Hookah poisoning – how to recognize and what to do?

Many people allow themselves to sometimes relax by smoking a hookah. This is a fairly popular method of relaxation, which is tightly included in the leisure of many people. Someone simply cannot imagine existence without such a thing. Although all sorts of restrictions are introduced, which, in theory, should limit the use of hookah a little, but at least in public places people find methods to get around this, because smoking a hookah is still a very common thing.

And one of the arguments for this occupation for many is that the hookah is a very harmless thing, supposedly almost all harmful substances are filtered through a liquid. But this is only partially true. In fact, there are a lot of such dangerous effects on smoking. Let us consider more specifically one of the examples, namely poisoning. Unfortunately, this is also the case when dealing with hookah, more often than it seems.

Why is this happening?

The causes of such poisoning can be several at once. Firstly, an impressive amount of carbon monoxide enters the body. If a person smokes an ordinary cigarette for about five minutes, then the hookah smokes much longer, about half an hour, sometimes more. As a result, the portion of carbon monoxide increases sharply, but hemoglobin is blocked in this case, because oxygen transfer is deteriorating. As a result, cells of the nervous system die, brain and heart activity is disrupted, tissue hypoxia develops.
A less common, but also likely cause of poisoning is the use of insufficiently high-quality mixtures. It happens that manufacturers make smoking mixtures quite dangerous, therefore, after their smoking, poisoning occurs due to the increased concentration of metals and other substances in them.

Signs

How to determine that a person has just begun poisoning? There are several sure signs:

• dizziness and headache;
• pulsation and a feeling of heaviness in the head;
• sharp weakness;
• noise in ears;
• darkening in the eyes;
• feeling as if you were stunned;
• nausea and sometimes vomiting.

If, given these signs, smoking is not stopped, then the body can lead to very dangerous consequences, including fatal ones.

What to do?

If such signs made themselves felt, then you need to stop smoking as soon as possible and bring a person to fresh air. If he fainted, then endure. To unfasten all clothes that unnecessarily pulls together. Put a cold compress on his forehead. Grind the whole body to restore blood circulation. If you have ammonia on hand, then you can bring them to life. If a person does not come to his senses, you need to reanimate him with an indirect heart massage (if there is no cardiac activity). In any case, you should call an ambulance.

Conclusion

Although the hookah is positioned as a fairly harmless entertainment, it is nothing more than a dangerous delusion. It can be dangerous in many ways; it does not cancel harmful substances from entering the body. Well, if you add to this the potential risk of poisoning, then it really becomes clear how negative this method of spending time is. Nevertheless, poisoning, and even with hookah, is not a joke.
Do not succumb to the temptation and console yourself with thoughts that smoking a hookah will not harm you. It will do more harm. Not in one respect, but in another. Therefore, it is clearly not worth abusing his smoking. If you have a method, how to spend time more interesting without harming your health, then why not use it? Your body will be very grateful to you.

Damien Morgan

Психолог, бизнес-консультант и тренер по йоге. Магистр психологии Northeastern University (Boston). В 2017 году переехал из Бостона в Санкт-Петербург. Путешественник и автор блога VrednyePrivychki 🙂