How Does Vaping Affect Sleep and Why? Does It Make You Tired?

It is not just distressful to realize Monday is a workday after experiencing sleepless nights over the weekend after spending your weekend basking in the shores doing what you like most: vaping. Your body, your brain, and your physique play a critical role in dictating your sleeping patterns. When your bedtime routine is compromised, certainly your next day shall be bad.

Several bad periods of sleep in a row can be disastrous and might adversely affect your output at work. Some stimulants such as caffeine before bedtime and switching off your TVs to have your mind relax are highly recommended. But how’s vaping related to sleep? Does it ruin your sleep patterns? And the answer is yes!

Vape flavors contain nicotine which causes a lack of sleep. While ordinary cigarettes consist of harmful substances that cause both short-term and long-term health effects and in worst cases various types of cancers, nicotine is a stimulant in vape flavors that has some adverse effects on human health.

Also, it’s highly addictive, and trying to quit on it abruptly can result in body shocks. That said, is it correct to say vaping is making you tired solely, or is it just a small part of the wider picture.

The damaging effects associated with smoking have been established and documented. For this reason, a good number of smokers are considering replacing ordinary cigarettes with vapes. Nevertheless, some of them may notice numerous changes in their bodies including lack of sleep. Now, if you’re one of such smokers seeking an alternative means of nicotine consumption, chances are you’re going to become a vaper soon. For you to vape, you’ll require vape flavor (vape liquid, e-juice) which is a mixture of different ingredients: nicotine, Propylene Glycol (PG), Vegetable Glycerin (VG), and flavoring.

Like smoking, nicotine will stimulate your body and give your a smoking-like experience. Nicotine, being a stimulant can lead you to ‘counting stars” in the middle of the night and wondering why you cannot switch off your mind. The nicotine hit in the new experience may be stronger than even the one you used to receive in ordinary cigarettes. It’s a disgusting reality but sometimes happens as part of the transition and not a permanent feature of one’s vaping life.

Fact: nicotine is a stimulant and highly addictive. Besides, nicotine is a perplexing chemical that makes users feel relaxed after consuming it and equally anxious when they fail to use it. The addiction is so high that smokers find it extremely hard to quit smoking but seek alternative methods. E-cigs are perfect cessation tools. Using e-cigs, ex-smokers can gradually reduce their nicotine consumption by decreasing nicotine strength in vape flavor and choosing the strength that suits them.

Instead of suddenly quitting smoking which usually results in relapse for many smokers, e-cigs relieves the addictive habit of smoking regular cigarettes and eliminates all other disastrous chemicals (in cigarettes) that cause severe health problems. Our bodies react differently depending on the amount of nicotine we ingest into our bloodstream. Even with the slightest amount of nicotine, you will still experience adverse side effects such as increased heart rate, nicotine dependency resulting in stress and anxiety when you go for some time without vaping, mental health problems such as mood swings, and nervous disposition that affects your sleep among others.

Vape flavors deliver nicotine faster into the bloodstream and nicotine is available in higher strengths. Whether you ingest small or large amounts of nicotine, frequently or irregularly, you will certainly experience one or two of the side effects mentioned above. This makes it hard for you to get sleep. Whereas nicotine is associated with enhancing anxiety and releasing constructive effects on the dopamine system creating some sense of reward, the degree of addiction makes it hard to quit.

Even though e-cigarettes are perceived as alternative means of consuming nicotine as they reduce the risk of cancers and deadly effects, and can enhance short-lived benefits like energy levels and breathing issues compared to ordinary cigarettes, whenever you’re addicted to them, it would be hard to turn not only your mind but also your body from them.

Therefore, amid the night, when you want to unwind and switch your mind to enjoy the peace of sleep, it’s nearly impossible since your mind and body are connected to e-cigarettes. Your body has familiarized itself with habits and routines that are hard to break. It is at this point where Sleep Apnea attacks you.

Generally, nicotine can adversely affect your sleep – irrespective of whether you’ve smoked or vaped. Besides, nicotine is a drug, a stimulant that triggers your blood pressure and heart rate and induces the production of adrenaline hormone. Vaping before bedtime has the same effect as taking a cup of coffee. Apart from prompting an adrenaline rush, nicotine also affects your Rapid eye movement (REM) cycle.

Under this condition, your REM cycle is shorter than expected as your body is susceptible to nicotine withdrawal signs. Consequently, the natural circadian rhythm of your body is disrupted.

Sleep Apnea is a condition where one experiences difficulty in breathing when they are sleeping. The victim may be forced to wake up frequently, choke and gasps for some breath, and snore loudly. These can subject them to increased tiredness which may even cascade down to the following day and generally have adverse impacts on their daily routine. If left untreated for a long period, the condition may be life-threatening.

Nicotine is a likely cause of Sleep Apnea as research shows stimulants such as nicotine causes inflammation of the upper airway and at the same time relax the muscular airways on neural reflexes. Whereas researches have been conducted extensively on vapers experiencing sleep difficulties, they are yet to establish the exact impact of nicotine on the distraction of sleep patterns.

If you’re suffering from Sleep apnea, one lifestyle change that physicians will recommend when you visit them is that you should stop smoking. Giving up smoking significantly helps in meliorating your sleep and enhancing your lung health. Sleep apnea can trigger some severe health problems like heart diseases, hypertension, diabetes, inflammation of the respiratory tract, and stroke among others.

If aren’t a smoker but vape, don’t celebrate because you aren’t far from getting it. Your sleep pattern and lung health can still be affected. Also, vaping can trigger inflammation in the nose, throat, and down to the lungs which can increase the chances of experiencing sleep apnea. Vaping can also worsen the overall health issues that in turn aggravate episodes of apnea. For example, vaping affects different organs such as the heart, brain, immune system, lungs et al., and this can worsen your sleep apnea condition.

In spite of its obvious effect, it’s interesting how often the mistake is to consume caffeine, take sugary foods or watch at TVs a few minutes before bedtime. If you want good sleep, avoid the aforementioned habits. The same happens when we take nicotine in vape flavors for some hours to sleep. For ex-smokers, it’s a bit messy because the degree of addiction is on another level. Shaking the habit requires quite some great deal of commitment. But they should observe some decency to avoid subjecting themselves to “nicotine slavery.”

The main cause of sleep difficulties associated with vaping is nicotine. If you cannot stop vaping altogether, at the very least, vape a couple of hours before bedtime or reduce the nicotine strength. The less the amount of nicotine in your system, the less your sleep will be affected. Quitting vaping likely will not treat your sleep problems, but will instead aggravate the condition.

Truly speaking, you cannot respond to this question with certainty as to whether vaping induces drowsiness or tiredness. This is because the phenomenon of vaping by itself can’t make them feel drowsy or tired while all the other possible factors are constant. But there are a couple of reasons why you may feel uneasy and somewhat tired after a vaping session, and the majority of them can easily be fixed.

The feeling of drowsiness or tiredness after vaping is usually experienced by ex-smokers who have recently switched to vaping. Luckily, these effects are regarded as transitional and usually vanish when the right adjustment is reached. For most vapers, nicotine affects them in the same way as caffeine. But nicotine stashed in vape flavors is more potent.

This implies that there is a need for an adjustment period because even people who have been used to nicotine – but in less potent contents – find it strange to their bodies. This is because a higher concentration of nicotine in vape flavors can induce a feeling of tiredness and drowsiness immediately after taking your vape flavor or after a few minutes. To some people, the feeling is intense such that it’s almost impossible to fight it.

If vaping is making you tired, you should adjust the dose till you get the most appropriate concentration. Nicotine vape flavors come in various concentrations. It’s therefore easy to play around with various nicotine strengths until you get the right blend. Once you’ve attained the most appropriate mixture, then the feeling of fatigue immediately or few minutes after vaping begins to subside. In other cases, you’re advised to use zero-nicotine vape flavors to avoid disrupting your sleep cycle.

Also, you can as well increase the time gap between your vaping sessions. For instance, if you’ve been vaping every day, you can skip one day and do it in the next one. That way, you will allow your body to adjust to nicotine concentration in the system. Over time, your body will adapt to this new concentration and the feeling of fatigue will begin to fade away.

Other than drowsiness and fatigue, nicotine is also associated with nausea and headaches. These can be solved by adjusting your nicotine intake. The effects will decrease gradually and everything will return to normal.

This is common to newbie vapers. If you are feeling nauseous immediate for some minutes after vaping, it could be caused by nicotine. Some people will claim to have experienced the same feeling – mostly upset stomach – after consuming over-the-counter nicotine therapies like patches and gums.

Vapers usually report the same. But it hasn’t been established that nicotine is connected to nausea in any way. Most probably, your body is reacting to a particular vape flavor that you’ve begun using. The remedy here is to reduce your consumption or cease it altogether. Like the other issues of headache and drowsiness caused by intake of nicotine, the gastro issues vanish over time.

If you just switched from smoking to vaping the other day, chances are you’ll have to fight headaches from time to time. Although you’re still getting nicotine from vape flavor, nicotine isn’t the only alkaloid contained in tobacco. And these alkaloids have a physiological impact on the users, and termination from perpetual consumption causes headaches.

The nicotine you’re getting from vape flavor may not be sufficient to ward off the headaches. Besides, you’re withdrawing from other substances and alkaloids contained in tobacco. Sometimes the headache might be persistent such that the switching from smoking to vaping is not the main cause; it is caused by dehydration. If you have noticed a tenacious dry mouth accompanied by headaches, then consider taking a lot of water. If that fails, then consult a medical practitioner.

If you’re fighting to cease vaping and you really want to stop, you need to commence treatment of the side effects of nicotine, and more importantly, Sleep Apnea. After you’ve started feeling the relief, you’ll definitely get motivated to cease vaping. With discipline, hard work, and consistency, you will completely transform your overall health.