lungs

[orangeman]

Well, if i were you man i wouldnt. 95% of THC is abosrbed instantly by the lungs, no one can argue with that as it's fact. So, you have the other 5% still there. A natural breath is about 3 seconds, so in that 3 seconds all the THC is absorbed. Holding the smoke longer gives the carciogens time to absorb, and any tar time to stick to the lungs. This is a badddd thing.

Basically, when your smoking your getting less oxygen to your brain, but if you start holding hit#s it's the same as holding your breath, so in reality your not getting higher, it's just getting you light headed from oxygen depravation, OR it could be a placebo, but either way, holding hit's is bad for you, and it doesnt get you much higher at all.

Smoking anything is bad, period. But holding hit's is only making it worse.

Some people like the light headed feeling though, so it's personal preferance.

But try it like i suggested, and see. You might be surprised lol. But if not, i'd seriously NEVER hold a hit for more than 10 seconds, cos then it's getting dangerous, i mean, our lungs arnt meant for smoke. Holding smoke down there is asking for touble.

Hope this helps.

This made nothing but sense. I don't think I'll be holding my hits in for any longer than 3 seconds now lol.

[EmoRebellion]

Is that the same for big bong rips? I can see when taking small hits off of a joint, but with a bong you generally have alot more smoke (and THC) to absorb, right?

Or am I completely off base here..

[RyanTheCaveman]

Yeh it doesn't cause cancer but..i dont know.
somethign else but w/e.

BTW emorebellion i love taht name...
i hate emos...

[Cannab1sman]

Hi,

FIRST OFF: I am VERY pro cannabis, I smoke it and I eat it and I'd love to prescribe it if the Home Office would be so kind as to grant me a license to do so. I think that every adult should have the right to use it if they want and IF they are aware of the side-effect profile and the harm it can do in various vectors of consumption.

Having said that ....

Cannabis smoke causes cancer as does EVERY OTHER TYPE OF SMOKE. This is a fact and there's nothing you can do about that. Some links to research are contained below.

1) http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/con...ract/8/12/1071
2) http://www.springerlink.com/content/l221477720240752/
3) http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjour...90/16/1182.pdf
4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...527&dopt=Books

This makes perfect sense since cannabis smoke contains almost all the carcinogens (cancer causing chemicals) that tobacco smoke does. Now let's analyze this for a minute.

There is some [SOME] evidence that cannabis has little effect as a risk factor for cancer, but it should be noted that those studies do demonstrate some flaws when analyzed by trained medical doctors. The majority of opinion and quite a few studies do show that there is mounting evidence that cancers can be caused by cannabis smoke. As to whether or not trans-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) causes cancer directly, well the juries still out on that but I doubt VERY much that it does.

It should be noted by EVERYONE that the cannabinoids and the cannabinols are VERY safe chemicals in and of themselves [see: British Medical Journal, 313, pages 270-. 272, 1996], but that cannabis smoke is not. In fact the LD-50 (lethal dose fifty = dose that is given to rats until 50% of them die) for THC is somewhere in the regoin of 40,000 spliffs smoke all at the SAME TIME! However, the ONLY safe way to use cannabis is as a food and to ingest it. This is also the most potent way of getting a high because the bodies digestive tract is VERY efficient at breaking down the vegetable matter and extracting the THC and other psychoactive cannabinoids.

It even causes cancer in your kids who've never smoked it!

1) http://www.springerlink.com/content/np66j505893vq852/

Nasty!



Adverse effects of Cannabis

1) http://www.springerlink.com/content/l221477720240752/
2) http://jcp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/a...2/11_suppl/71S

Someone, mentioned that smoke paralyses the cilia of the airways. Yes, it does do this within 30-120 seconds of the first puff and they stay that way for hours. [but then so does very cold air breathed via the mouth]

A little anatomy lesson might help here:

The defenses of the lungs (respiratory system) are multifactoral and often quite subtle. They start with the nares [pronounced: narays] or nostrils to most people, which contain hairs that filter out large particles. Next comes the mucous that is secreted by goblet cells of the lining of the airway (called the epithelium) which floats on top of a layer of cilia [little finger like protuberances that stick out of the top of the columnar epithelium [either pseudostratified or simple columnar] cells of the airway and waft upwards towards the head and cause the sheet of mucous to move upwards (along with trapped particles caught within it) and into the oropharynx (back of the throat) where it is swallowed and digested in the stomach. [NB: we swallow a LOT, up to a pint, of mucous a day! Yum!]. When the cilia are frozen this mucous does'nt stay put, it does what most things affected by gravity do, it moves downwards and into the bronchi, bronchioles, terminal bronchioles and lastly the alveoli [air exchange sacs]. Here it pools (is NOT absorbed quickly and does NOT transfer across the alveolar membrane (gas exchange barrier), in fact water would move from the blood into the lungs at this point due to osmotic pressure differentials making it worse). The tar from the joint (and cannabis contains much MUCH more tar than cigarettes do) sticks to the walls of the alveoli covering the Type I cells that are utilized in gas exchange causing them to be useless. It also affects the Type II cells that secrete surfactant that keep the sacs open and causes them to collapse and stick together. The lungs contain many pores that air moves through and also that special white blood cells (why they're called this when they usually live in the lymph is beyond me) called Wandering Macrophages normally move though these pores and eat (hence the suffix -phage) foreign matter such as dust and tar and digest it. These cells normally take 24 hours to eat a small amount of concrete dust (which is actually pretty harmless to human lungs!) and take 28days to eat the same amount of tar.

Organic smoke causes these cells to work less and kills many of them off so as I said before, do what you like, but don't fool yourself into thinking that weed is safe to smoke. It is NOT.

Smoke of any kind also causes destruction of the fibres of the air saces causing them to stop being like a bunch of grapes on a twig and more like an apple on the same twig [causing a massive loss of usefull surface area in the lungs and so less ability to exchange gases (IE: transfer ozygen into the blood and CO2 out of the blood) which is also called emphysema. Cannabis smoke [all smoke] also causes the loss of elastic fibre from the casing of the airway lining causing permenate dilation of the distal airways which is known as bronchiectasis [bron key eck tay sis] which is accompanied by a massive increase in mucous producing golbet cells and causing hypersecretion of mucous (why smokers have a smokers cough and always are coughing up white or green stuff). Both of these conditions are defining conditions of COPD or Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease. Both are killer diseases and I have patients that are dying of these as we speak, one of whom was a big weed smoker and hardly touched tobacco.

As for the original poster thought it might actually prevent cancer if he smoked it, that my friend is just sheer MADNESS!

Yours sadly but truly,


Dr. Cannab1sMan, MBBS (<-- UK equiv of MD)
registered medical practitioner