Pot heads can't stop puking

[sydneyguy]

Wow :reallyexcited: I heard alot of things being blamed on pot but this one is surely one of the strangest ! Anyone out there with puking mates who take showers non-stop?!

 

 

 

Pot heads can't stop puking

Anna Salleh

ABC Science Online

Thursday, 14 October 2004

 

 

 

A recipe for throwing up? (Image: iStockphoto)

Chronic cannabis use can lead to regular bouts of non-stop vomiting and an obsession with hot showers, Australian researchers have found.

 

General practitioner, Dr Hugh Allen of Mount Barker Hospital in South Australia, and team report this rare new syndrome in the November issue of the journal Gut.

 

Allen said he encountered the first case, dubbed patient Y in the paper, in the late 1990s. The patient came to him after a severe bout of vomiting.

 

"He would vomit continuously for two or three days," Allen told ABC Science Online. "It was so bad he had to go to hospital and be put on a drip."

 

Two or three months later it happened again, and then the vomiting episodes became more frequent, occurring every month.

 

The patient was a heavy user of marijuana at the time, said Allen, having started smoking at the age of 19 with the vomit attacks starting when he was 22.

 

"In all honesty, he was smoking 20 to 40 cones a day," Allen said.

 

When the patient was in hospital he started to act strangely, said Allen. The patient would sit in a hot shower, which he said relieved his nausea and vomiting.

 

"It became an obsession with him. He would have 10 to 15 showers a day."

 

After 15 months of cyclical vomiting, Allen said the patient concluded that his cannabis use was to blame. So he stopped using it and didn't vomit severely for nine months.

 

But Allen said the patient started using the drug again, and two months later was vomiting.

 

 

 

Behind the vomit

 

Allen and team set out to test the theory that chronic cannabis use could be behind otherwise unexplained cases of vomiting.

 

They identified 19 chronic cannabis users from the state of South Australia, which has fairly liberal laws regarding the possession of small quantities of marijuana for personal use.

 

Five patients refused to follow through with the study because they did not believe cannabis was behind the vomiting, said Allen.

 

Another five patients were excluded as there were other potential explanations for their vomiting, including schizophrenia and other drug use.

 

But the remaining nine cases, plus one from Sydney, demonstrated a link between chronic cannabis use and vomiting.

 

"They all had exactly the same syndrome," said Allen.

 

"Out of the 10 cases, seven abstained and all got better. Three took up smoking again and got sick again," he said. "Of these three, two gave up again and got better and one continued smoking and remained ill."

 

Allen said the illness, called cannabinoid hyperemesis, was "reasonably rare", affecting perhaps 1% of chronic users.

 

"But some people are very sensitive to cannabis."

 

Body temperature

 

Allen said experiments in mice had shown that cannabis lowers body temperature and lowered body temperature can affect how the gut works, and can lead to vomiting.

 

In people with vomiting sickness, cannabis could be interacting with the hypothalamus, which controls the body's temperature and gut motility, he said. And this interaction could explain why such people find relief in hot showers.

 

"It could be that by having a shower, people are heating themselves up and restoring their normal gut motility," said Allen.

 

He said further research was needed to test this.

[Pool_Assassin]

Woah,

Thats some seriously wacked out shit...I've never had ANYONE I know have bad effects from Mj at all apart from paranoia and the occasional green And thats only when actually smoking!

-Me

[sydneyguy]

Maybe they forgot to mention the 5 trips he was taking everyday could of had a effect !

[raverspec]

+1 sydneyguy

[Guest niall]

This is not an unreasonable hypothesis, cannabis has anti-emetic properties and so it stands to reason that some people may be affected by this in unexpected ways. I've heard herbalists say that herbal remedies tend to work the same way for 90% of people, and the exact opposite for 10% of people.

 

There are going to be people out there who are cannabinoid deficient, and also those who produce too many cannabinoids. Similarly there are people will odd combinations of cannabinoid receptors, not enough, too many... There will always be an exception to the rule out there, so I wouldn't dismiss cases like this too quickly. Particuarly when it's an attribute of cannabis which we already know about - nausea. Cannabis has homeostatic properties, it keeps the body in balance and acts like a messaging system to trigger change in the body such things as hunger, sleep, reduced nausea, reduced pain, reduced inflammation, neural protection......... it's pretty sensible to expect that some individuals will have their CNS affected in unexpected ways.

 

Myself for example, I can't eat or sleep on cannabis - I'm anything but hungry or sleepy, and everyone who consumes with me tends to get hungry and sleepy. I tend to experience a sativa-like high from anything I smoke (if anyone knows of a very heavy indica strain I'd be very eager to try it to see what happens!), very energetic and cerebral.

[WantDaChronic]

sounds like utter bullshit to me...sure some people have adverse effects when consuming marijuana, but it has anti-nausea properties which stop people from spewing + any pot smoker knows that smoking a bowl and then having a shower is pointless as the shower straightens you up

 

none the less, even if this minority of chronic pot smokers actually does have that medical problem, that study said it would effect 1 in 100 full time smokers and since i have a cast iron stomache, im all cool :smoke

[mull]

I wonder if it might be the tobacco the mj was spun with?

 

A fella I smoke with sometimes, greens out often. He spins pretty heavy with niccy and always has a chuck if he goes over his (low) cone limit. ::

Mind you, he will usually have a couple of scotches too so...

 

But he can spew a lot longer than any normal green out, so maybe he's one of these guys?

 

 

Another thing.. how, where and with what possible pollutants was the mj grown?

Might have had a high amount of something toxic to humans in the soil? Just a thought..

[Mushaman]

was reading an article last night which is kinda related - a pill to make you lose weight, stop smoking and stop drinking alcohol :: to good to be true ... but a very interesting read ... here's the link

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825291.700

[ThePillager]

sounds like utter bullshit to me...sure some people have adverse effects when consuming marijuana, but it has anti-nausea properties which stop people from spewing + any pot smoker knows that smoking a bowl and then having a shower is pointless as the shower straightens you up 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I always have a showers after a few bowls I find it really relaxing, had no idea it straightens u up agen that true.

 

Yeh this is shit, Out of all the chronic smokers I wonder how many throw up to the point that they are forced to sit in the shower.

 

Anyone here smoke 20 - 40 cones everyday?

 

Pillager

[cl0n3]

He said further research was needed to test this.

 

yeah like niall said. everybody is different but most people are the same. mj just like anyother drug can have good and bad it depends on an individuals body and mind condition. \

 

i dont beleive this to be an unreasonable hypothesis and im sure these scientist would know a lot more about how the body works that most of uss do.

 

i just rekkon pot does not agree with everyone. perhaps puking is theser particular peoples bodies telling them it is not cool for them. ?