A vape pen looks harmless during a pickup game or right after a workout.
A new video from a state health department says otherwise.
It claims vaping can hurt athletic performance, not just long term health.
This article checks that claim against real, peer reviewed exercise research.
The goal is a clear answer, not a scare tactic.
Some of the research below is new, published only within the last two years.
What the Video Claims
The video comes from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
It is aimed at young people who vape socially or before workouts.
The video says nicotine and vaping can lower lung capacity, raise heart rate, and slow recovery.
It frames vaping as a performance problem, not only a long term health risk.
That is a stronger, more specific claim than most anti vaping messaging.
Most public health videos focus on cancer risk or addiction years down the road.
This one focuses on something an athlete might notice this season.
It deserves a direct look at the science behind it.
How Vaping Affects Breathing During Exercise
Breathing trouble is often the first thing athletes notice when fitness slips.
A large study followed young adults in the national PATH survey for several years.
PATH stands for the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health, a long running federal study.
Researchers compared people who used e-cigarettes with people who never had (Xie et al., 2022).
Current e-cigarette users had 32% higher odds of developing a new respiratory symptom.
They had 51% higher odds of developing chest wheezing specifically (Xie et al., 2022).
The study also tracked difficulty breathing during exercise as its own reported symptom.
Difficulty breathing during exercise showed up more often in current vapers, even among people who had never smoked a cigarette.
That last detail matters because it rules out cigarette smoking as the hidden explanation.
The pattern held even in people whose only nicotine exposure was vaping itself.
Former e-cigarette users also reported more symptoms than people who had never used one.
That suggests some effect on breathing can linger even after someone quits.
What Vaping Does to Heart Rate and Blood Pressure
Athletic performance depends heavily on how efficiently the heart pumps blood.
One study tested young nonsmokers using a real nicotine e-cigarette and a placebo device (Gonzalez & Cooke, 2021).
The placebo device produced vapor with no nicotine in it at all.
Inhaling from the nicotine containing e-cigarette raised both heart rate and blood pressure right away.
The nicotine free placebo device caused none of these changes.
A placebo e-cigarette without nicotine caused none of these effects, which points to nicotine itself as the trigger.
That comparison is useful because it isolates nicotine as the actual cause.
A heart working harder at rest has less room left to work harder during exercise.
Researchers describe this as reduced cardiovascular reserve.
Reduced reserve can feel like running out of gas earlier in a workout than usual.
Nicotine also triggers the release of stress hormones like adrenaline in the body.
Those hormones can narrow blood vessels and make the heart pump against more resistance.
None of that is something a person can feel directly in the moment.
It shows up later, as a workout that feels harder than it should.
The Direct Study on Cardio Fitness in Vapers
Cardiorespiratory fitness is usually measured with peak oxygen consumption, or VO2 peak.
Coaches and sports scientists use that same measurement to track athletic conditioning.
Researchers directly compared 26 young e-cigarette users with 16 non users (Simovic et al., 2024).
E-cigarette users had significantly lower VO2 peak scores on exercise testing.
This gap held up even after adjusting for body fat and lean muscle mass.
The vaping group also showed a smaller heart rate rise as exercise effort increased.
Researchers call this a blunted chronotropic response.
In plain terms, the heart did not speed up as much as expected under load.
The study also found lower oxygen use inside the working leg muscles themselves.
That means the muscles were pulling less oxygen from the blood that reached them.
Together, these findings point to a real, measurable fitness gap tied to vaping status.
The study’s authors were not casual smokers studying other smokers by chance.
They specifically designed the study to test cardiorespiratory fitness in vapers.
What a Fitness Test Study Found in Active Young Men
Lab measurements are useful, but real world performance tests matter too.
One study grouped active young men by their tobacco and vaping habits (Dinkeloo et al., 2020).
Groups included never users, vapers only, cigarette smokers only, and people who used both.
Men who used both vaping and cigarettes had slower two-mile run times than never users.
They also completed fewer push-ups and fewer sit-ups on standard fitness tests.
These differences remained even after accounting for how much each group trained.
That detail matters because it was not simply a case of vapers training less often.
The men in this study were physically active, not sedentary volunteers off the street.
That makes the fitness gap harder to explain away as a lack of general activity.
What This Evidence Does Not Prove
None of these studies prove that one vaping session ruins one single workout.
Most of the human studies compared groups rather than tracking one person over time.
That design shows a strong pattern, but it cannot fully prove cause and effect for every person.
The cardiorespiratory fitness study compared just 26 vapers with 16 non users.
That is a small sample, so it is not the final word on every vaper.
The research does not tell us how occasional, light vaping compares with daily heavy use.
It also does not prove that every nicotine strength or device works identically.
Flavor, wattage, and how deeply someone inhales likely all change the real world dose.
None of the studies here followed elite or professional athletes specifically.
Genetics, sleep, diet, and training age all shape performance alongside vaping status.
A single risk factor rarely explains all of a person’s performance on its own.
The video’s own framing simplifies a more complicated, still developing research picture.
Common Mistakes People Make
Many people assume vapor is just flavored water, so it cannot be as risky as smoke.
Nicotine is still present and active even when there is no visible smoke.
Some athletes believe vaping right after a workout does not count toward daily use.
The body does not know the difference between a vape used before or after training.
Nicotine’s short term stimulant feeling is easy to confuse with real energy or focus.
That temporary lift does not cancel out the heart rate and blood pressure cost underneath it.
Another mistake is ignoring a slowly rising resting heart rate over several months.
A creeping resting heart rate can be a quiet early warning sign worth tracking.
People also tend to blame flat performance entirely on sleep or diet and skip vaping as a factor.
Switching from cigarettes to vaping is sometimes treated as a full fitness reset.
The research above suggests it is a smaller risk in some ways, but not a clean slate.
Who Should Check With a Doctor First
Anyone with a diagnosed heart condition should talk to a doctor before continuing to vape and train hard.
The same advice applies to anyone with high blood pressure or a known arrhythmia.
Athletes with asthma or another lung condition should ask a doctor how vaping may interact with it.
Chest tightness, unusual shortness of breath, or dizziness during exercise are reasons to get checked promptly.
Anyone trying to quit nicotine and struggling with withdrawal during training should also loop in a doctor.
A doctor can point toward evidence based cessation support instead of quitting cold with no plan.
Parents of teen athletes who vape should treat it as a coaching and health conversation, not just a punishment.
Coaches who notice a sudden drop in a normally strong athlete’s conditioning have reason to ask about it directly.
A calm, curious question usually works better than an accusation in that conversation.
Practical Takeaway
Start by tracking your resting heart rate for a week using a watch or a simple pulse check.
A high or steadily rising resting heart rate is worth a real conversation with a doctor.
A basic stair climb test can also give you a rough sense of your current cardio fitness.
Comparing your own numbers over time matters more than comparing yourself with a stranger online.
Cardio fitness built through steady, ordinary movement does not carry the same costs vaping does.
Our breakdown of how daily steps relate to long term health shows why that ordinary base matters so much.
Heat based recovery habits can support training without adding a similar cardiovascular cost.
Our piece on sauna use and heart health covers one example of that in more depth.
If performance has quietly declined and you vape regularly, that pattern is worth taking seriously.
Cutting back with real support tends to work better than an unplanned, sudden stop.
Write down how a familiar workout feels once a week, not just how fast you finished it.
A pattern across weeks tells you more than any single hard or easy session.
Watch the Original Video
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References
Dinkeloo, E., Grier, T. L., Brooks, R. D., & Jones, B. H. (2020). Vaping, smoking, and the physical fitness of active young men. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 58(1), e31 to e37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2019.08.015
Gonzalez, J. E., & Cooke, W. H. (2021). Acute effects of electronic cigarettes on arterial pressure and peripheral sympathetic activity in young nonsmokers. American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 320(1), H248 to H255. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00448.2020
Simovic, T., Matheson, C., Cobb, K., Heefner, A., Thode, C., Colon, M., Tunon, E., Billingsley, H., Salmons, H., Ahmed, S. I., Carbone, S., Garten, R., Breland, A., Cobb, C. O., Nana-Sinkam, P., & Rodriguez-Miguelez, P. (2024). Young users of electronic cigarettes exhibit reduced cardiorespiratory fitness. Journal of Applied Physiology, 137(3), 569 to 580. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00292.2024
Xie, W., Tackett, A. P., Berlowitz, J. B., Harlow, A. F., Kathuria, H., Galiatsatos, P., Fetterman, J. L., Cho, J., Blaha, M. J., Hamburg, N. M., Robertson, R. M., DeFilippis, A. P., Hall, M. E., Bhatnagar, A., Benjamin, E. J., & Stokes, A. C. (2022). Association of electronic cigarette use with respiratory symptom development among U.S. young adults. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 205(11), 1320 to 1329. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202107-1718OC
This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. If you have an injury, ongoing pain, or a medical condition, talk to a doctor or physical therapist before you change how you train or eat.
