Prohibition of the Federal Government – Lachgas: Why is the intoxication with the balloons dangerous?

The Federal Government wants to ban the sale of laughing gas to young people. What is so dangerous about the gas?

When the gas – chemical stabil oxide – is filled in balloons from the officially filled in balloons for cream resiphons and inhaled from there, it creates a short intoxication and makes you happy. You giggle to yourself. Hence the name: Lachgas. But there are also side effects: the molecule disturbs the vitamin B12. This can damage nerve cells if used for longer use, and paralysis can even occur. You can also tip out of the mountain pines when used, which in turn can result in injuries.

Doesn’t the liver like alcohol hits the laughing gas?

No, laughing gas is not a poison in the actual sense, for the most part it is simply exhaled. In the air, it is a very effective greenhouse gas. However, the greenhouse effect of the laughing gas sniffers should not be a real competition to the main source of the gas in the atmosphere: the bacterial decomposition of nitrogen compounds such as fertilizers in the soil.

How does laugh gas work in the body?

The molecule can block certain transitions in the nervous system, which are relevant for pain forwarding. It also works like other drugs, which largely also come from pain therapy, morphine and fentanyl, for example, or their starting material opium. Kokain also started his career as a means of local anesthesia. However, unlike morphine, this has largely disappeared from medical use.

So originally laughing gas comes from medicine?

Correct. In the 18th century, an English chemist discovered the gas and found that it was painful. A century later, an American dentist started to fogel his patients when pulling their teeth so that it doesn’t hurt. After initial resistance from well -known surgeons, it was used for anesthetic operations for a long time. Especially since if used correctly, it has less undesirable side effects than previously used substances such as ether or chloroform. Lachgas are still in the WHO list of the list of indispensable medicines.

For general anesthesia?

Lachgas is not the ideal means to really step away. It looks relatively quickly; But also quite short. The difference when using in medicine to use the youngsters is that the gas is used with pure oxygen in the former. And that is not entirely unimportant, because if you pull pure laughing gas into your lungs, it displaces the oxygen in the lungs. Consequently, you literally remain the air away when you are repeated.

Because you have addressed morphine and fentanyl – does the laughing gas also depend on?

Not to know. At least no physical dependency.

Let’s say, I pull five balloons in every day. On the eighth day, my everyday life continues normal without laughing gas?

That doesn’t seem to be a problem.