Health - Help Assess A Persons Lungs

[Bryan_J]

Hello, recently a person has been a little concerned about his well-being. He has been thinking about his long term marijuana use, and his occasional smoking, and how it has been affecting his lungs. For the past 3 years he has been smoking yottis, or poppers, daily. He smokes loads of one-hit tobacco in bongs. But at the same time, he doesn't smoke very many cigarettes, perhaps 2 or 3 in any given week. In his highschool years he competed track, and was quite competitive. Since the age of 13 he has been biking, and in the past few months treks roughly 35-40km a week. He hasn't noticed too much shortness of breath or straining on the lungs when exerting himself, however, after a couple days of heavy pot smoking his lungs feel rather dead for the first couple km of biking, or the first few minutes of jogging.

So, although a person isn't feeling physical effects on his lungs from smoking weed with tobacco daily, is there major damage being done internally, considering his activity and fitness?

[sweettea]

Well, there's a bit of disagreement about this one.

Some studies indicate that moderate weed smoking of appears to pose minimal danger to the lungs. Marijuana smoke, like tobacco smoke, does contain irritants and carcinogens, but typically moderate marijuana users smoke much less often than tobacco smokers, and therefore over time, inhale much less smoke. So, as a result, the risk of serious lung damage should be lower in marijuana smokers.

No reports of lung cancer related solely to marijuana have surfaced, and a large study in 2006 found that even heavy marijuana smokers didn't have any increased risk of lung cancer. Contrary to heavy tobacco smokers, heavy weed smokers showed no signs of obstruction in the lung's small airways, suggesting that these folk won't develop emphysema from smoking weed.

The flip side is that scientists in the other camp say smoking weed is especially harmful to the lungs because the unfiltered smoke is taken in deeply and held in for as long as possible. So the irritants and carcinogens in the smoke is in contact with the lung tissue longer. Now, if one is a double-smoker (weed and tobacco) then it seems reasonable that the health risks are much greater.

If swiyou are going to weigh the health-risks between the two vices weed or tobacco, drop the cigarettes.

Possibly too swiyou feels sluggish for a couple days because swiyou hasn't worked out during those heavy weed usage days?

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Well balanced post

[Bryan_J]

Well a person uses the weed/tobacco combo to get him stoned and accelerate his heart and get his blood pressure up to get going and exercise. It helps pass time and get him focused on pace.

He does notice on days of heavy smoking and getting high if he doesn't exercise or work his lungs they get caught up with flem and he gets coughing and irritation. But like mentioned, once he gets biking or running and his lungs start working hard he coughs up the bit of flem and his lungs feel as iron strong as they always have.

A person has been trying to look in on the effects of tobacco when filtered through water. Obviously the change in temperature and density will have an effect differently than smoking a cigarette. He wonders if the water would be a pro or con when smoking all his weed and tobacco. He rarely smokes pipes or joints too.