7 ms·
Positive link between cannabis use and 'Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events'
- Neywiny 1y agoThis could get dicey. I know there are a lot of users out there and I understand the various causes for use. However, for those of us who didn't because of concerns like this, it is a bit vindicating. Addiction is a disease, full sympathy, but please get help if you need it.
- cluckindan 1y agoAre all cannabis users addicts?
- owebmaster 1y agoI don't think so, I smoke for the past 20 years and I'm not addicted /s
- SkyeCA 1y agoAccording to a lot of people online? Yes, and they're the same type who will tell you an occasional glass of wine with a meal makes you an alcoholic.
- chisleu 1y agoSpeaking as an addict, yes most regular users are. It's not the same kind of addiction (emotional, not physical) but it's still addictive. If you smoke weed every day for a year, and stop, for the first year you stop, your suicide rate is doubled.
- code_for_monkey 1y agoIsnt it possible that people smoking weed were treating conditions like anxiety or depression and are more likely to commit suicide in the first place? Weed has had a real deficit of actual study and although some people can get a dependency on it I have a hard time qualifying those people as addicts when stopping weed is so much less dangerous and difficult than other substances. Its a complicated topic that requires quite a lot of care when you talk about it, because labelling someone as an addict is a tall order and also weed has been a moral panic for so long.
- chisleu 1y agoOh that’s absolutely part of it.
- cluckindan 1y agoIs it not a bit disingenuous to imply that cannabis causes the suicidality if it is actually the cessation of (self-)treatment that causes it?
- chisleu 1y agoI don't know brother. I'm not making that claim. I'm repeating it.
- cluckindan 1y agoThat’s generally how misinformation propagates. Hearsay.
- chisleu 1y agoYeah except it's not hearsay so much as repeating a credible source.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoCitation needed
- chisleu 1y agoHeard it from the doctor on mtv. Remember that show?
- _Algernon_ 1y agoNo
- chisleu 1y agoDr Drew and Adam Corola had a show on MTV where they discussed it at length.
- cluckindan 1y agoLoveLine? ”Carolla co-hosted the syndicated radio call-in program Loveline with Drew Pinsky from 1995 to 2005 as well as the show's television incarnation on MTV from 1996 to 2000.” Pinsky is seemingly a medical doctor specializing in addiction treatment. Just saying that he has a financial incentive to present hyperbole, not to mention a dramatic one (anything for more content in his rehab TV shows)
- haswell 1y agoPeople don’t take the withdrawal potential seriously. I’ve had a complex relationship with cannabis over the years, and one of the things that I didn’t understand before getting stuck in a daily habit of heavy use for a period of time is how hard it can be on your body to just stop. I had major upset stomach and food aversion for a few weeks to the point that I lost 10 pounds, major sleep issues, a major spike in depressive symptoms (not just baseline depression, because I eventually got back to baseline), etc.
- chisleu 1y agoSame. After enough use, I just kind of forgot how to have fun without it. Sleep issues are the worst.
- cluckindan 1y agoAnecdotes are not helpful here. Did you commonly have an upset stomach and food aversion before?
- haswell 1y agoNo, upset stomach and food aversion were not common for me before. I've gone through the quitting process several times over the years, and the experience was consistent each time. I've also run experiments while quitting like: what happens to the food aversion and stomach issues if I use some cannabis? When in the middle of withdrawal, it was like flipping a switch that allowed me to eat again. These symptoms are well known among the cannabis community, and there is increasing awareness in the medical community [0] especially for people who experience the most extreme forms like CHS [1], which has become increasingly common with more people using extremely high % THC products. If you're curious about this subject, I'd highly recommend reading the thousands of 1st hand accounts of the quitting process on a subreddit like /r/petioles or /r/leaves. It's extremely common for people to be skeptical of cannabis addiction/withdrawal [2], and I'm pretty certain this is an overcorrection after the decades of demonization and straight-up lies about cannabis. This is understandable, but the pendulum is gradually swinging back as more people experience difficulties quitting. I'm still in favor of legal cannabis, but the addiction potential is very real and worth highlighting. Part of the issue currently is that research is decades behind at this point due to the federal scheduling of the drug, and much of the research we do have was conducted with old low-THC strains. Hopefully we'll get better studies that highlight the things many heavy users already know 1st hand. - [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9110555/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9110555/ - [1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21665-cannabis-hyperemesis-syndrome https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21665-cannabi... - [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/07/31/marijuana-addiction-legal-recreational-sales/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/07/31/marijuana-a...
- cluckindan 1y agoThat effect could be simply due to pre-existing pathology such as anxiety, depression or even PTSD, not necessarily due to cannabis. Do you have a source for those statistics?
- owebmaster 1y agoSome of us are smoking for the past 20, 30, 40 years without cardiovascular issues tho. And I have met many old guys and ladies smoking weed in their 60, 70s doing fine if not better than their peers.
- Popeyes 1y agoYou can only meet the ones who haven't died.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoThere are many old guys who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for their whole life. There's many more guys who aren't as old because they died from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. (I'm not saying weed causes these issues, but I am saying anecdotes are less than useful)
- owebmaster 1y agoI have met many smokers with diseases directly related to the habit of smoking cigarettes. I have never met a cannabis smoker in the same situation or that developed it over time (20 years span). Obviously, cannabis smokers also die from heart diseases but if smoking cannabis was something that would be related to heart attacks we would know by now, a research would not be needed or it would be quite obvious and accepted.
- bluGill 1y agoCannabis was illegal for many years in most countries (it often still is, but the laws are ignored). There have not been many studies year, given the timelines of the law enforcement I'd expect that we would first see the long term studies start to come out now. And of course the first studies will not be conclusive.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- harimau777 1y agoI think that a lot of drug users (at least in America) use drugs to escape their circumstances. IMHO, what's needed is to help people improve their circumstances so that they have better alternatives. Unfortunately, that is sorely lacking in America.
- kordlessagain 1y ago> Although the authors will not share the data directly, any interested researcher may apply the search strategy developed for this analysis, available in the online supplemental appendix.
- cluckindan 1y agoYeah, that’s a bit of a red flag. A better study would of course open up the data, so validation would be easier. But a better study would also have figured out whether the effects are correlated with specific strains of cannabis, perhaps even specific cannabinoids. There is no guarantee that it is specifically THC causing these effects, it could very well be CBG (cannabigerol) or just the inhalation of smoke itself: inhaled particular matter from combustion has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues, among other things.
- kotaKat 1y agoI’m more inclined to believe the physical stress of coughing my ass off on a bad hit would wreck my heart over time than the THC itself, times thousands and thousands of coughs…
- bluGill 1y agoErr, you sound like alcoholics I know who won't use ice in their drinks because they "had a bad icecube once". That is trying to justify your habit by finding anything you can to blame the issues on something else. I have no idea what the truth is here. However it sounds like your mind won't be open to it if it doesn't allow for your drugs.
- kotaKat 1y agoDidn’t think we’d get this kind of shitty boomer take on HN, but you do you.
- cluckindan 1y agoSee, smoking anything is bad for you. Get a vaporizer.
- snitzr 1y agoPeople have really been lied to re: the risks of smoking pot. Especially the potency and dosage so many more people are using.
- chuckadams 1y agoI agree, but it doesn't help that the pre-legalization regimes also lied their asses off continuously. We're only seeing these studies now because we stopped threatening people with career ruin or even imprisonment for studying it.
- daeken 1y agoMy doctor sends out a monthly newsletter sharing things he finds interesting or useful, medical news, etc. Just this weekend he covered this study and shared his own thoughts on this, which I'll summarize since I haven't asked his permission to share verbatim: This study does show a strong correlation but doesn't attempt to show causation. If cannabis users are significantly different than non-users in terms of activity levels or diet, or the ways they manage anxiety/pain/boredom, this could cause skewing. Since people use cannabis to treat (however effectively) various conditions, what is the risk of those conditions going untreated? I thought this was a good analysis; glad to see a bit of desensationalism.
- corndoge 1y agoHow did you find a doctor like this? If I wanted to get a doctor who communicates with patients and visibly stays up to date, where should I go?
- daeken 1y agoHe was recommended by my therapist. Essentially runs an all-inclusive, boutique medical service; expensive, but actually turned out to be cheaper than all the services I'd previously had to use, for the best care of my life. That said, he only sees a limited number of patients (actually just closed new memberships from the web, only accepting referrals until he hits his cap) and only in Georgia. I imagine there are other boutique providers out there, but this has been a first for me and given me hope that healthcare might not be so goddamn awful for everyone eventually.
- wswope 1y agoJust to tail off this and explain the business model, searching for “direct primary care” is a good way to find this type of physician. A lot of these smaller shops start under the “DPC” label to build up a client base, charging something like $75-150/mo for unlimited primary care services. When the practice starts to hit its limits, they close off new patient signups, and start offering “concierge” signups at ~4x the DPC rate. The concierge patients are basically the whales who make the business model profitable (and I don’t mean to use that label as a pejorative).
- zug_zug 1y agoI have no idea why we keep putting this stuff on HN. Common thing X causes/reduces 1 (out of 100) types of cancer or health issue. Without looking at all the effects together, the comparison product (alcohol?), and the actual change in risk it’s as likely to confuse as inform.
- bognition 1y agoIn my experience the HN crowd is generally interested in cutting edge science that is relevant to pop culture. Ever since cannabis use has become normalized there has been a vigorous debate about its long term safety and the issue is far from settled. This study is another data point that we as individuals can use to make decisions about cannabis use. You are right that in practices we can't just look at cannabis use in isolation from the rest of a persons lifestyle. However, science almost never starts with a comprehensive analysis. Instead it starts with smaller targeted studies that are then used to build the comprehensive arguments. So while yes I it would be more useful know the risk of cannabis use relative to drinking alcohol, consumer sugar, lack of exercise, etc... this data point in an of it self is still useful.
- zug_zug 1y ago20% of Americans use weed. I think HN crowd is more likely to read one article out-of-context and over-extrapolate. In this case, there's no article even linked, just an abstract, so anybody jumping to conclusions from this isn't being very HN. Somebody who was really HN would read the whole article, see what doses, what % risk change, what age, see what other studies say, etc.
- altairprime 1y agoHN readers are, at least if they’re in sfbay, somewhat more likely to use a variety of drugs (prescribed or otherwise) and significantly more likely to have researched the beneficial and adverse affects of any drugs they take voluntarily, relative to a baseline default population. “Nootropics” preceded “Microdosing”, and the human fascination with optimizing oneself knows few bounds.
- ramesh31 1y agoOne thing I never see in these studies is control for all nicotine usage. Cannabis use is a massive indicator for that, and can very easily be under reported if it is not actually being tested for.
- code_for_monkey 1y agoThis is true! I would also like a study that separates the danger of smoking, any substance burned and inhaled is dangerous, but is it more or less dangerous than the actual thc?
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoThere's also a link between sugar and your teeth falling out, water and drowning, heat and burning to death, sunlight and cancer, etc. Cardiovascular disease presents in half of all American adults. This isn't interesting news.
- ImJamal 1y agoIt is when some people consistently parrot the idea that weed is harmless.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoSmoking anything is bad, we've known that inhaling particulates is bad for a long time.
- ddoolin 1y agoOnly sort of related, but I'm almost completely unable to smoke anymore. I used to smoke heavily in my early 20s (33 now). Now if I take more than one hit of anything, I'm liable to have an anxiety/panic attack. I can hardly move and I get these awful chills. The way it's consumed hardly matters; even with edibles, I can only have 1-2mg. I've ceased entirely and I don't regret it at all. I'm sure there are at least a couple of other causes (genetics, early life diet), but I think it did worsen some hormonal imbalance issues I've had too.
- andoando 1y agoSame. Stupid me kept smoking for a year despite that. It's fairly common. Works great then one day, boom, pure anxiety hell. I went from being my happiest ever to taking years to just feel "ok" again
- ddoolin 1y agoWhoa, you and the other commenter are the only ones I've ever met who even remotely relate to this though (I've never bothered searching it out on the net). That's actually kind of a relief. For me it also coincided with just higher anxiety in general so I'm not really sure which came first.
- andoando 1y agoIf you search "weed panic attack" its all over the place. I wondered what happened to me for a while and I tried different strains/methods but it was all the same. The only thing I can think of this seemed to have started after a semi bad experience with MDMA and weed.
- gedy 1y agoSame here. I think the link to panic attacks and psychosis triggers gets downplayed a bit.
- bradleykingz 1y ago
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44361795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44361795
- deanebarker 1y agoI read through it, but I couldn't figure out if it was (1) just smoked cannabis, or (2) general THC usage (from gummies or drinks).