Advantages: Tasty fruit flavours, fashionable

Disadvantages: If the smoke is inhaled then ill health effects associated with smoke inhalation apply

The sudden popularity of the shisha has been brought to my attention recently with the number of café?s offering shisha in around London. Edgeware Road in London is undoubtedly the shisha capital of London the way Amsterdam is the capital city of Cannabis.

I guess most of you would like to know what exactly shisha is... so here goes...

Shisha in simple terms is tobacco that is mixed with various fruit flavours. Shisha tobacco is not the normal tobacco found in cigarettes and cigars. It is completely different. Shisha tobacco is thought to be better than that found in cigarettes and cigars- the tobacco in cigarettes and cigars are not pure and contain large amounts of nicotine and other additives making them harmful. Shisha is most commonly smoked for flavour and not for the same reasons that people smoke cigarettes. Shisha smoking is very light and flavourful with a sweet, smooth aromatic taste (well that?s my experience anyway!)

Shisha is smoked in an instrument called a ?Hookah? which has been around for over 500 years and originally came from the Middle East. This piece of equipment is sometimes also called a shisha, hookah, nargile, narghile, nargila, hubble-bubble or a waterpipe. The basic elements of a hookah consists of a hollow glass base which is filled with water and often beatifically decorated, a vertical pipe topped with a clay bowl for the shisha tobacco and coals, and a hose to smoke through. Charcoal is used to gently heat the flavoured tobacco so that when you suck on the hose, the smoke is drawn down the pipe and through the water causing the water to bubble.

Smoking shisha has become something of a social activity with people visiting shisha cafés whatever the time, occasion or mood. Most shisha cafes in London are open until the early hours of the morning. One shisha café that I go to in London?s Edgeware Road is open 24 hours!

There are many different flavours of shisha that you can choose from, and i
n different parts of the world they have exclusive localised flavours. In the UK, the flavours that I have come across are double apple, mixed fruit, cherry, strawberry, grape, orange, and mint. Whilst on holiday in Dubai I noticed that they had flavours like cappuccino, lemon and bubble gum! I really wanted to try bubble gum flavour but unfortunately they were out of it on the day that I went, so I settled for my favourite flavour which is double apple. Smoking shisha doesn?t get you high but if smoked and inhaled continuously between 45 minutes to an hour, you may start to feel light headed (I?m just speaking from my own experience!)

Is Shisha smoking dangerous for you?

I decided to research this and found out that shisha could be bad for you but supposedly only negligibly:
?The water in the hookah is thought to take away around 90% of the harmful chemicals (excluding THC) and so the pipe contains merely 0.5% nicotine and 0% tar. Also, if it?s not inhaled, there is apparently practically no danger of lung cancer.? (http://www.shishapipe.net/)

However, if the smoke is inhaled then naturally all the ill health effects that are associated with smoke inhalation apply. If pregnant or suffering from any health conditions it would probably best to consult your doctor first.