Featured Image Credit: Martina Paraninfi/Getty Images
Topics: Vaping, Health, TikTok, Social Media, US News
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Madison Burgess
Topics: Vaping, Health, TikTok, Social Media, US News
A 24-year-old TikToker has issued a stark warning to vapers after he suffered a heart attack and did ‘irreversible’ damage to his lungs due to the habit.
Jacob Temple, who hails from Kentucky, posted a video to the social media platform in May, urging people to give up the habit - and it has since racked up almost four million views.
Vaping has increased in popularity in recent years with more and more people swapping them into their routines in place of traditional cigarettes.
And while experts still think vaping is better for us than smoking cigarettes, a groundbreaking study earlier this year found that opting for a flavoured vape may actually be 'more dangerous’.
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Jacob is one of those who have experienced the hazard first-hand and is desperately warning others that it’s just not worth it.
In the clip, he told viewers: “Okay so this is a PSA for anybody out there still using those electronic robot dongs (vapes) to breathe in flavoured air. Stop before you regret it, okay.
"I now have the lungs of a 70-year-old man, all of the small airway tubes at the bottom of your lungs, those are scarred up permanently, forever.”
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He continued: "I can never inflate or deflate my lungs to 100 percent again in my life. It feels like I'm breathing through a straw constantly, always, just never getting enough air.
“And there's nothing that can be done. It’s permanent. Scar tissue. Please stop.”
In another video, the TikToker recalled how he suffered a ‘minor’ heart attack known as an anterior myocardial infarction and his ‘whole body was fighting to stay alive’.
He explained how he started experiencing ‘serious pains’ in his kidneys and liver and began to worry that something sinister was going on.
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Jacob said: “I would literally wake up sweating bullets and shivering and the whole side of my bed would be soaked, not to mention that I would wake up being unable to sleep.
“In my sleep, I would cough to the point that my lungs would fill up with air, because I could inhale fully, but not exhale.
“So I would breathe in air and not be able to get it all out and that would compound to the point where I had to either use a nebuliser or not be alive in the next five minutes.”
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He continued “My blood oxygen level was at 80 percent. I had a literal mini heart attack while hooked up to the EKG. I was 24—that should not be happening. It almost took my life.”
Jacob first started vaping when he was just 12 years old, with the view that it would be 'safer' than smoking cigarettes.
Elsewhere, in the UK, disposable vapes were banned by the government this year in a bid to protect the health of children and adolescents.
The ban, which came into force on 1 June, prohibits the sale and supply of single-use vaping devices across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.