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Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

reuters.com

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Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#21

Post by nxsynonym »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

I'm not offended. I encourage more studies to be done! 1200 is a large number of people, but not large relative to the number of people who consume regularly.

What I'm railing against is "news" articles that don't contextualize or think critically about the studies that are being performed, and try to generate clicks through buzz-word filled headlines.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#22

Post by FungalRaincloud »

artemisyna wrote: post #11
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

1200 person study is a pretty big study. That said, the authors of the study themselves listed some pretty big caveats. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

Those are some pretty big caveats...

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#23

Post by John_Cena »

artemisyna wrote: post #11
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

1200 person study is a pretty big study. That said, the authors of the study themselves listed some pretty big caveats. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

Then the problem is not with the creators of the trials, but those who are reporting them with insufficient characterizing information.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#24

Post by swasheck »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

I agree on your second point. 1200 people is a substantial population. However, we'd also need to read more about the details of the study to see how it was conducted and how controls were controlled and then, naturally, someone would have to reproduce the results using the same methodology.

There are plenty of questions to be asked of this study, but blithely dismissing the sample size while attacking the government (and the recommendation that they do more to protect the populace) are not the first two holes to poke at this study.

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#28

Post by nrjdjejejdd8 »

SN76477 wrote: post #10

Plenty of weed users in the USA have used other drugs, live below poverty, and have other external factors. Im for legalization of marijuana so my thoughts may be biased but I an concerned that this study is bad science. Marijuana isnt legal in most places, perhaps these causes of hypertension are environmental. "For Yankey's study, information on marijuana use was merged with mortality data in 2011 from the U.S. Nat…

It's not science at all.

It's a suspect statistical correlation with poor controls.

Aka bullshit.

Anecdotal but relative to this paper equally valid, my step-dad, grandpa, and a number of their buddies all went through prostate cancer treatment and hopped on weed on the side and a decade plus later of smoking for each of them they're all within normal ranges for every thing (I check in since some of them are genetic relations and I'm nearing that age where monitoring becomes vital)

Too much of this "science" fails to control for mental health. Anxiety is a common disorder in our society. Anxiety from illicit illegal drug use could be the cause here.

It's a crap study, probably intended as fodder for politicians and to stoke fears in the public

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#29

Post by mancerayder »

A lot of it, because it's illegal, isn't grown in conditions regulated in the same way that other agricultural products are grown.

Take, for example, a report from this week about pesticides in illegal growing spots in California. I can't find the Reuters link that talked about banned pesticides but I found: http://www.newsweek.com/illegal-marijuana-farms-dump-shockin...)

and

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/05/pot-laced-with-pestici...

So the question is, do studies on cannabis harmfulness account for this variable, the unknowns and frequently illegal pesticides and other chemicals used to grow it?

I suspect I know the answer...

Re: Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study

#30

Post by mbreese »

CJefferson wrote: post #6
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

>> "If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public." Like how the policy makers protect the public from Alcohol, tobacco, and over-the-counter meds? Also a 1200 person study isn't really enough to draw any major conclusions from. Of course ingesting anything substance of any kind frequently over a period of time is bo…

Policy makers do put quite a lot of work into protecting us from alcohol, tobacco and over the counter meds. Also, 1200 people is a fairly huge study, plenty to get some quality statistics from. I'm not sure why you have been so offended by this research. It looks quite convincing to me, and fairly worrying.

Given the current legal environment around marijuana use (I'm not sure what it's like in the UK), I doubt you'd be able to adequately control for other confounding variables in a study like this.

For example, is there a skew in demographics between users and non users? Socio-economic status? Other health indicators? Diet? Pre-existing hypertension? (Were people self-medicating?) Lifestyle? What about delivery? Is this a smoking-in-general related effect or would other forms of consumption also have the same effect?

1200 people is a pretty large study, but from this writeup, it isn't clear that they would be able to completely single out cannabis as the sole factor. I'd have to read the fully paper to know more.

That said -- it is a worrying concern and certainly a good enough reason to continue studying this potential effect. Hopefully they will be able to continue with lab based studies to try and find an underlying mechanism.

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