Researchers have analyzed a large number of studies on how marijuana affects your heart

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• Scientists from Pennsylvania, New York and California have examined dozens of studies on the effect of marijuana on the heart in detail.
• Over 1,200 people aged 20 and over took part.

Scientists looked at more than a dozen studies on the effect of marijuana on the heart, and their result is far from conclusive.

This finding contradicts a study published in August 2017, which claimed that marijuana users face a three times higher risk of dying from hypertension than those who do not use marijuana.

The August study had some major limitations, including the fact that it defined as a user anyone who had ever tried the drug.

The findings were alarming. But like every study, this one also had key limitations, including the fact that it defined as a cannabis “user” anyone who had ever tried marijuana. More importantly, however, it highlighted a significant gap in the current understanding of cannabis science: How does the drug affect the heart?

In short, scientists do not know the overall impact of cannabis on cardiovascular health.

For the new study, researchers in California, Pennsylvania and New York looked at dozens of studies on the effect of marijuana on the heart. These studies examined links between cannabis and health problems that put people at a higher risk of developing heart disease – such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure – as well as links between marijuana and heart disease.

But they found that all the previous studies suffered from problems. Some examined only a small number of people, others were too short-term, and others failed to test the right group of people, especially those who would be most at risk under these conditions.

The scientists thus reached a sobering conclusion: “Evidence examining the effect of marijuana on cardiovascular risk factors and outcomes .. is insufficient,” they wrote.

This conclusion thus makes a mockery of previous studies.

What we know about marijuana and heart health

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about cannabis and its effect on our health. Yet in many areas of medicine there is a lack of sufficiently comprehensive research to reach any conclusion.

Scientists know that marijuana use increases the heart rate by 20 to 50 beats per minute, for between 20 minutes and 3 hours. It appears that this could affect heart function, but again we need further research.

A recent extensive report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found “insufficient evidence” to support or refute the idea that cannabis may increase the overall risk of a heart attack, although some limited evidence was also found that drug use may be a triggering factor.

Another study, albeit a very small one, found an increase in blood pressure – but only when people who used marijuana regularly stopped using the drug, not before.

This is consistent with research from the Mayo Clinic, which suggests that the use of cannabis could result in both a decrease and an increase in blood pressure.

With this in mind, Francesca Filbey, director of cognitive neuroscience research in addictive disorders at the Center for BrainHealth, told Business Insider in August that future studies should assess a wider range of factors associated with cannabis use and heart health. This may include weight, BMI and the use of other substances.

How a single study came to such a strong conclusion

So how is it possible that one study reached such strong conclusions about drugs and our hearts when there are so many limitations to the knowledge of this subject? As it turned out, numerous factors were evaluated incorrectly, including the study authors' decision to define as a “regular” marijuana user any person who had ever tried cannabis.

For the study, the researchers selected more than 1,200 people aged 20 and over. The participants had previously been recruited as part of an extensive and ongoing national health survey. One question in the survey concerned whether they had ever used marijuana. People who answered “yes” were classified as marijuana users; those who answered “no” were classified as non-users. The scientists processed this data and merged it with statistics on deaths from various causes obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics in the USA.

The statistical analysis suggests that the scientists estimated that marijuana users were 3.42 times more likely to die from hypertension or high blood pressure than those who stated that they had never used cannabis. This risk also appeared to increase by a factor of 1.04 with each “additional year of use”.

That is quite a stark finding. In reality, however, more than half of Americans have tried cannabis, yet in this study that half would be classified as “regular cannabis users”. According to recent surveys, however, only a fraction of these people use it regularly.

Source: article, image: www.civilized.life; www.cup.com.hk