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Comment by jwdunne | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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