Marijuana May Boost Heart Attack Risk

[Hudson]

Marijuana May Boost Heart Attack Risk


By Will Dunham,
Reuters
Posted: 2008-05-13 12:04:36
Filed Under: Health News (http://news.aol.com/health), Nation News (http://news.aol.com/nation)
WASHINGTON (May 13) - Heavy marijuana use can boost blood levels of a particular protein, perhaps raising a person's risk of a heart attack or stroke, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.

Dr. Jean Lud Cadet of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, said the findings point to another example of long-term harm from marijuana. But marijuana activists expressed doubt about the findings.



Cadet said a lot of previous research has focused on the effects of marijuana on the brain. His team looked elsewhere in the body, measuring blood protein levels in 18 long-term, heavy marijuana users and 24 other people who did not use the drug.

Levels of a protein called apolipoprotein C-III were found to be 30 percent higher in the marijuana users compared to the others. This protein is involved in the body's metabolism of triglycerides -- a type of fat found in the blood -- and higher levels cause increased levels of triglycerides, Cadet added.

High levels of triglycerides can contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls, raising the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.

The study did not look at whether the heavy marijuana users actually had heart disease.

"Chronic marijuana use is not only causing people to get high, it's actually causing long-term adverse effects in patients who use too much of the drug," Cadet, whose study is in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, said in a telephone interview. "Chronic marijuana abuse is not so benign."

The marijuana users in the study averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week, based on self-reported drug history, the researchers said.

The researchers said the active ingredient in marijuana, known as THC, seems to overstimulate marijuana receptors in the liver, leading to overproduction of the protein.


http://news.aol.com/health/story/ar/_a/marijuana-may-boost-heart-attack-risk/20080513093309990001
Has nothing to do with the inevitable "Munchies" I bet.

[LiddyRules]

The marijuana users in the study averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week, based on self-reported drug history, the researchers said. There are 168 hours in a week. So either you're having a joint approximately every two hours or every half hour without sleep. How many stoners actually smoke that much? How many stoners can afford to smoke that much? And can I hang out with them?

Has nothing to do with the inevitable "Munchies" I bet. 'Course not.

[THE FEZ MAN]

weed might boost my risk of a heart attack. but it raises my ability not to kill all you motherfuckers ;)

[boardsofcanada]

This is exactly the kind of shit that makes me question the credibility of other medical reports.

1)Nobody is smoking anywhere near that amount and for them to assume people your average person is smoking that much is misleading and bullshit
2)They just say it MIGHT raise protein levels which MIGHT raise your risk of having a heart attack..wasn't the purpose of the study to figure out whether it actually does and not guess?
3)They fail to take into account the many positive benefits of smoking weed...such as reduced stress which is probably the number one most harmful thing out there.

[askewcore]

This seems like just reaching to find something negative about weed. You have to smoke an obscene amount to raise some obscure protein 30% and that MIGHT cause a heart attack? If you had a drink every hour for a month I bet you would have alot worse problems than apolipoprotein C-III.

They might as well just stand on a soapbox and yell "Negroes smoke marihuana and R^PE white women!"

[THE FEZ MAN]

actually it was out lawed because of mexicans..... it was the cocaine that was demonized to punnish the negro

[DonTheTrucker]

But it was put here by God maaaaaaaannnnnn....

Ugh.

[Chino Kapone]

wtf...

id read the article but im too high right now.

[WhiskeyWhispers]

The marijuana users in the study averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week, based on self-reported drug history, the researchers said.Wow, they are really stretching, ain't they? Is this the best (worst) that they could come up with? Are these guys high themselves?

If you took the most weed I have ever smoked in a week and multiplied it by 10, it would'nt be that much. Besides, if you ate 350 fucking bananas per week you would probably develop some type of malady.

Has nothing to do with the inevitable "Munchies" I bet.Exactly. Fast food shitholes can pump out heart attacks in a bag and that's fine.

Tobacco companies can reap billions while killing nearly as many, but thats A-OK.

They must really think that potheads are retarded to believe this shit or even give it the slightest merit. Spicoli is a character in a movie, dickheads, and people like him were retarded in the first place. Your a dummy if you think we're buying what you're selling.

[Vyce]

I hope it does increase the risk. Let's let natural selection weed the stoners out.

[d0uche_n0zzle]

You have a better chance of dying from a RX fuck up, then you do from weed, maaan.

[Hysterectomeal]

Of course it does. Remember Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells? The stoner got a shotgun put in his face and fainted instantly.

[DJ Evel Ed]

They might as well just stand on a soapbox and yell "Negroes smoke marihuana and R^PE white women!"

There's lots of fun stories of racism spread by Hearst & Dupont leading to cannabis being made illegal in the 1930's:


Starting with the 1898 Spanish American War, the Hearst newspaper had denounced Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos.

After the seizure of 800,000 acres of Hearst’s prime Mexican timberland by the “marihuana” smoking army of Pancho Villa,* these slurs intensified.

*The song “La Cucaracha” tells the story of one of Villa’s men looking for his stash of “marijuana por fumar!” (to smoke!)

Non-stop for the next three decades, Hearst painted a picture of the lazy, pot-smoking Mexican, still one of our most insidious prejudices. Simultaneously, he waged a similar racist smear campaign against the Chinese, referring to them as the “Yellow Peril.”

From 1910 to 1920, Hearst’s newspapers would claim that the majority of incidents in which blacks were said to have r@ped white women, could be traced directly to cocaine. This continued for 10 years until Hearst decided it was not “cocaine-crazed negroes” r@ping white women - it was now “marijuana-crazed negroes” r@ping white women.

Hearst’s and other sensationalistic tabloids ran hysterical headlines atop stories portraying “negroes” and Mexicans as frenzied beasts who, under the influence of marijuana, would play anti-white “voodoo-satanic” music (jazz) and heap disrespect and “viciousness” upon the predominantly white readership. Other such offenses resulting from this drug-induced “crime wave” included: stepping on white men’s shadows, looking white people directly in the eye for three seconds or more, looking at a white woman twice, laughing at a white person, etc. For such “crimes,” hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and blacks spent, in aggregate, millions of years in jails, prisons and on chain gangs, under brutal segregation laws that remained in effect throughout the U.S. until the 1950s and ‘60s.

[Chino Kapone]

Ok, I doubt anyone that smokes that much denk really remmebers how much they smoke... :cool3:

Try getting a pothead to remeber anything but where they put their weed is next to impossbile.

[DJ Evel Ed]

Who knew the Cucaracha song was about Pancho Villa's pot smoking army? I'm going back to bed. I learned enough today!

LA CUCARACHA [p. 291]

1 Cuando uno quiere a una
Y esta una no lo quiere,
Es lo mismo que si un calvo
En la calle encuentr' un peine.

Chorus:
La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Ya no quieres caminar,
Porque no tienes,
Porque le falta,
Marihuana que fumar.

2 Las muchachas son de oro;
Las casadas son de plata;
Las viudas son de cobre,
Y las viejas oja de lata.

3 Mi vecina de enfrente
Se llamaba Doña Clara,
Y si no había muerto
Es probable se llamara.

4 Las muchachas de Las Vegas
Son muy altas y delgaditas,
Pero son mas pedigueñas
Que las animas benditas.

5 Las muchachas de la villa
No saben ni dar un beso,
Cuando las de Albuquerque
Hasta estiran el pescuezo.

6 Las muchachas Mexicanas
Son lindas como una flor,
Y hablan tan dulcemente
Que encantan de amor.

7 Una cosa me da risa --
Pancho Villa sin camisa.
Ya se van los Carranzistas
Porque vienen los Villistas.

8 Necesita automóvil
Par' hacer la caminata
Al lugar a donde mandó
La convención Zapata.

1 When a fellow loves a maiden
And that maiden doesn't love him,
It's the same as when a bald man
Finds a comb upon the highway.

Chorus:
The cucaracha, the cucaracha,
Doesn't want to travel on
Because she hasn't,
Oh no, she hasn't
Marihuana for to smoke.

2 All the maidens are of pure gold;
All the married girls are silver;
All the widows are of copper,
And old women merely tin.

3 My neighbor across the highway
Used to be called Doña Clara,
And if she has not expired
Likely that's her name tomorrow.

4 All the girls up at Las Vegas
Are most awful tall and skinny,
But they're worse for plaintive pleading
Than the souls in Purgatory.

5 All the girls here in the city
Don't know how to give you kisses,
While the ones from Albuquerque
Stretch their necks to avoid misses.

6 All the girls from Mexico
Are as pretty as a flower
And they talk so very sweetly,
Fill your heart quite up with love.

7 One thing makes me laugh most hearty--
Pancho Villa with no shirt on
Now the Carranzistas beat it
Because Villa's men are coming.

8 Fellow needs an automobile
If he undertakes the journey
To the place to which Zapata
Ordered the famous convention.

[Stormrider666]

There are 168 hours in a week. So either you're having a joint approximately every two hours or every half hour without sleep. How many stoners actually smoke that much? How many stoners can afford to smoke that much? And can I hang out with them?

'Course not.

No shit. This study was a complete waste of time. Although I would have definitely signed up to be a volunteer.