Drug Abuse On The Respiratory System

Like most prescription drugs, "recreational" drugs come with potentially dangerous effects that can have grave and long-term effects on our health. Drug abuse can direct to a range of respiratory problems. Smoking cigarettes, for instance, has been shown to cause bronchitis, emphysema and lung cancer. Marijuana smoke also leads to respiratory problems. The use of some drugs may also cause breathing to slow down, block air from entering the lungs or aggravate asthma indication.

High amount of a lot of the drugs, or impure or more unsafe substitutes for these drugs, can cause instant life-threatening health problems such as heart attack, respiratory malfunction, and coma. Combining drugs with each other or with alcohol is in particular dangerous. Each drug has a different effect on our respiratory system.



There can be strict medical difficulty linked with cocaine use. Some of the most recurrent complications are cardiovascular effect, including instability in heart rhythm and heart attacks; respiratory effects such as chest pain and respiratory failure; neurological effects, including strokes, seizures, and headaches; and gastrointestinal problems, including abdominal pain and nausea.

Cocaine use has been connected to many kinds of heart disease. Cocaine has been found to trigger disordered heart rhythms, called ventricular fibrillation; speed up heartbeat and breathing; and increase blood pressure and body temperature. Physical symptoms include chest pain, nausea, blurred vision, fever, muscle spasms, convulsions, coma, and death.

Medical consequences of steady heroin injection use include scarred or collapsed veins, bacterial infectivity of the blood vessels and heart valves, abscesses and other soft-tissue infections, and liver or kidney disease. Lung problems including types of pneumonia and tuberculosis may result from the poor health condition of the abuser as well as from heroin's depressing effects on respiration. Many of the additives in street heroin may include substance that do not eagerly dissolve and result in blockage the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause illness or even fatality of small patches of cells in essential organs. Immune response to these or other contaminants can cause arthritis or other rheumatologic problems.



Sharing of injection tools or fluids can lead to some of the most severe consequence of heroin abuse- infections with hepatitis B and C, HIV, and a number of other blood borne viruses, which drug abusers can then pass on to their sexual partners and children.

Inhalant abusers risk an array of distressing medical consequences. Long-drawn-out sniffing of the highly intense chemicals in solvents or aerosol sprays can tempt irregular and rapid heart rhythms and lead to heart failure and death within minutes of a sitting of prolonged sniffing. This condition, recognized as "sudden sniffing death," can result from a single session of inhalant use by an otherwise healthy young person. Sudden sniffing death is mainly linked with the abuse of butane, propane, and chemicals in aerosols. Inhalant abuse also can cause death by: Asphyxiation - from repeated inhalations, which lead to high concentrations of inhaled fumes displacing the available oxygen in the lungs; Suffocation - from blocking air from entering the lungs when inhaling fumes from a plastic bag placed over the head.

• John Palsson
• 05/05/2009, 6:59 AM
• 0 Comments