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Smoking Pot Might Increase Your Risk Of Stroke And Heart Failure

With marijuana use, patients' risk for stroke went up by 26 percent, a new study found.

By: Ethan Weston

Posted at 4:08 PM, Mar 14, 2017

and last updated 2017-03-14 16:08:48-04

The American College of Cardiology has some bad news for pot smokers: The drug might increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

The study looked at the health records of more than 20 million patients from more than 1,000 different hospitals. Of those, 316,000 patients reported using marijuana.

In those patients, pot use was linked with obesity, high blood pressure, smoking and alcohol use — all things that are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

So the researchers corrected for those factors. After the adjustments, they found that with marijuana use, a patient's risk for stroke went up by 26 percent and their heart failure risk increased 10 percent.

There's an important limitation, though. The study relied on people who'd recently been in the hospital, so it might not apply to the general population.