SMOKING POT HURTS YOUR HEART!
Same dangers as cigarettes
PUFFING pot isn’t a safer habit than sucking on cigarettes and may even cause your cardiac health to go up in smoke, experts warn.
Dr. Muthiah Vaduganathan, cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, notes, “Marijuana is becoming increasingly potent and smoking marijuana carries many of the same cardiovascular health hazards as smoking tobacco.”
He explains, “The combustion products a tobacco smoker inhales have a very similar toxin profile to marijuana, so the potential lung and heart effects can be comparable.”
Vaduganathan’s research team found cannabis consumers typically toke less than those who indulge in tobacco products. However, they determined marijuana users’ “larger puff volumes and longer breath holds” mean they have prolonged exposure to damaging chemicals.
What’s more, they say compounds in cannabis can also interfere with cardiovascular medications — including statins, antiarrhythmic drugs and beta-blockers, which reduce blood pressure.
The scientists say their concern was triggered by the realization that among patients suffering a first heart attack before
age 50, marijuana smoking was identified as a common factor. Additionally, researchers led by Dr. Carl J. Lavie — of the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in Louisiana — found young adults who smoked pot appeared to more frequently experience clots and spasms of the coronary
arteries than those who abstained.
And a survey managed by scientists in Australia discovered compared to the general population, heavy cannabis users seemed to have three times the risk of stroke, which is believed to be caused by marijuana disrupting the heart’s electrical system and causing abnormal cardiac rhythms.