Mouth-to-Lung vs. Direct-to-Lung Vaping

Virtually all of the world’s smokers inhale in the same way: They draw the smoke into their mouths before inhaling it into their lungs. That’s called mouth-to-lung inhaling. That’s the inhaling technique that you used when you were a smoker, and you naturally continued to inhale that way when you switched to vaping. The idea that anyone would do things differently might strike you as a little odd. With smoking, inhaling directly into the lungs isn’t even possible for most people; you’d cough like crazy. How is it possible that vapers can inhale directly into the lungs without coughing? More importantly, why would anyone want to vape that way?

One of the greatest things about vaping is that there are so many ways of doing it – and no matter what you want your vaping experience to be like, you can find products to accommodate your preferences. Reading this article, you’re going to learn about the differences between mouth-to-lung and direct-to-lung vaping.

What Is Mouth-to-Lung Vaping, and What Are Its Benefits?

Mouth-to-lung vaping is the act of drawing the vapour into your mouth before inhaling all of it into the lungs at once. The primary benefit of mouth-to-lung vaping is the fact that it’s familiar and comfortable to smokers.

The benefit actually goes even further than that, though, because mouth-to-lung vaping is what feels most like smoking. When you draw the vapour into your lungs from your mouth, you feel a sensation called “throat hit” as the vapour passes through your throat. You also feel throat hit when you smoke a cigarette, and the mouth-to-lung inhaling style is the only way to mimic that sensation.

Most people use fairly high-nicotine e-liquids when they switch to vaping because using an e-liquid that delivers as much nicotine as possible on a puff-for-puff basis helps to ensure that you’ll be able to switch to vaping successfully. With that in mind, the mouth-to-lung inhaling style is actually necessary for most new vapers because inhaling directly to the lungs when you’re using a high-nicotine e-liquid is almost impossible – it’ll make you cough.

What Is the Best Setup for Mouth-to-Lung Vaping?

The ideal setup for mouth-to-lung vaping is a small vaping device such a refillable pod-based system or a small vape pen. If a vaping device is small enough that you can wrap your entire hand around it – or the device’s mouthpiece is around the same size as a cigarette filter – it’s probably an ideal device for mouth-to-lung vaping.

To have the best possible experience with a mouth-to-lung vaping setup, you should generally use a high-nicotine e-liquid. That’s for two reasons. First, a mouth-to-lung vaping setup isn’t going to produce very large vapour clouds, so using a high-nicotine vape juice ensures that you’ll have a satisfying vaping experience. The other reason is because most people who use the mouth-to-lung vaping style want to feel throat hit when they vape, and that’ll only happen if you use a high-nicotine e-liquid.

What Is Direct-to-Lung Vaping, and What Are Its Benefits?

To understand what direct-to-lung vaping is like, imagine putting your vaping device in your mouth and simply inhaling through it. That’s essentially what direct-to-lung vaping is – instead of using your mouth to generate the air pressure, you’re using your lungs and drawing the vapour all the way in.

Why would anyone want to vape that way? To understand the benefits of direct-to-lung vaping, you first need to understand that direct-lung hits are only possible with low-nicotine e-liquids. As we’ve already mentioned, you’ll cough if you attempt to inhale a high-nicotine vape juice directly into your lungs. Nicotine has a flavour of its own; it tastes a bit like black pepper. Some people enjoy the flavour of their e-liquid so much that they’d rather taste the e-liquid without the peppery nicotine covering that flavour. That’s the main benefit of direct-to-lung vaping; nicotine isn’t really part of the flavour equation anymore, so you can taste the flavour of your e-liquid more intensely.

The second reason why some people switch to the direct-to-lung inhaling style is because they simply enjoy chasing clouds. Vape tanks and mods designed for direct-to-lung vaping can produce enormous clouds, and that enhances the pleasure of vaping for some people.

The final benefit of direct-to-lung vaping is that it eliminates almost all throat hit. If you’re new to vaping, you probably appreciate the throat hit that you feel when vaping because it reminds you of smoking. However, your feelings about that might change in the future. Once you’ve been vaping for so long that you don’t ever crave cigarettes anymore, throat hit may no longer be important to you. In fact, you may find it somewhat irritating. If you ever decide that throat hit is no longer a vital part of the vaping experience for you, it might be time for you to give direct-to-lung vaping a try.

What Is the Best Setup for Direct-to-Lung Vaping?

Vaping hardware designed for direct-to-lung inhaling is often significantly larger than mouth-to-lung vaping equipment. That’s partially because a vaping device needs to be powerful to generate the enormous clouds that direct-to-lung vapers want and partially because a tank designed for direct lung hits needs to be large because if it isn’t, you’ll need to refill it constantly. You can tell that a particular vaping device is designed for direct-to-lung vaping because it’ll have a large tank that’s usually made from glass. The tank will have large air vents at the bottom, and it’ll have a big mouthpiece that’s much wider than a cigarette filter.

The most popular vape juice nicotine strength among those who prefer the direct-to-lung vaping style is 3 mg/ml. That might be significantly lower than the nicotine strength you’re using now, but there’s no need to worry that you’ll find the direct-to-lung style less satisfying. Although the nicotine strength of your vape juice will be lower, you’ll actually end up absorbing around the same amount of nicotine that you currently do because you’ll be using much more e-liquid. Because of the increased e-liquid consumption, the lower strength of the e-liquid isn’t really relevant.