E-Cigarettes with Nicotine Can Damage Your Heart with Just One Puff

A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association asserts that e-cigarettes with nicotine can damage the heart in nonsmokers with just one puff: researchers did blood tests and measured the subjects' heart rhythms and found that participants had high levels of adrenaline in their hearts after they smoked e-cigs with nicotine, but not after they puffed on e-cigarettes without nicotine or empty e-cigs. Dr. Holly R. Middlekauff, senior study author and a cardiologist at UCLA, and her colleagues found participants developed a pattern of abnormal "heart rate variability" (HRV), which is indicative of increased heart adrenaline levels after using the e-cigarette with nicotine only. These increased adrenaline levels were attributable to the inhaled nicotine and not the non-nicotine components in the e-cigarette aerosol. Nevertheless, the researchers did not find increased oxidative stress because they only looked at one marker, therefore this warrants further testing to support this finding.