we were told it is just as bad as cigarettes, actually worse as sheesha sessions last for an hour, so you inhale much more smoke.
I wouldn't smoke in front of kids. There is second hand smoke and also seeing adults smoke makes it socially acceptable making it more likely that the children would take up smoking later

6

Re: Sheesha

Yea it is real tobacco.

7

Re: Sheesha

Whatever man!..i smoke shisha. Do it once a week or twice a week. Depending on situation. Let the man live!..

8

Re: Sheesha

Thats like saying an alcohol free beer is a beer. Most sheesha is nicotine free or nicotine content is < 0.5%. So its not addictive. Carcinogens due to coal burning is a concern. However they make cocunut based coal that is healthy.

9

Re: Sheesha

There is nothing healthy about it.

10

Re: Sheesha

Sheesha lova :lifey: I had smokey blueberry last time. What is your favorite sheesha flavor?

11

Re: Sheesha

Most recently I’ve had jolly rancher + Kiwi + grapefruit…fruity heavennnnnnn :lifey:

and mmmm mm mmm paan!

12

Re: Sheesha

I would love to just walk into one of these sheesha lounges and just flip one of them over and smash it across someones head. Prefably one of these wannabe cool / gangster types with the funny clothes / hairstyles. I dont mean to be rude to anyone here though.

13

Re: Sheesha

Anybody ever prepared a shisha and know the mechanics of it will know it is NOT a form of smoking. Actually, it's a non-digital vaporizer.

The smoke you see being exhaled is actually water vapor. I know this because:
1) if I try to inhale shisha without the presence of water in the apparatus, no smoke is visibly exhaled.
2) I smoked indoors in my basement for 8 years, in a room that has a smoke detector. The smoke alarm never went on even if I blew the shisha "smoke" directly on the detector. But it goes on if I light a match under it

In a shisha, the flavor that is placed under the foil is ROASTED, NOT BURNT like in cigs. It is not a combustion reaction. The combustion reaction of plant material is what produces the countless toxin as found in cig smoking. I know this because, when I smoke a cig, I see ash forming, but no ash forms on the shisha flavor. The only ash that forms (and the only thing that burns) is the coal. The byproduct of its combustion is carbon monoxide (lethal in high doses). That's the only thing of concern and it's most probably not present in significant quantities in second hand shisha smoke because of its extreme affinity to hemoglobin (meaning, when it's inhaled, most of it won't come out with exhaling).

Flavor can be tobacco or tobacco free, with nicotine or nic free. Actually, the mass used as flavoring is a wicking material that holds liquid sweeteners called propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. The heat from the coal vaporizes the sweeteners first and then the water, and then delivers it to the mouthpiece for inhalation.

Whoever wrote shisha is worse than cigs clearly has no idea how a shisha even works. It'd be worse than cigs if the flavor was combusted, and anybody who has burnt the flavor knows how bad it tastes.

So, CO is the only real concern, but pakistan being so polluted that you can smell the smog day and night I guess won't make a big difference. Inhalation of the sweeteners may be harmful but not much studies have been done on these. Glycerine is used commonly in foods, foods that are to be eaten not inhaled. Propylene glycol is used with albutrol, an inhaler apparatus used by asthmatics to relieve asthma attacks.

All in all, it's no way near as bad as cigs, but I definitely wouldn't recommend being near it while pregnant.

14

Re: Sheesha

Smoking in any form is harmful for health either it is cigarette, alcohol, sheesha, heroin or marijuana. so don't keep yourself or near yourself to any form of smoking.