How dangerous is smoking hookah?

I would approach it the same way you would approach cigarette smoking, but I’ve also heard a lot about hookah spreading colds, flus, and even some STD’s. If you’re going to a hookah bar, make sure it’s properly cleaned before use.

I keep reading things on the internet that say the effects of hookah smoking are really no different than cigarette smoking; people just think it’s less harmful because the smoke is less irritating. But I have a few questions: how come people I know who smoke hookah sometimes are not addicted to it? How much tobacco do you have to smoke before you get addicted to it?

I smoked hookah several times. It’s flavored tobacco. Tobacco has nicotine. Nicotine is bad for you. And it leads to other things. But that’s a whole separate discussion.

Smoke is not good for you.
Lung cancer sucks.

I believe it has the same risks as smoking a cigarette. But the difference is it’s not a direct smoke, it’s filtered through the water.

Stick to the Ganja.

pretty similar to smoking a cig.

It’s sucking smoke into your lungs. It’s certainly not healthy.

But I doubt it’s really dangerous if you go to the hookah bar a few times a year with a group of friends. If you’re talking about daily use, it could be even more dangerous than cigarettes, because you’d be more likely to hold the smoke longer/ inhale a greater amount of smoke.

Your lungs are meant to process nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.

Adding other stuff is never going to have a positive impact.

It is tobacco which we know isn’t good.

It’s not bad for you really, the only bad part is that if you do alot of hookah smoking the sugar in the tabacco can cause infections or irritations to your lungs. It’s not addicting because there’s no addicting chemicals like in cigarettes.

According to the World Health Organization, studies from the Mayo Clinic show “The water used to filter the chemicals does not work efficiently to remove all the harmful chemicals” In fact, because people are inclined through a false sense of protection to inhale far more harmful ingredients than cigarette smokers.

Smoke + Lungs = Body Pollution;

and it doesn’t matter how it gets there.

By Hook or By Crook, smoke in lungs is bad for you.

Go visit the Human Body Exhibition whenever you get a chance and take a look at the lungs of the people who died from lung cancer.

This just may help you to reframe this question

The health danger of what you’re smoking and that you’re smoking should be considerred, your choice of method to smoke is not as important. A hookah will cool your smoke and reduce some of the heaviest most nasty parts of smoke – But It’s Still Smoke. Healthwise as suggested above by betterman there are some advantages to the ganja over tobacco as it is missing some of the most vile parts of tobacco smoke. But there are still Products Of Combustion, POC, which is a dog’s breakfast of partially burned hydrocarbons and impurities and as Seek more generally points out those just really don’t belong in the lungs. Stuff like that from perfectly normal coal-fired power plants causes something 10,000 premature deaths a year in the US. The lungs do an impressive job of carrying on in compromised conditions and have some capacity for cleaning a limited regular exposure, but it’s a tax on our systems.
One strategy for some with medical needs or simply bent on consumption is vaporization. The good stuff is boiled off w/o actually burning the plant mass – no POC, you are not “smoking” anymore. I will admit to Seek that lungs aren’t really made to deal with vaporized components of popularly smoked plants either but I’d maintain that most of the stuff in smoke that is unwanted is eliminated by this process. There are some hookah and hash pipe that work that way too, with a fueled heating chamber below a separated vaporizing chamber, the active stuff in the hash will vape away down the tube to you and leave behind the tar-like medium (which ends up in your lungs if you actually smoke it). Those don’t work very well with unrefined plant matter though. If you are using unrefined plant matter look into the quintessential volcano (haven’t tried) that I hear is prescribed in medical marijuana cases as a medecine delivery system with a minimum of harmful unwanted stuff reaching the patient and maximizing the efficiency of delivering the medication. If your HMO isn’t paying for it there are far cheaper vaporizers including the widely acclaimed Iolite that are reputed to do the trick nicely.