WEIRD SCIENCE When laughing gas is just not that funny

OVERDOSING on nitrous oxide – or ‘laughing gas’ – is, it turns out, no laughing matter.

As well as being a treatment for patients who need pain relief or sedation, it can be abused, making users who inhale it through balloon canisters feel intoxicated and giggly. But a hospital in South Carolina reported that a 29year-old man with a laughing gas habit was admitted after suffering numbness in his limbs for more than ten days.

Tests revealed it had been caused by a severe deficiency of Vitamin B12, which had been ‘inactivated’ by the gas.

The medical journal Cureus reports that the patient was cured with B12 supplements.