lung damage

I'm guessing bill will have a good response for this question, but i was wondering this the other day. is there any specualation on what, say, smoking a few times a week for year, will do to you're dying age? aka, how many years would it take off? Got me thinkin....

 

What do you prefer: Dying earlier but enjoying life or Living longer but wasting your life? Personally, I like being healthy but an extra year or two when I'm old and decrepit isn't worth a life without weed. I mean, say I live to be 90. It's not like I'm going to do a whole lot when I that old anyways. Except keep smoking of course.

 

i dont think enjoying or not enjoying my life does or should depend on whether or not i smoke.

 

yes it will,smoking weed will harm your lungs, but i realy wouldnt worry about it, keep active and eat right and it wont realy matter,i know people who are 50 and still smoking and have been for like 35 years and there fine.

 

im saying like would it take off a few months, couple years, that type of thing. I'm not contemplating my future as a smoker, the thought occured to me and i got curious.

 

it doesnt work like that,depends on how much you smoke,your body type how fit you are ect...,you realy cant calculate that

 

yeah i guessed that...

 

If your worried about your health, you could always use a vaporizer. None of the crap you find in smoke, just a clean high. The only problem is the good ones arent cheap.
When I get some money, I'm getting this one:
http://www.wickedroots.com/vaporizers/super_vapezilla_vaporizer.html

 

Doing it a few times a year? Not really a problem, you inhale worse every day if you live in a big city. Seriously though, it only takes a day or two for your lungs to clean themselves. Maybe longer, but smoking that infrequently will not have a large impact. I'm sure it takes longer for your lungs to clean out if you smoke a lot, because not only is there constantly more to clean, but the cells would start getting damaged from all that hot smoke. The damage would also start compounding. I doubt there'd be much noticable loss of time if you only smoked a few times a year. Marijuana smoke also isn't radioactive like tobacco smoke is (thanks to the additives), and also unlike tobacco smoke, marijuana OPENS up airways, so the tars aren't trapped in constricted lung spaces; thus facilitating faster lung clean-up.

 

i meant smoking 4-5 days a week for a year. just as an example...

 

there is no substance in the world that 'takes off' days or months from your life. they calculate those sayings like 'every cigarette takes a day off your life' by average statistical things. for example one way of donig it might be to get the average lifespan of smokers and nonsmokers. then find th average amount smoked. then you divide the amount smoked by the difference in the lifespans. this will tell you how many units of life each cigarette will take off.

but thats all bullshit, tobacco will just make you get lung cancer at one point but if you stopped smoking at some point in your life, then only cancer will kill you from the smoking. you cant calculate when cancer strikes and it doesnt correlate directly with how many cigarettes smoked.

cannabis apparently raises the lifespan of tobacco smokers by like 15 years, or something crazy like that.

smoking cannabis will not make you die earlier by any unit of time. if yo usmoked weed, and just weed (not cigarettes) 4-5 times a week all year.. then the worst problems youll get are things like in some few cases, bronchitis. but those things dont make you die sonner, especially if theyre caused by weed.

but really as tripsta pointed out, lungs dont take long to clean themselves especially from weed. marijuana helps itself get out of the body.

jake, dont worry. its not gonna make you die sooner and if it does, it already has taken off however many days or months from your life that youd like to believe.

but since the only study ive seen showed that cannabis increased the lifespan of people in a certain group, i really dont think theres anything to worry about. it either helps or hurts. id say cannabis helps.

 

You could decide that you're never going to smoke again so that you can live a long and fruitful life, then walk outside and get hit by a bus =P

My friend's grandfather lived to be 98, and he smoked shisha (tobacco) from his hookah every day. At around 85 the doctor told him if he wants to live longer, to stop smoking. He said that for all he knew it was the only thing keeping him alive =P

Point is, when you die is determined by so many different factors, especialy unkown genetics and blind luck, that I would'nt worry myself over inhaling some pot here and there.

 

Sorry, I misread you. Well, if for just the one year, then you stopped completely, it probably wouldn't set you back too far, but I'd guess there'd be an effect.

Here's how I see it. First, marijuana smoke isn't as poisonous as tobacco smoke...but it's not exactly GOOD for you. So there would be some loss of time. But then, why are you worrying about that. Such an effect is going to be far in the future. Worry more about just living well, finding some semblence of peace and happiness. You could die tomorrow from a car hitting you, so all this worry about losing a few months at the end of your life at age 90 is going to be moot. It's not really important.

If you notice negetive health effects (coughing a lot, getting sick more often, etc) you should reexamine your life choices including, but not limited to, smoking weed. That's as far ahead as one should think; "is doing this good or bad for me" should be your question. If smoking weed weakens your immune system and you get sick more often, or you develop a bad cough, then it might not be good for you. Same goes for drinking caffeine or alcohol, for having lots of casual sex, eating fast food, driving too fast, etc etc.

 

theres a difference between hindering the body and making you live less. if things that hindered our bodies made us live less then the average life span would not have gotten higher over the last century.

no, the things that they say 'shorten your life' are the things that change the way your body functions. tobacco smoke does heaps of shit to you, from offloading tonnes of chemicals, radioactive stuff, but very importantly, closing your airways and letting your body get much less air and whatnot. this can age you rather fast.

cannabis on the other hand, if smoked by itself, doesnt exactly do your lungs good. however it increases blood flow (higher bpm) whilst lowering strain on the arteries/heart (less blood pressure) and increases the amount of air you breath. the fact that you are breathing smoke means that theres gonna be bad stuff in your blood but id say thats offset by the other changes that the body makes.

though the only times ive been sick since ive been a stoner have been when ive stopped smoking.. which makes me ponder that the immune system may actually be benefited by cannabis but then be in deficit when it goes away. but thats a rather assuming ponder. interesting that its teh case nonetheless

 

or there could be no correlation. Health is such a complex issue, you know? Hard to pinpoint one thing that made you sick. You could say germs, but a healthy body can fight the germs well enough that you won't get sick. Only an unhealthy body gets sick (generally speaking). A healthy diet and good amounts of exercise, as well as a low stress lifestyle are your best bets for staying healthy. Smoking weed, well, there's some evidence (inconclusive though) that THC benefits the immune system...specific white cells, if I recall correctly. But then, all the tar you inhale likely doesn't help (carbon monoxide as well, these things are toxic), so I'm doubtful that it has real physical benefits. Mentally/spiritually, though, I can believe, what with stress relief, the benefits of laughter, and the general fun of it.

I will say this. Whatever your blood dissolves from the smoke, I'd bet that the liver and/or kidneys can filter out pretty quick, except for carbon monoxide, which I'm not so sure about (anyone know what all those "400 chemicals in marijuana smoke" are? And maybe the rate of removal from the body? That'd be interesting knowledge to have). And for your average, casual smoker smoking one or a few times a week, the lung damage is probably minimal. The small amount of plant material smoked as "rarely" as that probably won't have a massive impact.

 

by the time im 70 i expect on beeing in a wheel chair w/ an oxygen tank hooked up directly to my throat, and having a nurse change my diaper... i think id rather die young and enjoy life.then before im an old fart, who cant do anything himself, being a vegetable that is very dependent on others, id probbly cut my own life support off...

 

You have less of a chance of developing lung cancer if you smoke weed. It also allows the lungs to take in deeper breaths, and to clear out harmful/foreign particles much easier.

 

i don't see how anybody can really measure how much something actually takes off your life. i mean there're so many incalculatable variables, cuz every person is in different conditions and lives a different life. but anyways...

i was blazing every day for 3 months(summer haha) and my lungs didn't feel any different. as compared to me having been smoking cigarettes, a pack every 3 days, for around 2 months and already feel the difference in my lungs. weed deffinitely isn't GOOD for your lungs but as a whole, you could be putting much worse things in there.
getting lots of aerobic exercise would deffinitely help keeping your lungs in good condition too.

 

i read this book on nam and all these soldiers experiences, and one part i remember was this one sarge who almost died and from then on his hut always had sandbags pile like five feet high around it and he slept on the floor with his gun etc...there was an airstrike and everyone but him survived.

just enjoy your life and dont get hungup worrying about shit.

 

I found these two quotes yesterday:
"Estimates suggest that from 20 to 50 million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death. By contrast, aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year."
DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young
Opinion and Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law.

"A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly fifteen hundred pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response... In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many of the foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death."
DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young
Opinion and Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law