How to Use Vaping to Reduce Your Nicotine Intake

Although many medical experts agree that vaping seems substantially less risky than smoking, it doesn’t mean that vaping is absolutely safe. Nicotine can contribute to high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar levels, slower wound healing and more. So, although switching from smoking to vaping is a great decision for your health on its own, you can do even more by reducing your nicotine intake – and vaping can help you do that as well.

Lower-nicotine vapes are readily available, but there might be a pretty big gap in nicotine strength between those devices and what you’re using now. What you need is a roadmap that can help you step down gradually and avoid the unpleasant cravings that people usually experience when they cut back on nicotine. Vaping can provide that roadmap – and in this guide, we’re going to explain exactly how to do it.

Reduce Your Nicotine Tolerance

If you’re like most people who use disposable vapes, it’s likely that you’re currently using a brand with a nicotine strength of about 50 mg/ml – also sold as 5% -- because that’s what most people use. A lower-nicotine vape will have a strength of about half of what you’re currently using. You won’t want to switch directly to a low-nicotine device because you’ll just end up vaping twice as much – and spending twice as much – as you currently do. Researchers have actually studied this and proven it to be the case.

The way to make the transition as smooth as it can possibly be is by lowering your daily nicotine requirement before switching to a lower nicotine strength. You can do that by tracking the number of times that you puff on your vape each day. Disposable vapes with built-in puff counters aren’t common, but you can do the work yourself with a pen and a pad of paper. It might feel like a lot of work to make a tally mark each time you puff on your vape, but the work will be worthwhile if it helps you reach a larger goal. Try to reduce your usage by at least one puff each day.

Switch to a Lower-Nicotine Vape

When you’ve cut your number of daily puffs in half with your current vape, you’re ready to move on to the next step, which is to switch to a lower nicotine strength. Low-nicotine vapes have become quite popular as manufacturers have increased the vapor production of their devices, so there’s actually a large selection available these days. You might even be able to use the same brand and flavor that you currently buy.

As we explained above, vapers automatically self-titrate their nicotine intake when switching to lower nicotine strengths. So, if your new device’s nicotine strength is half of what you’re currently using, you’ll probably double your number of daily puffs. That’s okay, though, because it only means you’ll go back to the number of times that you puffed on your original device each day before you began to cut back – so your vaping expenses won’t skyrocket.

After switching to a lower-nicotine device, continue your progress by tracking your puffs each day and reducing the number at whatever pace you find comfortable. Try to reduce the number by at least one puff each day to maintain steady progress.

Start Using a Refillable Vape

When you’re ready to reduce your nicotine strength again, it’s time to switch from disposable vapes to a refillable device because that’ll give you the ability to control your nicotine intake more directly. Look for a device that has a built-in puff counter. That way, you won’t have to tally your puffs manually anymore. Don’t forget, though, that your device won’t track your progress for you. You’ll need to tally your final puff count at the end of each day and reset your device’s puff counter before you begin vaping the following day.

When you switch to a refillable device, you can start by using the same nicotine strength that you’re currently using. If you’re using a low-nicotine disposable vape, the strength will probably be somewhere in the range of 20-30 mg/ml. If you haven’t already reduced your daily puff count to half of what it was before you switched to that strength, you should endeavor to do that now.

Depending on where you live, you might be able to find vape juice with a strength of 10-15 mg/ml. In many cases, though, 6 mg/ml is the next lower strength that will be easy to find. If you’re switching from 20-30 mg/ml to 6 mg/ml, your daily puff count will probably increase significantly for a while. Once again, though, that’s okay because you’ll now be buying your vape juice by the bottle. That’s much cheaper than using disposable vapes.

Mix Your Own E-Liquid if You Need to Go Lower

As you continue reducing your nicotine strength and the number of times that you puff on your device each day, you’re eventually going to hit a barrier when you find that almost no company makes vape juice with a strength lower than 3 mg/ml. If your goal is simply to consume as little nicotine as possible each day, that strength might be perfect for you. If you want to go even lower, though, you’re going to find that there’s a big gap between 3 mg/ml and nicotine-free e-liquid. The good news, though, is that solving this problem is actually fairly easy – you can make your own vape juice.

If you want to use vape juice with a strength below 3 mg/ml, it’s simple – all that you need to do is buy some nicotine-free e-liquid in the same flavor and mix the two together. Buy an empty e-liquid bottle or save one of your own empty bottles and mix your 3 mg/ml and nicotine-free e-liquids in equal proportions to get a strength of 1.5 mg/ml. If you want to, you can go even further by using a little less of the 3 mg/ml e-liquid each time you mix a new batch. You’ll end up with a lower nicotine strength each time – and before you know it, you’ll no longer be using nicotine at all.