Cardiac Arrhythmias and Marijuana

Dr. Phillip Leveque Salem-News.com

Phillip Leveque has spent his life as a Combat Infantryman, Physician, Toxicologist and Pharmacologist.

Image courtesy: aurorahealthcare.org

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - Anybody who knows anything about marijuana knows that it causes blood vessel dilation followed by a drop in blood pressure and reflex tachycardia. This is not what I’m writing about.

I have seen and performed physical exams on at least 4,000 marijuana patients. I have also reviewed the physical exams performed by competent Nurse practitioners and Physicians Assistants. In no case did we ever find a cardiac arrhythmia such Auricular flutter or fibrillation and no ventricular arrhythmias except for slight tachycardia mentioned above.

I was a Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology for about 25 years and I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on Auricular fibrillation. In fact, I developed several experimental means for the physiologic production of Auricular fibrillation which I used to test antifibrillatory drugs. The most recent drug was Bretylium, which can be accessed on GOOGLE as "Bretylium Leveque", which also displays several of my research articles about Auricular fibrillation.

I performed no less than 500 procedures developing the experimental model and I was able to produce fibrillation at least 80 percent of the time.

After I published the article on Bretylium, it looks as if about a dozen research pharmacologists jumped on it and tried to patent the concept. Whether anyone was able to do this I do not know but Bretylium was one of the Cardiac arrhythmia drugs recommended by the American Heart Association in the manuals.

I am writing this explanatory information to let the reader know that I know what Auricular fibrillation is.

I probably used up 10 thousand feet of EKG paper during my studies. I found also that I, or my assistants, could produce fibrillation not only in dogs, but also rats, goats and one baboon. Bretylium also works in humans for both auricular and ventricular arrhythmias.

I am no longer surprised when someone finds a new medical use for cannabis / marijuana.

When the treatable lists for marijuana came out from California and the Oregon Dept of Human Services, I scoffed and thought “snake oil”. It appears that of the medical conditions many have a relationship to nerve tissue. Certainly the Purkinge fibers of the conducting system of the heart qualify as semi-nerve tissue.

Cardiac Arrhythmias and Marijuana - Salem-News.Com