Pot related illness growing

[spuwho]

Per the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mysterious-marijuana-flu-emergency-rooms_us_5869d6bee4b0eb586489f7e6

Mysterious Marijuana-Related Illness Popping Up In Emergency Rooms

A mysterious marijuana-related illness is popping up with increasing frequency in hospital emergency rooms, particularly in states where cannabis is now legal.

The symptoms are severe abdominal pain and violent vomiting — and most doctors are initially stumped when they encounter patients with the problem.

The illness is cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which is linked to heavy, long-term use of marijuana, according to experts. For some reason, the nausea and vomiting of CHS can be relieved with hot showers or baths, which can serve as an important hint for physicians trying to diagnose a patient.

Since 2009, when the federal government relaxed its stance on medical marijuana, emergency room diagnoses for CHS in two of Colorado's hospitals nearly doubled, according to a study co-authored by Dr. Kennon Heard, a physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. Now that cannabis is also legal for recreational use in the state, "we are seeing it quite frequently," Heard told CBS News. "My colleagues are seeing this on a daily to weekly basis."

Emergency rooms in other areas where cannabis is legal are also reporting more cases of CHS. Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle are among hospitals reporting an uptick.

Though CHS was first recognized almost a decade ago, not much is known about the illness.

"The science behind it is not clear," Heard told the Denver Channel. "The most likely cause is that people using marijuana frequently and in high doses have changes in the receptors in their body, and those receptors become dysregulated in some way, and it starts causing pain."

Dr. David Steinbruner, an emergency room physician at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, believes it's likely triggered with a significant amount of marijuana. "The corollary would be alcohol. So small amounts may be fine for people, but over a long time it will cause all kinds of problems," Steinbruner told KDRO-TV.

In its most severe form, the illness can lead to kidney failure — but symptoms stop within days of ending marijuana use.

"Patients are given IV fluids and medication to resolve the vomiting and help with the pain," explained Heard. "But the treatment is really to stop using marijuana, or at least to cut back severely, and that's really the only way to make it better."

[spuwho]

With the legalization in several states there is for the first time a great deal of study and analysis by several groups on its impacts.

The one thing this highlights is that when it was expensive and illegal people tended to economize their use. Documentation on side effects were small and sparse.

With it becoming more common, therefore cheaper and easier to obtain, people are using more. Also the strength of weed has grown as an effort to breed stronger varieties took hold.

This report merely states that more people are suffering from too much cannabis in their bodies and it is having an effect.

A friend of mine was recently having issues with the very thing the article outlines. The doctor recommended going off weed for 8 weeks and they didnt and it came back worse after 2 weeks. They finally went off for the whole 8 weeks and the gut aches finally stopped.

Other studies aee ahowing that the impact to teens is less than expected. The antiweed lobby was promoting the idea that general availability would cause problems with teenage abuse hasnt come about.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

Spu - is your friend a smoker or are they eating the edibles?

[Adam White]

I thought this was a very interesting article, Spuwho. Thanks for sharing it.

[spuwho]

Spu - is your friend a smoker or are they eating the edibles?

Smoker.

[thekillingwax]

I guess they've been pushing this hard on the news. My mom called me and was like "now TV says pot will kill your kidneys!", so they're getting it out there. As helpful as I've found it, I do realize that too much of anything can be bad and it's not some cure all that's great for everyone.

Only time I've ever felt sick is when I had an edible the first time and it was really potent and I didn't know quite what to expect. Even then, it was only maybe half an hour out of a pretty excellent afternoon. I use a vaporizer 95% of the time, it's the way to go for me- you get more with less and then you've got the leftovers which I put into a coffee grinder and save up for edibles/infused oil. I'll smoke if it's what someone else wants to do but I couldn't handle it on a daily basis, kills my throat.