HEAVY pot SMOKERS will suffer serious lung disease

[Guest niall]

How does this study compare to the Jamaican and Costa Rican studies which found no lung damage and measurably improved health amongst the lifetime cannabis (only) smoking populations?

[GChronic]

wow thats pretty f#cked,i get to take it easy with mj.not good,not good at all

[DrDee]

Hi People,

First I guess I'll piss a few people off with some comments about "harm reduction" You're actually complaining because the government doesn't intervene in potheads lives enough??!! It's called freedom...smoke pot, don't smoke pot, cook with ganja, vape it. It's your choice and you don't need the government to tell you what's dangerous and them make laws against it. Sheesh (I have libertarian leanings)

 

I'm almost 60 and smoked my first bowl of hash in 1968. My smoking hasn't been consistant over the years. There's been droughts and times when I was too busy professionally to take the time to smoke. But when I'm growing or have a reliable source, I smoke fairly heavily. My lungs work fine...I tolerate exercise well. If I get a cold or the flu, I recover rapidly. I've never smoked tobacco which certainly plays in my favor. I recently bought a vaporizer and I've always enjoyed cooking with ganja too. So I offer my own experience for what it's worth. Study's are based on statistics which can always be manipulated to lean them one way or the other.

Cheers,

Dee

[DownUnderDoper]

A team from the Department of Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory Medicine at Monash University reviewed the lung condition of middle-aged chronic cannabis smokers.

 

It must make it easier to find negative results when you only test the long term heaviest of users

 

The horrible habit of adding tobacco to pot is definitely more prevalent on the east coast.

 

 

As for maximum effect from a bong (or vape) hit.. you're better off filling your lungs with smoke/vapour and then shallow panting for 3 or 4 1/4 breaths before emptying your lungs.. it's the expansion and contraction of the lungs that causes gas exchange.

 

All in all this study (if accurate) just shows one more reason for vaping.

[bufo marinus]

I'm in my 40's and the best thing I can remember doing for my body was giving away the cigarettes last decade. I'm as healthy now as I've ever been.

I think cannabis actually helps with bronchitis which is the only sickness I usually get and hardly ever get badly anymore since giving the ciggies away.

I bet they don't highlight that positive in their study

[DrDee]

I'm in my 40's and the best thing I can remember doing for my body was giving away the cigarettes last decade. I'm as healthy now as I've ever been.

I think cannabis actually helps with bronchitis which is the only sickness I usually get and hardly ever get badly anymore since giving the ciggies away.

I bet they don't highlight that positive in their study

 

Bufo,

You make a good point which is that THC or one of the other cannibinoids can actually dilate bronchioles in the lungs. Those are the tiniest air passages in the lung. So marijuana could help in asthma if it were ingested in some way other then smoke. Smoking pot during an acute attack would likely worsen it.

 

I would say Bufo, that if you smoked cigarettes for twenty years, you already have some degree of irreversable lung damage. That's the general rule. So I'd really suggest to someone with your history to find another way to ingest marijuana other then smoking. There's no denying that heavy smoking of pot can impact the lungs...we just don't really know the degree. So with bronchitis as an occasional problem, you should vape or even better, try out your culinary skills and make some great cookies. I like snickerdoodles...the perfect pot cookie. (plus I really like the name)

Dee

[SukonmiSkunk]

actually smoking cannibis can lessen the effects of asthma.. they actually used to prescribe pot for asthma sufferers

 

heres an ad that used to run.. obviously before prohibition..

 

"they may be smoked by ladies and children"

[mull]

Wonder if Dr Matthew Naughton (President, Australasian Sleep Association) finds this a little conflicting, when he knows many of the 11% of Australian cannabis users, use it to aid sleep..

 

Bullous lung disease is common to people exposed to fibre glass and all smoked drugs.

 

Monash have some interesting goals btw...

 

"

Research Commercialisation

 

Monash's Research Commercialisation group, previously Monash Commercial, captures opportunities and builds relationships to deliver outcomes of commercial value. The Research Commercialisation objectives are to achieve excellence in the commercialisation and commercial management of Monash University 's intellectual assets, in order to enhance its reputation and to create value for the university, its people and the community.

 

Activities include:

 

* Identification and protection of intellectual property

* Technology licensing

* > Formation of spin out companies

* Engagement with industry

* Negotiation of commercial research contracts

 

 

http://www.monashcommercial.com/

"

 

 

January 2008 issue of Respirology has this study up, but it costs 40 bucks.

It would be interesting to see how many patients went into the summary findings. Also be interesting to see what other factors contributed to the patients bullous lung disease so early.

If cannabis is such a devastating problem, this one would have been noticed years ago.

 

Another slightly hyped summary of a study, with no supporting data quoted.

 

Breathe easy.

[Rocker]

What are the credentials of those who performed the study?

Where are the details of the research?

What was the sample size?

Over how many years was the research conducted?

 

I believe this is a small group of research scientists looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

I've seen hundreds of these useless reports over the years and everything is bad for you.

It doesn't matter if it's red meat, dairy products, margarine, alcohol, coffee or a myriad of other products.

 

Why don't these guys research something worthwhile?

 

What about the effects on us of preservatives in all of our food?

 

What about looking at the reasons 100,000 people in the USA dies each year from the adverse reactions to prescription drugs.

 

Good on you bufo for getting off cigarettes because that is tough going.

 

I reckon we all need to get some pleasure from this life. There are no return tickets, well, I've not seen anyone come back.

 

There are a lot worse drugs on this planet than cannabis and I'm talking about 'legal' ones.

[amarkrieder]

Perhaps when i used the words "forced to mix it with tobacco" in my first post, I phrased that wrong I was assuming the reader would not require an indepth explanation, but if thats the case change that phrase for this.

 

If 95% of the people I know who smoke cannabis did not feel compelled to dilute their cannabis with another substance such as tobacco or herbal mull mixtures ineither joints or pipes due to extreme limits to supply, inhale deeply and hold to get the maxium concentration for the desired effect due to proabition reduced supply.

The figures might might be very similar to tobacco or for such substances as dust.

 

As to the relative dangers of different dilutants being different, check what we were taught in biology at UNI below and I have tried to make it as non technical as possible.

 

In your life you are bombarded with things that damage one side of the dna that exists in every cell of your body such as physics cosmic rays which you cannot avoid.

 

Your cells have a system enzyme called reverse transcriptase which can transform RNA into DNA and one of its chemical tricks is the ability to read the break on one side of the dna finding these breaks it then attempts to repair the damage by replacing the missing pieces and rejoining the ends.

 

This works well as long as the reverse transcriptase lands on the unbroken side of the DNA strand, but causes repair errors if it lands on the broken strand as it sometimes misses bases and joins the strand back together with missing pieces causing a bulge in the oppersite strand.

 

If another copy of reverse transcriptase on the other side strand discovers this bulge it will cut it out and rejoin the ends leaving a damaged gene.

 

If this gene is the one that tells the cell when to stop reproducing, it will continue to devide for as long as the environment will support it therefor forming a tumor, possibly in a vital system causing death.

 

These repair/copy errors happen to everyone without exception if you live long enough.

 

Smoke or other forms of air contamination (eg pesticides/herbicides used on farms) causes the cells on the surface of your lung to die early before they naturally reach maturity, stop deviding and die. The body responds by forcing the remaining cells to devide faster and it is this that shortens the time before cancer appears.

 

ie faster cell death = faster cell devision = greater probility of fatal DNA damage in a shorter time

 

I worked outside in a in an open cut iron ore mine for years, 15 years after not working there a doctor viewing the results of an MRI scan asked me if I had worked in a mine based on the results indicating iron dust in my lungs,

Isn't it a contridiction when its okay for me to do behaviours that can cause cancer and shorten my life span as long as the government can benifit from the taxes, but if I want to make a decicion about how I want to live my life I am suddenly told I should not do anything to shorten my life span and I need protecting from myself by the same people who expect me to do other life shortening behaviors such as work in a mine.

 

As to taking risks ban such things as skydiving, absailing and yatch racing.

 

Any behavior which causes cells to die earlier will increase the risk of developing cancer.

 

I wish they would teach this to high school teachers but the teachers training at our institution, only did half of the biology majors units before leaving to study education theory units missing out on a lot of biology unit such as genetic engineering giving them a limited understanding of what they teach.

Edited January 25, 2008 by amarkrieder