Twelve + One: shisha?


Saturday, May 27, 2006

shisha?

after seeing the shisha thing for the very first time of my entire life i came home really curious what that thing is actually about. yeah, wikipedia rocks.

FYI: shisha is also known as hookah and alot of other names

A hookah's ability to produce pleasant, non-irritating smoke has led many to believe that hookah smoking is less detrimental to one's health than most other methods of smoking tobacco, such as smoking cigarettes. Unlike cigarettes, where smoke is produced by the ignition and burning of tobacco, hookahs produce a dense, flavorful smoke by heating moistened tobacco. Research has shown that fewer cancer-causing carcinogens are produced because the tobacco is heated, rather than burned. In addition to fewer carcinogens being produced, nicotine production is reduced by the lower temperatures at which the tobacco is heated. Lower nicotine production, when compared to cigarettes, means addiction to tobacco among hookah smokers happens significantly less frequently — though this may be due to cultural views and other limiting factors, such as the time required to prepare a hookah for use.

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The most commonly-used hookah tobaccos (known as tobamel or maassel) are produced using a 1:2 mixture of shredded tobacco leaf mixed in with a sweetener such as honey, molasses or semi-dried fruit. Originally, tobacco was mixed with one of these sweeteners to form jurâk (e.g. Zhaghoul brand), a flavorless, moistened tobacco. The now-popular, fruit-flavored hookah tobaccos got their start in the late 1980s when Egyptian tobacco companies began experimenting with flavored tobacco as a way to sell more of their products to women. Due to the popularity of flavored hookah tobaccos, many modern manufacturers have begun to use glycerin as the primary sweetener in hookah tobaccos because of its humectant qualities and subtle sweetening properties that accentuate the various tobacco flavorings. Today, shisha tobacco is often mixed with dried fruit, natural extracts and artificial flavorings to produce a varying assortment of tobacco flavors, such as apple, double and triple apple, strawberry, mango, cappuccino, vanilla, coconut, cherry, grape, banana, kiwi, blueberry, tuti fruity, Arabian coffee, mixed fruit, cola, lemon, apricot, licorice, and mint, which has a cooling effect on the throat. This proliferation of flavors is rather new, starting perhaps in the mid-1990s.

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a study in the November 2005 issue of the Journal of Periodontology[4] found that the impact of water pipe smoking is largely the same magnitude as that of cigarette smoking.

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Thomas Eissenberg, a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University co-authored a hookah study which found that a session of hookah smoking which lasts about 45 minutes, delivers 36 times more tar, 15 times more carbon monoxide and 70% more nicotine than a single cigarette.

*this is freaky indeed.

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A study of Egyptian couples found an association between water-pipe smoking and infertility. :O



i know u guys dont do it often.. but just to let u all know what u guys inhaled last night. yeah arvind was right. its tobacco anyway.

posted by foongmei @ 8:22 PM   7 comments