[quote]jarvis wrote:
jbodzin wrote:
Question, dosnt pot slow your metabolism?
I’m not entirely certain but I’d say that if anything it accelerates your metabolism. Your heart rate increases when you smoke marijuana as does your appetite.
[/quote]
I have read the same. Many of the myths surrounding it are untrue and unsupported. I will try to find some solid studies, but it isn’t like this is top priority.
[quote]itsthenickman wrote:
Dude, do whatever the fuck you want. The people bashing the chronic are the same people who think abstinence is the safest form of sex. [/quote]
How far out in left field did you have to go to come up with that idiotism?
Just my experiences with it:
I used to be a HEAVY smoker about 3 months ago, at least once daily usually 2-3 times or more. I started getting gyno and when I got my hormone levels checked, my free test was abysmally low and my estradiol was really high (E to T ratio was actually positive in favor of E.) My libido was low as hell.
So yeah, for me it definitely did alter my physiology. Was it because I was such a heavy user, or because I have a sensitivity to such things, or both? I’m not sure…but I’ve smoked 3 times since and I started growing thick facial hair a month or so after quitting: definitely not a coincidence.
For me it was a choice between being high all the time and having some god damn test in my blood…and it was a no-brainer.
As I said before this is my body, so someone else may react differently than me. But I definitely thought my experience was pertinent to the question.
As for help cutting down on usage, just stay busy with other stuff. 99% of the time you’re getting stoned cuz you’re bored, so make sure you’re always doing something. Occasional use is perfectly fine (meaning once/month-2 months or so) and won’t hinder your progress at all.
Who cares about the “scientific” studies? Does anyone know anybody who does drugs on a daily basis and is successful in life or the weight room? The only guys I ever knew who got into drugs all ended up droppping out of college. It just seems to me, if you are interested in building your body and doing something healthy, why do the opposite?
I smoke alot as well, I have had great success weight lifting/ weight gain ect. Does it hinder gains? probably. but I enjoy smoking, its a trade off, I dont lift to become Mr. USA, or the stongest man in the world, it helps me live a healthier lifestyle, more energy, and provides an attractive appearance …if you dont agree with it fine…but if you make a blanket statement like “smoking is stupid go find another site wah wah” well fu*k you. What if I said I drink alot of beer is that ok because its legal should I still find another site
Its about your goals, are you lifting to achieve the maximum performance that you are capable of? then stop smoking, it cant be good for your performance. If you are willing to accept the some negative affects then your set…just be aware of what its doing to your body as recorded in previous posts. its about BALANCE!
I smoke alot as well, I have had great success weight lifting/ weight gain ect. Does it hinder gains? probably. but I enjoy smoking, its a trade off, I dont lift to become Mr. USA, or the stongest man in the world, it helps me live a healthier lifestyle, more energy, and provides an attractive appearance …if you dont agree with it fine…but if you make a blanket statement like “smoking is stupid go find another site wah wah” well fu*k you. What if I said I drink alot of beer is that ok because its legal should I still find another site
Its about your goals, are you lifting to achieve the maximum performance that you are capable of? then stop smoking, it cant be good for your performance. If you are willing to accept the some negative affects then your set…just be aware of what its doing to your body as recorded in previous posts. its about BALANCE!
[quote]PGJ wrote:
Who cares about the “scientific” studies? Does anyone know anybody who does drugs on a daily basis and is successful in life or the weight room? [/quote]
Yep. More than you can imagine. It’s all about not losing focus on your goals in life and enjoying what you can when you can.
How many people you know drink everyday, yet still hold down a successful career?
[quote]FFB4Life wrote:
I’m currently on the Waterbury Method and will follow it up with The Art of Waterbury & Poliquin’s Lactic Acid Training or 10x3 FFL.
I take Powerdrive Pre workout and Surge Post workout. I take whey protein throughout the day and Metabolic Drive in the evenings before bed.
I also smoke marijuana every night before I go to bed.
My question is: Will marijuana use hinder my progress or hold me back from optimal gains? Or can it interact negatively with the my current supplementation?
I’ve heard several different opinions on this and would like to know what you knowledgeable folks at T-Nation think.
Thanks![/quote]
The only occasion that marijuana would affect your bodybuilding goals is if you smoked it BEFORE working out.
After that point using marijuana will increase your hunger and increase your sleep (the 2 most important aspects of recovery).
Another thing: cigarrette smoking has been linked to lung cancer but not marijuana smoking.
[quote]Gregus wrote:
In reality the answer is NO. That’s right NO. This is an issue to deep to explain and go into, but rest assured that a light smoke before bed will accelarate your gains. You’ll sleep better, spend most of that time in REM. The vasodialation effect will have your taking in much more oxygen and you’ll regenerate faster.
[/quote]
I was under the impression that most of the restorative actions of sleep occured in the several stages past the REM stage. If that is the case, then spending more time in rem would not be beneficial, unless it was the result of more deep sleep cycles, with rem being in stage one, and the progression in and out of deep sleep occurrring more frequently?
Is that the mode and mechanism of this theory?
[quote]trap_builder wrote:
Another thing: cigarrette smoking has been linked to lung cancer but not marijuana smoking. [/quote]
So you can smoke cigarettes and not have to worry about developing a pot habit?
Just kiddin a little.
[quote]BIGRAGOO wrote:
PGJ wrote:
Who cares about the “scientific” studies? Does anyone know anybody who does drugs on a daily basis and is successful in life or the weight room?
Yep. More than you can imagine. It’s all about not losing focus on your goals in life and enjoying what you can when you can.
How many people you know drink everyday, yet still hold down a successful career?[/quote]
Here’s the difference. When you drink, you don’t have to get drunk. Can you smoke dope and not get stoned?
It’s not a direct correlation. Now, if someone was getting drunk everynight, I would venture to say that individual is not holding down a successful career.
People do drugs to get high. I drink a beer with dinner because I like the taste. That beer will not make me drunk.
You want to smoke a blunt once in a while, go ahead. It’s your body. I get drunk on the rare occasion myself. But this guy is getting stoned EVERY day. That is a problem. That’s an addiction. It’s bad. Just like alcoholism.
[quote]PGJ wrote:
Who cares about the “scientific” studies? Does anyone know anybody who does drugs on a daily basis and is successful in life or the weight room? The only guys I ever knew who got into drugs all ended up droppping out of college. It just seems to me, if you are interested in building your body and doing something healthy, why do the opposite? [/quote]
To answer your question…ME. I wake up early in the AM 5 days out of 7 to go swimming from 7:30am to 8:15am. I then walk to my office and work from 9-5pm. I am quite succesful and I’m a college grad. Two to three nights a week depending on the semester, I have classes from 6-9pm (I’m also a current grad student). The nights I dont have class I go directly to the gym. The nights I do have class I get to the
gym by 10pm and bust my ass till 10:45 -11pm.
I drink my Surge and then go home to smoke a li’l sumthin. WHen I get the munchies I’ll take my Metabolic Drive and I’m in bed by 1am. I wake up and repeat. I squeeze in studying, while commuting and on weekends or days that I’m not lifting.
I’ve experienced great success professionally, moderate success in the gym and I’ve managed to keep a gf for the last three years (probably because I barely see her).
I know the little sleep I’m getting is killing my recovery but people have been telling me that if I cut back on the weed I’ll get a lot bigger. Then there are those that will tell me that that’s a load of crap and will start talking about Ahnold and how he used to supposedly smoke all the time.
So I figured I’d post on T-Nation but it looks pretty close to a split decision here as well.
IN any case, thanks for the input guys.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
trap_builder wrote:
Another thing: cigarrette smoking has been linked to lung cancer but not marijuana smoking.
So you can smoke cigarettes and not have to worry about developing a pot habit?
Just kiddin a little.[/quote]
Arnold was getting “small” at the end of “Pumping Iron”. But I bet he didn’t do it every day.
[quote]PGJ wrote:
Here’s the difference. When you drink, you don’t have to get drunk. Can you smoke dope and not get stoned?
[/quote]
Yes. You don’t have to get completely ripped every time you smoke. Taking a couple of puffs off of a joint is totally different from doing ten bong hits…
And I second the brownie idea posted earlier. Eat your veggies!
[quote]PGJ wrote:
BIGRAGOO wrote:
PGJ wrote:
Who cares about the “scientific” studies? Does anyone know anybody who does drugs on a daily basis and is successful in life or the weight room?
Yep. More than you can imagine. It’s all about not losing focus on your goals in life and enjoying what you can when you can.
How many people you know drink everyday, yet still hold down a successful career?
Here’s the difference. When you drink, you don’t have to get drunk. Can you smoke dope and not get stoned?
It’s not a direct correlation. Now, if someone was getting drunk everynight, I would venture to say that individual is not holding down a successful career.
People do drugs to get high. I drink a beer with dinner because I like the taste. That beer will not make me drunk.
You want to smoke a blunt once in a while, go ahead. It’s your body. I get drunk on the rare occasion myself. But this guy is getting stoned EVERY day. That is a problem. That’s an addiction. It’s bad. Just like alcoholism.
[/quote]
Some would argue that the person who has to have that beer with dinner every night is just a form of controlled alcoholism justified by remarks like,
“I don’t get drunk off of it. I just like the taste.”
Now I don’t necessarily believe that but I do know that the physiological changes occur in the body even after one beer.
As for me, if I smoked a blunt I would indeed get stoned.
But I don’t smoke blunts. I smoke a little joint in the evenings. I don’t get stoned or high… I get sleepy…
and “I just like the taste” too. =)
Yes it will hold you back. As others have said, the disadvantages are exaggerated, however doing any drug every day will seriously short circuit your living potential.
I abused marijuana heavily for years. Now that I am off, I will never go back. I am achieving much, much more now than I ever could before.
And although it is demonised in the media, it is hardly the safe drug it is made out to be.
If you are going to smoke, I think to be safe it should be no more than once a month. Once a week would be the upper limit. More than that I think will hold you back. Especially in my case as if I had it, there’d be no way I could keep myself to just once a week.
[quote]Gregus wrote:
Nicholas F wrote:
eh, one joint a day? Come on, won’t hold back any gains at all.
Won’t effect fat loss or gain.
Won’t mess with test levels.
The only thing it will do long term is it will cause lung cancer.
Plese do some thinking for yourself and stop parroting BS you’ve been spoon fed all your life.[/quote]
Show me a study that refutes anything I just said and I will.
Oh yea thats right you can’t. Moron
[quote]smokey13 wrote:
Nicholas F wrote:
eh, one joint a day? Come on, won’t hold back any gains at all.
Won’t effect fat loss or gain.
Won’t mess with test levels.
The only thing it will do long term is it will cause lung cancer.
“Donald Tashkin, a UCLA medical with funding from the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, looked at more than 1,200 people with cancers typically associated with cigarette smoking and a control group of more than 1,000 people without cancer. To his surprise, he found no link between marijuana and increased risk of cancer, even among the heaviest pot smokers. The results of Tashkin’s study, the largest of its kind that’s been done, will soon appear in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarker and Prevention.”
and
“Animal studies have shown that THC has an inhibitory effect on a number of cancers. Marijuana also contains dozens of active cannabinoids, several of which have been shown to block cancer cell growth.”
-from an article by Ryan Grim on Slate.com at
http://www.slate.com/id/2146214[/quote]
I dunno smokey.
I smoke weed here and there. Its nowhere near as bad as cigarettes and, of course, NOWHERE near as bad as alcohol.
But there is one thing. Smoke, in all forms, even from the healthiest plant in the world, is cancerous. Smoke causes cancer. Any smoke, be it from cigarettes, weed, a campfire, or Geronimo’s peace pipe, LOL, you name it. Thats just something you can’t really refute.
Either way Im not worried. I smoke a joint or two a week. Whoopty do. Ive made AMAZING progress in the past year, and if anyone is testament that a few drinks or a smoke here and there won’t hinder progress, its me.
Im all for the movement of the decriminalization of pot, maybe not completely legal but no reason to lock up people who smoke.
Aside from that, just as long as people know the minor risks involved, no big deal.
[quote]Sxio wrote:
Yes it will hold you back. As others have said, the disadvantages are exaggerated, however doing any drug every day will seriously short circuit your living potential.
I abused marijuana heavily for years. Now that I am off, I will never go back. I am achieving much, much more now than I ever could before.
And although it is demonised in the media, it is hardly the safe drug it is made out to be.
If you are going to smoke, I think to be safe it should be no more than once a month. Once a week would be the upper limit. More than that I think will hold you back. Especially in my case as if I had it, there’d be no way I could keep myself to just once a week. [/quote]
This is an excellent example of of why i always tell people that it’s no the substance but the user. Cannabis did not hold you back. Your psychological disposition did. You were reacting to it like a person with a predisposition to alcoholism having their first drink.
If this was alcohol it would be much much harder for you to kick. Cannabis level of addiction is compared to caffeine. Certainly nothing that will keep you hooked if you finally decide to not do it anymore. That’s the beauty of it.
Also, i smoke but don’t get stoned. I dislike getting stoned and therefore never get stoned. I always prefer to smoke to get high with Sativa Based strain and avoid the heavily developed (brown tricomes) cannabis. I like my tricomes clear and cloudy. It gives a very crystal clear headed high that energises and never brings down.
Cannabis is not something that is just cannabis. There are hundreds of varieties and types of aging the plant to get the desired effects. Just like with alcohol and all it’s varieties, incarnations and againg techiques.
I would also like to note that cannabis is smoked by some of the most sucessful poeple i know. People that are self made millinares, business owners, doctors etc…Cannabis never held anyone back, it was just the scape goat of the many poeple who held themselves back.
[quote]Nicholas F wrote:
Gregus wrote:
Nicholas F wrote:
eh, one joint a day? Come on, won’t hold back any gains at all.
Won’t effect fat loss or gain.
Won’t mess with test levels.
The only thing it will do long term is it will cause lung cancer.
Plese do some thinking for yourself and stop parroting BS you’ve been spoon fed all your life.
Show me a study that refutes anything I just said and I will.
Oh yea thats right you can’t. Moron[/quote]
Show me a study that actually demonstrates an increased link of lung cancer. A study-not a government-sponsored blog. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. In fact, leading researchers today do not believe that it increases the likelihood of lung cancer. But it is not good for lung function, and the verdict is not yet out on the relationship to emphysema. The evidence suggests that it increases the likelihood of developing emphysema. More research in these areas is underway.