Most of the studies that we have reported on in recent months have been bad news for the vaping community. Even though many of the studies were flawed in one way or another, they seemed to suggest that vaping was harmful to people who use e-cigarettes. Some have called vaping a “gateway” to smoking, while others have labeled e-cigarettes as “smoking cues.”

We are all sick and tired of these kinds of studies! So it’s nice to finally hear about a study that was done on vaping that didn’t simply yield negative results. The study was conducted in the United Kingdom—where, not surprisingly, vaping has a much better reputation than it does here in the United States—and it was backed by Cancer Research U.K. Its main purpose was to find out whether or not people who quit smoking cigarettes and started using e-cigarettes instead were more or less likely to be diagnosed with cancer.

The great thing about the study was that it wasn’t done over the course of a few days or even a few weeks like many of the other vaping studies out there. Instead, it was done over six months, which gave researchers plenty of time to collect data and make an informed conclusion based on their findings. And what they eventually found should be encouraging to all of the vapers around the world.

Want to learn more about this exciting study and what it found? Continue reading to hear what was studied and how the information that was gathered could ultimately benefit the entire vaping community…

How the Study Was Conducted

The premise of the study that was conducted at the University College London was an interesting one. The researchers’ goal was to analyze the quantity of chemicals that are known to cause cancer in the bodies of smokers and former smokers who quit and used e-cigarettes instead of traditional cigarettes.

In order to do this, the researchers found 181 participants willing to quit smoking for six months. At the end of the six-month period, they analyzed the urine and saliva of these participants and checked them for NNAL, a chemical that is often present in those who have lung cancer. By doing this, they hoped to determine whether or not a correlation exists between using e-cigarettes and cutting down on the presence of this chemical.

What the Study Found

So what did the researchers find at the end of their study? Well, they discovered that those participants who put down their cigarettes in favor of e-cigarettes had NNAL levels that were 97.5 percent lower than those people who continued to smoke regular cigarettes during the study. This is obviously a significant reduction, and according to researchers who spoke with Digital Trends, the researchers were actually surprised by what they found.

“The take-home message for smokers and e-cigarette users is that using e-cigarettes long-term is likely to carry substantial health benefits, certainly in relation to cancer risk, compared with continued smoking,” Dr. Lion Shahab, one of the researchers behind the study, said. “E-cigarettes are certainly safer than combustible cigarettes.”

How the Study Might Benefit Vapers

The potential benefits of the findings of this study simply cannot be understated. If there is a direct correlation between using e-cigarettes over regular cigarettes and cutting down on the presence of cancer-causing chemicals in the body, it could be a huge development. It could finally force the FDA to take a good, hard look at their anti-vaping stance.

However, we should point out—and the researchers were very clear about this as well—that there is still so much work to be done when it comes to vaping research. While this particular study is encouraging, it included the participation of fewer than 200 people, so it’s impossible to draw any definitive conclusions from it.

Before researchers can say that vaping is better for people than smoking cigarettes, they must continue to study the topic and do additional studies like this one with even larger groups. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be excited by this study, but we should hold off on throwing any big celebrations just yet.

What’s Next?

As we just mentioned, this study is just one small stepping stone on the path towards vaping being viewed as a legitimate alternative to smoking. The next step is to conduct studies that look at all of the possible drawbacks of both smoking and vaping.

Cancer is obviously one of the things that scares people most when it comes to smoking. But it’s also not the only disease that affects those who smoke. Many smokers run into problems with other respiratory diseases, too. Could vaping help them avoid those problems and assist them as they quit smoking once and for all?

That’s one of the many questions that is still left to be answered. The fortunate thing is that, unlike some anti-vaping researchers who try to make vaping out to be something that it’s not, Dr. Shahab understands the challenge that lies ahead for him and many of his colleagues. There is still work to be done, and he’s prepared to do it.

“A next step would be to follow smokers over a longer period of time who switch over to using e-cigarettes and measure potential harm and risks not only in relation to cancer but also lung function and cardiovascular health,” he said.

That sounds like a great plan to us, and with any luck, that next step will be just as encouraging as this last one. We all understand that, because vaping research is still in its infancy, it’s going to take years until we know everything there is to know about vaping and the effect it has on human bodies.

We shouldn’t be deterred by that, though. Instead, we should be inspired by it, and we should all shoot to find out everything we can about vaping. Many lives are depending on it, so we shouldn’t stop conducting studies like this one until we know all there is to know about vaping.