A FEW TIPS to smoke safer (knowing that only pure air is safe !) if you cannot refrain from smoking

HOOKAH NARGHILE WATERPIPE: A FEW TIPS

to smoke safer (knowing that only pure air is safe !)

if you cannot refrain from smoking

Watch out ! We are not promoting anything but we are very concerned so we suggest hereafter a few "harm reduction" hints to save lives

[Added material Oct 23, 2010: "Even regarding charcoal, there are so many ways to smoke in a healthier way (harm reduction options) but these prohibitionist hygienist people are stubborn and stuck to a global agenda serving the economic interests of the pharmaceutical industry (nicotine gums, pills, inhalers, Chantix, etc.) which , in a way or another, funds them"]

THE BEST ADVICE

First off, try to smoke only once a week then only on social occasions (birthdays, Christmas, wedding parties, picnics, etc.) just like those peoples you love in Asia and Africa have been doing for centuries.

CARBON MONOXIDE

Ideally, an electrical resistance would drastically reduce the amount of this dangerous gas. However, if you are not in possession of such a device, what you can do is:

-smoking outdoors, for instance in a green patio or garden surrounded with plants.
-using a bigger hookah. Effectively, the bigger the pipe, the lesser it produces CO.
-using natural charcoal instead of commercial (self-lighting and the lot) charcoal. Another problem with the latter, besides its nasty smell during the few minutes following its lighting up, is that its composition is unknown. This handy commodity might however contain dangerous elements.
-from time to time, blowing (instead of drawing air) inside the hose to get rid of the smoke CO building up over the water urn.
-not cramming too much the tobacco mixture inside the bowl.

INHALATION

- Try not inhale deeply. Retain smoke in your mouth ("chipping") imitating toads before they gulp down insects.
-It must be clear to cigarette smokers that a single one-hour hookah session provides in the worst case with the nicotine equivalent of only one cigarette so they should understand that hookah cannot be an alternative to their cigarette smoking habit. This would be an illusion and another problem would be that these users would naturally tend to inhale deeper and deeper in order to "compensate".

THE HOSE

-Share the hose because it is a four-century old tradition in Asia and Africa. By doing this, you will inhale less smoke and keep to the habit its essential playful, collective, convivial and recreational dimensions and, by the same token, you will move to a distance, further off and banish the dependency spectre which also exists albeit it’s completely different from that induced by cigarette smoking.

TAR

-The production of tar varies accordingly with the frequency of inhalations but also with their periodicity. This means that it is certainly better, from a health point of view, to inhale once every 2 minutes than twice each minute. This also means that it is much better to inhale at IRregular intervals (in an every which random way) than rhythmically like a rocking chair or a metronome. Otherwise, you could agree with the findings of a controversial study (press here).

In short, make pauses and breaks during which you could, for example, meditate upon the hidden meaning of life or give thought to the mysterious origin of the narghile, also called hookah...
-The longer the hose the better it is.
-The user should not become an extremist so he must learn to stop smoking before the end of the session. Otherwise, he would inhale impure combustion elements.

WATER
- Change water as often as possible.
- Change the pH (“acidity”) of water to hold back as much as nicotine as possible.
- Find the ad hoc chemical substances to be added to water to stop as many harmful elements (tar, etc.) as possible. Note: water already stops many of them (among them some known carcinogens). Let’s only consider here acrolein and acetaldehyde the filtration of which makes hookah smoke accepted even by… non-smokers.

[Added December 2007: Shocking ! Two Well Regarded Scientists Go Beyond All Acceptable Limits by Giving Tips to Hookah (Narghile, Shisha) Smokers !]

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