Tobacco, like so many things in life, is a thing for moderation. Having a hookah a day may not be the greatest thing for you, but one a week or so, and you’ll probably going to be just fine. It’s just like butter - too much of it, all the time, and you’re cruising for a heart attack. A little bit in moderation, and you’re good to go.

I hope that answers your question. If you’re referring to another study, please toss out a link. I’d love to take a look if there’s some new data out there. And I dream of the day when medical researchers accept the fact that not everyone inhales things like hookahs, cigars, and pipes and they gear their research to such things.

That totally explains why you can puff on a hookah like a madman and not get “tongue bite”, which is really easy to get off of a regular pipe or sometimes a cigar.

This comment totally has ironic timing because we were both talking about getting a hookah again the other day.

A hookah (shisha, nargile, and the improbable hubbly bubbly) is used to smoke shisha. Shisha (hookah tobacco, molasses, moasel, flavor) is a shredded or ground sticky tobacco mixture. Shisha is 50% to 80% tobacco, and the rest is a flavorful syrup. Shisha can be made with real fruits and stuff, but it’s usually not.

There are three major differences between smoking hookah and smoking cigarette tobacco. First, shisha tobacco isn’t fermented. Fermentation is what makes a lot of the really nasty chemicals in cigarette smoke and dip or chew. Secondly, shisha isn’t burned, it’s vaporized. A cigarette burns at something crazy like 800 degrees, whereas shisha cruises along right around 200, thanks to the relatively low-temp coal and a layer of foil and air between it and the tobacco. This means the shisha itself doesn’t burn, but the syrup it’s saturated in vaporizes, and that’s what comes out as “smoke” when you suck on the hose. That’s why it tastes like candy and not burning nastiness, and you’ll notice that hookah smoke doesn’t linger like a cigarette or a cigar. Third, shisha has much less nicotine than cigarettes, usually. Most shishas are “washed”, and that’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. the unfermented tobacco leaves are rinsed and wrung out several times, and a lot of the nicotine goes with it. In my experience, an average hookah of about 45 minutes with one person smoking will grant about 4 cigarettes worth of nicotine, and most of that nicotine will happen in the last ten minutes.

So, yeah. Hookahs are awesome.