Daily Marijuana Use Is Perfectly Healthy, Study Suggests

LogicSoDeveloped

LogicSoDeveloped

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Lord knows we have our share of daily pot smokers in L.A., the medical marijuana capital of America.
But do they flood the emergency rooms and doctors' offices with requests for health care as a result of their cannabis habit. Nope. Not, at least, if you think a new study applies to all weed tokers:

Researchers from Boston Medical Center and the Boston University School of Medicine examined 589 drug users, more than 8 out of 10 of then pot smokers, and determined that the weed aficionados among them were no more likely to go see the doctor than non-drug consumers.

The research was published online this week by the Journal of General Internal Medicine. According to a summary, researchers found ...

... no differences between daily marijuana users and those using no marijuana in their use of the emergency room, in hospitalizations, medical diagnoses or their health status.
Mom always said partaking of your greens would keep the doctor away.

Daniel Fuster, postdoctoral scholar at both Boston institutions, says:

... Our findings suggest that marijuana use has little measurable effect on self-reported health or healthcare utilization in adults using drugs identified in a primary care clinic.
Still, don't count this as an LA Weekly endorsement. Consult your doctor before partaking of any medicinal herbs, please.

source: http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/09/marijuana_smokers_healthy_boston_study.php
 
But they still keep it so illegal in so many places in the world, whilst alcohol and tobacco is so legal. :\ :X 8)
 
The world would be a happier place if people smoked/ate cannabis instead of drink ;)
 
weed is a benefit to me, it has done no obvious harm to my lungs even though I'm asthmatic. I'm convinced it aids my medication & believe it helps protect me against polution particulates.

On the other hand, I am presently fighting an alcohol habit which although relatively minor was still daily & brought obvious detrimental effects to my daily life & my mental health. Weed I've smoked all my adult life in moderation, daily, & caused myself no obvious physical or mental problems, but daily alcohol use brought problems within a year!
 
Well of course it's better than taking alcohol or tobacco every day, but "perfectly healthy" is an awfully strong phrase and this study doesn't suggest that at all.
 
Clocktower said:
Well of course it's better than taking alcohol or tobacco every day, but "perfectly healthy" is an awfully strong phrase and this study doesn't suggest that at all.
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Agreed.

Tired of marijuana's pro health reputation. It's disingenuous.
 
Yeah I don't think you can say just because people don't go to the doctors any more that means shit is perfectly healthy. I think weed is about as harmless as shit comes, talking in terms of drugs that can be used medicinally or recreationally, but using any substance daily without good reason is not perfectly healthy by any stretch. Even if you were to argue that it had no physical negatives, if someone is using something to induce a certain state every day then they are relying on that drug and diminishing their ability to accomplish whatever they are using the drug for when the drug is absent, like sleeping for example.

I also think that things like a general increase in anxiety are not things people go to the doctor for, like I have smoked weed for 11 years or so, a good deal than more of half of that daily and I am only 23 years old. I KNOW for a fact, my anxiety is worse during periods when I smoke cannabis regularly, I went backpacking last year and honestly the difference in my anxiety level with a week off the shit is huge. I am never going to go to the fucking doctor and say I am smoking too much pot and it is making me anxious, what the fuck should I do? Because the answer is obvious, either live with the anxiety (as I choose to do) or stop smoking pot, does this mean cannabis has no negative effect on my psyche simply because I have no reason to consult a doctor about it? Of course not!

I can empathise with why a lot of stoners want to downplay the negatives of cannabis, after all, we have all put up with decades of baseless demonisation of this plant and a whole host of false claims about its negative effects. Still, I think it is actually counterproductive for the pro cannabis side to try and portray it as completely harmless, to steal the above posters word it is disingenuous and it is very obviously so, I think this causes some people who might otherwise be able to be persuaded to not take the pro cannabis side seriously, and can cause doubt in these people on some of the proven positive things that cannabis can do.
 
I'm too paranoid to go to the doctor nowadays... what ya expect, I been smoking dope daily for the best part of 25 years ;) ;) ;)

Hahahahahaha the fuck! NOTHING is 100% safe 100% of the time, not even fucking BED!
 
neversickanymore said:
personal study concluded ages ago
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Yeah, although this article sure tickles me and makes me hopeful, many more studies are needed, with N's 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger, and much more rigorous methodological design, before this hypothesis is something most healthcare providers and public health experts would get behind. It's a rather bold claim ("perfectly" :?), and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

For starters, there are a whole of confounding factors to control for, when it comes to measuring healthcare utilization. For example, I'd bet the house the average age of marijuana users in any given large population is going to be statistically significantly younger than the average age of the whole population. And healthcare utilization is, at the population level, inversely proportional to age -- a very robust and well-documented finding.

Then there's the issue of reliability of information. "People willing to self-report daily marijuana use, to an anonymous survey, in a historically liberal city, whose enconomy revolves around colleges, in a state where marijuana borders on legal" is undoubtedly a different population from "all people who actually smoke marijuana daily". Relying on self-reporting introduces some major limitations in how you can interpret the data, yes. But frankly, I'm having trouble coming up with a harder, more objective measure of marijuana use that truly samples the population randomly, and has a high sensitivity (few false negatives). As it stands now, there are many reasons, and many effective methods, for ensuring a false value of "negative" on the variable of marijuana use in any healthcare provider's chart, to say nothing of the file that any insurance company, school, employer, or court system keeps on you. In other words, I think there are a lot of regular users of marijuana (and other drugs) whose use is known only to them, that almost any study would miss. And think about it -- if you're an unhealthy person who relies on the services of the healthcare system more than the average person, and you happen to enjoy recreational drugs and have no intention of stopping, all the more reason to keep hush and cheat drug tests.

That said, I do think we're going to find that when it comes to frequent, long term use, marijuana carries by far the least risk and the lightest disease burden at the population level of any common recreational drug. (Though I don't think it'll be negligible.) I'm just calling for good science. Until I see a Cochrane report with a similar title, I won't be telling my patients this or anything similar.
 
Doc... I agree that "perfectly healthy" is a little absurd.. but as the debate about whether marijuana is good has raged on for so long and has been filled with generalizations, propaganda, and ridiculous dishonest claims by the drugs opponents.. So somehow I just dont feel that unreasonable about touting this as "fact." as it is at least based on facts.

My personal experience combined with others experiences with grass lends me to believe that using the drug with traditional smoke as a ROA would not prove to be completelly healthy. Taking the drug through vap, or better yet in edible form, would cut down allot of the health factors that are IMO clear.

Like with everything else in this world, Marijuana will be a positive thing if it is used in a responsible manor. IMO responsible use will not have any significant negatives associated with it. That being said I agree with wise statement you made "That said, I do think we're going to find that when it comes to frequent, long term use, marijuana carries by far the least risk and the lightest disease burden at the population level of any common recreational drug."

I do wonder now that the world is realizing the insanity of at least this prohibition and its use is becoming legal in places weather we will continue to see heavy use of marijuana causing paranoia and heightened government conspiratorial thoughts. As I think being hunted to face incarceration, hassle, and disruption of a users life would make a lot of people paranoid. Also when someone is familiar with the effects of marijuana on their life and compares these effects to the effects that have been claimed by the government and is forced to watch so many people lives ruined buy the laws the government has enacted, it just may be natural to develope a decent level of sceptissim about that governments real motives. When someone realizes they are being lied to and there is a large amount of effort and destruction perpetrated on dishonest precepts, then it just be natural to look for the real motives in allot of the illogical things that governments do. Trust is earned and easily lost and if the government is lying about this then what else are they lying about.
 
Some general thoughts on reading news articles about scientific research:

Who's saying "perfectly healthy", the researchers or some blogger?

Oh OK it's some blogger.

What did the researchers say? Are their claims reasonable?
 
I've used cannabis. A lot. While it resolves some anxiety it creates some other anxiety, canceling out it's effect for the most part. Not paranoid or scared, because if I get caught the penalty is a caution, or a fine of next to nothing here in NSW. But being irritable with a deep desire to punch the shit out of people who antagonize me would happen a lot more if I used cannabis all the time.

It helps with sleep. A lot. But I think mirtazapine is superior to cannabis because unlike cannabis it doesn't cause the paranoid introverted type anxiety that cannabis causes. When I use cannabis I don't want to leave the house because I get this nasty irritable agoraphobic state especially in crowded supermarkets where sometimes I just want to scream because I can't handle it. But alcohol, barbiturates, phenibut, and even weak benzos are always helpful but of course, we have dependence problems with these drugs, but I think we also have the same problems with cannabis with regards to sleep - I knew a guy who could NOT sleep without cannabis - it took him 2 months to sleep properly again without waking up half a dozen times a night. I suffer from chronic insomnia, and wake up often, with a dry mouth caused by mirtazapine - the same stuff that helps me to sleep also sabotages it in a way.

I'd say cannabis is quite harmless, but I wouldn't say completely benign. Mirtazapine in comparison is not completely benign either. Dependence...Sleep...Desert Mouth...wanting to eat like a pig. Both mirtazapine and cannabis indica have the same issues.
 
^Mirtazepine seemed to be similar to marijuana for me. Lethargy, anxiolysis, and never ending cravings for sweets and cigs. A kind of spacey head buzz when the pill kicks in was nice but well outweighed by the brain fog experienced the next day or two.

OT: Perfectly healthy seems a bit much as already pointed out.
 
I literally have only gone one day in the last year without smoking. December 12th of last year actually...as an everyday smoker, there are definitely negatives to my usage. Realistically speaking, I don't think it's bad if an individual can moderate their usage. (in the instance that they are not a legitimate medical patient)
 
Because you know, filling your lungs with smoke once or twice a day everyday is completely safe...
 
How much Marijuana, what type of strains, strength, method of ingestion, etc?

I'm sure a couple of small tokes here and there everyday is no harm.

Cannabis is probably one of the most benign things you can be addicted to, but ingesting it everyday in large amounts has got to lead to some problems.
 
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