Has it ever occurred to you that there could be more than one way to inhale when you vape? In fact, you can inhale in two different ways – and if you’ve only ever used the mouth-to-lung inhaling style that you once used as a smoker, learning about the other inhaling style has the potential to transform your vaping experience.
There are two inhaling styles that you can use when vaping. They are:
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Mouth to lung (MTL)
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Direct to lung (DTL)
There are some very valid reasons for choosing one inhaling style over the other, and you’re about to learn what those reasons are.
How to Inhale in the Mouth-to-Lung Style
Inhaling in the mouth-to-lung style means that you inhale the vapour in exactly the same way that you would inhale cigarette smoke. You use gentle air pressure to draw the vapour into your mouth, and you inhale it into your lungs all at once. The ideal vaping devices for mouth-to-lung inhaling are usually beginner-oriented devices such as disposable vapes and small vape pens.
What Are the Benefits of MTL Vaping?
Feels Like Smoking
If you’ve already switched to vaping and are using a smaller vaping device like the ones described above, you’re most likely using the mouth-to-lung inhaling style already because that’s the way you inhaled when you were a smoker. That’s the biggest benefit of mouth-to-lung inhaling – the fact that it feels completely familiar to you as a smoker, making it easy for you to switch to vaping.
Best for Throat Hit
The mouth-to-lung vaping style always works best with a higher-nicotine e-liquid, which brings us to the second major benefit of this inhaling style: the fact that it produces a strong throat hit. Throat hit is the scratchiness that you feel when you inhale nicotine, and you feel it especially strongly when you smoke a cigarette. Although it’s possible to inhale the same amount of nicotine without feeling throat hit – we’ll explain that next – many people have trouble feeling satisfied and eliminating their cigarette cravings unless they experience a strong throat hit when inhaling the vapour.
Lower Cost
When you use an e-liquid with a high nicotine content, you don’t have to use a great deal of that e-liquid in order to get the amount of nicotine that you require. That translates to real cost savings. If you use disposable vapes, using a high nicotine strength means that you won’t need to buy new devices as often – and if you use a refillable device, it means that you won’t need to buy e-liquid as often. It also means that you won’t need to buy as many replacement coils. Using the mouth-to-lung inhaling style is always the cheapest way to vape.
How to Inhale in the Direct-to-Lung Style
Inhaling in the direct-to-lung style means that you inhale the vapour directly from your device into your lungs without drawing it into your mouth first. When you use the DTL inhaling style, the vapour travels through your throat slowly instead of all at once. For that reason, you need to use a lower-strength e-liquid with this inhaling style – otherwise, you’re likely to cough. The ideal vaping devices for direct-to-lung inhaling are usually larger devices such as advanced vape kits.
What Are the Benefits of DTL Vaping?
Bigger Cloud Production
Many people who vape really enjoy the experience of blowing an enormous cloud of vapour across a room, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why you might like the direct-to-lung inhaling style. Compared to MTL inhaling, the DTL vaping style gives you drastically greater cloud production. Your lungs, after all, can hold much more vapour than your mouth. To facilitate the maximum possible cloud production, DTL vaping devices typically have very wide mouthpieces and large airflow vents to allow as much air through as possible.
Bolder Flavours
When you use a vaping device that produces large clouds, it means that you consume a lot of e-liquid with each puff – and inhaling more e-liquid means that you’ll enjoy much bolder flavours when you vape. If you enjoy vaping but find that the peppery flavour in a higher-nicotine e-liquid tends to cover the flavour of your vape juice, you’ll probably enjoy the DTL inhaling style because there’s much less nicotine getting in the way of the flavour. People who use the MTL inhaling style typically use e-liquids with nicotine strengths as high as 20 mg/ml. With devices designed for DTL inhaling, on the other hand, the most popular nicotine strength is 3 mg/ml.
Smoother Vaping Experience
Because the nicotine strengths that people use for DTL inhaling are typically very low, you’ll find that this inhaling style promotes a very smooth vaping experience. You’ll experience almost no throat hit when vaping – and you’re likely to really enjoy that fact if you find that your current e-liquid irritates your throat or makes you cough. Although the very low nicotine strength that you’ll use with the DTL inhaling style will produce almost no throat hit, it doesn’t mean that you won’t feel satisfied. You’ll inhale a greater volume of e-liquid per puff because of your device’s greater cloud production, and that means you’ll consume roughly the same amount of nicotine overall.
DTL vaping does cost more than MTL inhaling because it means that you’ll consume more e-liquid. That means you’ll need to buy vape juice more often, and it also means that you’ll need to buy more replacement pods or coils. However, many experienced vapers find that they enjoy the cloud production, flavour and smoothness of DTL inhaling so much that they don’t mind the increased cost.
Learning How to Inhale Is the Key to Maximising Your Enjoyment of Vaping
Reading this article, you’ve learned that there are two different ways to inhale when you vape. You’ve also learned that there are legitimate reasons for both of those inhaling styles to exist – because different people have different priorities. If you want vaping to feel as much like smoking as it possibly can, you’ll most likely prefer the MTL inhaling style. When you gain experience, though, you may eventually decide that you no longer crave the sensation of smoking and that you’d rather vape in a way that allows you to experience the boldest and smoothest flavours possible. When you reach that point, you’ll be ready to give the DTL inhaling style a try.