- With Mayo Clinic emeritus internist
Edward C. Rosenow III, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
Edward C. Rosenow III, M.D.
Edward C. Rosenow III, M.D.
Dr. Edward Rosenow III sees a natural link between the Information Age and health care as a way to promote better health. Dr. Rosenow, a Columbus, Ohio, native, is board certified in internal medicine and pulmonary disease and worked in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. He retired from clinical practice in 1996 after 30 years' service at Mayo Clinic.
"It has always been my feeling that the better informed the patient is about his or her body and its functions, the better the patient-physician partnership," he says. "The informed patient is in turn more compliant with the physician's recommendations and better able to make intelligent decisions about health care needs."
Dr. Rosenow is a former Arthur M. and Gladys D. Gray Professor of Medicine and former chair of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Mayo Clinic. He was also president of the American College of Chest Physicians, consultant to NASA on the Space Station Freedom project, president of the Mayo Clinic staff, a regent with the American College of Chest Physicians and program director of the internal medicine residency program at Mayo Clinic.
During his distinguished career, Dr. Rosenow was a five-time Teacher of the Year in internal medicine and inducted into the Mayo Fellows Hall of Fame of Outstanding Teachers.
In 1994, he won the Distinguished Mayo Clinician Award from Mayo Clinic staff and in 1995 was honored with the Ralph O. Claypoole Sr. Memorial Award for Lifetime Dedication to Patient Care by the American College of Physicians. He was named to a mastership by the American College of Physicians in 1998 and that year also won the Mayo Foundation Distinguished Alumnus Award. He is also a Master Fellow in the American College of Chest Physicians. In 2008, a professorship was established in his name — the Edward C. Rosenow III, M.D., Mayo Professorship in the Art of Medicine.
Dr. Rosenow has contributed to 156 publications, including 48 book chapters and one co-authored book.
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Question
Hookah smoking: Is it safer than cigarettes?
Is hookah smoking safer than cigarettes? I've been told that the water used in the hookah makes the tobacco less toxic.
Answer
from Edward C. Rosenow III, M.D.
It's a myth that hookah smoking is safer than smoking cigarettes. The tobacco is no less toxic. Hookah smokers actually inhale more tobacco smoke than do cigarette smokers because of the massive volume of smoke they inhale.
Hookah — also called narghile, shisha and goza — is a water pipe. The device has been used for centuries in the Middle East and Asia to smoke tobacco. Now, hookah bars and cafes are popping up across the United States — fueled by the growing popularity of hookah smoking among teens and young adults.
The hookah device consists of four parts:
- A base, or smoke chamber, which is partially filled with water
- A bowl, which contains tobacco and the heating source
- A pipe that connects the bowl to the base and dips into the water in the base
- A hose, a second tube in the pipe that does not dip into the water but opens into air in the base and allows users to inhale the hookah smoke
When a smoker inhales through the tube, a pressure difference forces air past the heating source and heats the tobacco, which gives off smoke. The smoke is pulled away from the tobacco and passes through the water and into the smoke chamber — from which it is inhaled by the smoker.
Although many believe that the water in the hookah filters out all the "bad stuff" in the tobacco smoke, this isn't true. According to a World Health Organization advisory, a typical one-hour session of hookah smoking exposes the user to 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette. Even after passing through water, tobacco smoke still contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens). Hookah smoking also delivers significant levels of nicotine — the addictive substance in tobacco.
The trend of hookah smoking has doctors and public health experts concerned because — despite claims to the contrary by many users — smoking from a hookah is just as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.
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