Study: Cannabis boosts risk of stroke and heart attack independently of tobacco | Hacker News Reader

Study: Cannabis boosts risk of stroke and heart attack independently of tobacco

telegraph.co.uk

38 pointsvixen9938 comments

One thought that occurred as I read this: stress is a known cause of stroke/ heart attack. Perhaps stress-prone individuals seek out cannabis to handle it. Thus, the cannabis use and heart disease are correlated, but not caused by each other.

Perhaps the paper addresses this, the article did not.

It seems this article was written using only the press release about this.[0] The paper would actually provide support for these claims, making it fit for actually reporting on. But the paper will not be released until March 18. So it seems no critical thought was put into the article. My expectation is that journalists report on news once it has been verified, or at least clearly communicating this lack of fact-checking.

I think it's a classic case of clickbait headline and low-effort journalism. If they didn't report on this now, some other news outlet (with a lower standard for news) would, and then by the time it was verified, it would be "old news". No ad revenue for you.

Nobody is actually enabled to have a discussion about this potential issue because this reporting is so shoddy. The headline parrots the claim made by the researcher with no supporting evidence. By the time the facts come out, the headline has already made its way through the media. So now, we never have a productive conversation about it, and consumers walk away misinformed at best.

0: http://2017.accmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kalla_Ma...

Mine might be a bit of a fluff comment, so I apologize in advance for that, but it really doesn't help them to have a photo of a spliff in the article and not a regular joint. There's clearly tobacco mixed with the cannabis in that rolling paper.

I want to think that this is the usual anti-cannabis scaremongering, but it actually seems more like a combination of clickbait and the usual soft "science" studies. I file this under, "Eggs are good for you/Eggs will murder your soul". Maybe it's a matter of moderate consumption? In the case of cannabis in particular, maybe it's a matter of not combusting the damned stuff? It's hard to imagine that smoke in any form is good for you after all. Fortunately smoking a plant only became the popular route for cannabis once it was made illegal. Before that, tincture was the way to go.

Most people don't want to walk around with a joint hanging out of their mouth, but they'd be fine with a breath-strip with fractionally distilled CBD or whole plant extract. People who would reasonably scoff at inhaling burning plant fumes, might be comfortable with a medical vaporizer and a CO2 extracted product with lab tests to vouch for it.

I wonder if this takes all methods of ingestion into account. My cardiologist told me to eat all I want - just don't smoke it, and the jury is still out on vaping.

I was wondering the same thing. Inhaling smoke is just not a smart idea if you like oxygen, but that does not implicate cannabis per se as being a causative factor for cardiovascular trouble.

Whereas for example, tobacco smoke has been shown to be especially harmful. I think the popularity of smoking tobacco has shaped the views of many as to the nature of smoking anything else. As you say, it's hard to imagine smoking anything is a good idea, but that doesn't mean that it's all COPD, heart attacks, and strokes either.

Just anecdotally, people who smoke a lot of cannabis rather than vaping or eating it seem to me, to get a lot more upper respiratory inactions, bronchitis and the like. Will that shave years off your life? Maybe, maybe not, but it's still clearly something to pay attention to, when the alternatives to smoke exist.

Yeah. Inhaling hot particulate matter is going to put some level of unneeded stress on your lungs. I think that's pretty well-established.

what comprises that particulate matter may be incidental to its health effects -- grain size probably matters more than grain composition.

The biggest argument against vape is lack of tests regarding sold liquids. Cant remember which polyphenol is cited. otherwise vape liquids are still said to be hundred of Times less concentrated in carcinogens.

Vaping cannabis doesn't involve adulterating with flavors or fillers (necessarily). In the best case, it's a CO2 extraction of the plant, rendered into an oil, or steam distillation of the same. I would agree with you though, that people are insanely cavalier with these GRAS additives they're happy to inhale all day.

...Although if you're stuck between smoking tobacco, and vaping nicotine... vape away.

> Although if you're stuck between smoking tobacco, and vaping nicotine... vape away

Hear, hear! It's also much easier to taper off the nicotine with vaping. I just started on zero myself, so I'm almost done altogether.

Good for you, seriously! I have two good friends who did the same thing, one of them 3 years ago, and his life is markedly improved. I'm sure you've already felt that though... tobacco smoke is just bad news all around. Again, congratulations.

That's my pov but i'm neither a chemist not a doctor.

There are plenty vapes now that can vaporise dry herb too.

Sure, they've been around for a while, but they have some limitations. I've seen "Volcano Poo" if you know what I mean, and that color screams, "Acrylamide!" to me. With an extract you can simply inhale much less of anything, precisely control temperature over a tiny volume of material, and isolate only those elements of the plant you want (leaving out waxes, cellulose, etc).

I think inhaling smoke is the key here. Do nicotine patches increase risk of heart disease and stroke?

I imagine wood smoke is full of carcinogens too. Same with plastic.

We were just not built to inhale smoke chronically.

Agree. And even vaporizing the plant would have all sorts of chemicals beyond THC and CBD. A better study would test synthetic THC and CBD, either oral or vaporized.

Luckily it's fairly easy to study the difference in chemical output between the different ingestion methods. Vaping vs Smoking is quite different.

>The new study used a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS) to examine the gas components of the vapor. The analysis showed that the Volcano® vapor was remarkably clean, consisting 95% of THC with traces of cannabinol (CBN), another cannabinoid. The remaining 5% consisted of small amounts of three other components: one suspected cannabinoid relative, one suspected PAH, and caryophyllene, a fragrant oil in cannabis and other plants. In contrast over 111 different components appeared in the gas of the combusted smoke, including a half dozen known PAHs. Non-cannabinoids accounted for as much as 88% of the total gas content of the smoke.

Yes, smoke is bad. Cannot control the compounds that form in such an uncontrolled high energy environment.

Vaporizer on the other hand has clean inputs.

I thought that at first as well and I still imagine that smoking it causes more risk than eating it but the article does say this...

Previous research in cell cultures has shown that heart muscle cells have cannabis receptors relevant to contractility, or squeezing ability, suggesting that those receptors might be one mechanism through which marijuana use could affect the cardiovascular system.

Nicotine is a known stimulant and vasoconstrictor so one could imagine that it's not great for long term cardiovascular health. That said, it seems consensus is that it's better than smoking [1] (quite old I know).

EDIT: Also, yes wood smoke has bad things in it [2], but dose and dilution make the poison. In the developing world, poor venting of wood stoves is a real health problem [3].

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109797... [2] https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/wood-smoke-and-your-health [3] http://www.unfoundation.org/who-we-are/impact/our-impact/dec...

Quickening and impeding the heart just makes it work harder to get the same job done. Why wouldn't we think this has similar effects to mild exercise on long term CV performance?

That's a good point, and I don't know. Though I would propose that there's a difference between chronic stressor and short term stressors. In the case of exercise you're fluctuating up and down, in the case of a nicotine patch, you might be more constantly stressed.

There's emerging evidence that nicotine itself actually increases lifespan.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23871228

Right, though fruit flies may not be the ideal model system here.

I've really been wondering about the long term effects of marijuana smoke, in particular the bewildering strains that have been bred in response to market forces and growing constraints over the past 50 years. I have a feeling that it is going to be the Millennial generation's "why didn't anyone tell us!" chronic health problem.

Pointless anecdata: a conversation with a coroner in Washington State reveals his observation that since legalization occurred the lung quality of younger folks dying for unrelated/accidental reasons has been atrocious.

I'm betting we find a notable difference in effects based on what people are doing after ingesting in different ways. I suspect certain types of mental & physical exercises done at some point after ingestion could help to a large degree.

I'm solely talking about the long term effects of filling your lungs with fine particulates.

Gotcha. Maybe we can find a way to think the particulates out of our body?

I cannot agree more with your sentiment. As a millennial, I can't wait for the surge in lung and oral cancer in about 20 yrs, when the cannabis industry unsurprisingly starts dodging the "real" health negatives of smoking cannabis.

Just give us access to high quality vape and oral versions instead. It has to be legal and properly supervised by FDA to achieve this. More than tobacco.

Link to the actual study?

I couldn't find it.

"...when marijuana use was illegal in most states."

"It identified 316,000 patients - 1.5 per cent - where marijuana use was diagnosed in the notes."

I'm not a researcher but I would suspect there are massive holes in this research. How many of these people would not voluntarily reveal MJ usage given it's illegality or stigma. The amount of MJ usage/duration during the patient's lifetime etc is also a huge factor.

my thought was that "where marijuana use was diagnosed in the notes" means the patient volunteered that information, which they likely wouldn't do unless they were moderate/heavy users. But it's just too much to guess about without seeing the detailed methodology.

I would not reveal cannabis use to my GP, nor would I advise any person in the US to do so. A note can (probably will) be made in your medical records. That note may follow you around, and cause doctors to treat you as a "drug-seeking" patient.

Not necessarily disagreeing, but AFAIK, "Delta-Sierras" are after hard drugs. MMJ is not(yet?) a problem for medics. It is still illegal federally, so you could expect that to be used against you in a variety of dubiously connected ways.

I live in a red state where cannabis is as hard a drug as as you can get as far as the law is concerned.

As I mention in my comment the study has not been released yet. It seems the whole article is based on the press release.

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