›› Ma Huang
Ephedrine was big
news a few years ago. Available over the counter everywhere, this
stimulant had a variety of uses for which it was popular. It could
provide immediate relief from asthma, and was still occasionally used
in asthma treatment in spite of newer modalities. It was incorporated,
along with caffeine and ginseng, into diet pills which promised to burn
fat at phenomenal rates. And of course, its most popular use, for which
it was ultimately banned by the FDA: as a stimulant. Not only would
truck drivers use it, but so would rave kids who would pop ridiculous
amounts of this pill and then go dance all night. It seemed that every
week, another teenager out for a good time would end up exploding his
or her heart.
Nowadays, ephedrine is hard to find, but ma huang, the plant from which
it is extracted, can still be fairly easily obtained. Personally,
although I understand the dangers of this drug, I like ma huang a lot
and believe that, when used in moderation, it is both safe and useful.
The advantages of ma huang as compared to regular old caffeine are
manifold. In the first bit, while caffeine makes you feel jittery, ma
huang, except in extremely large doses, makes you feel pleasantly alert
without excess tension. In reasonable doses, it is safe and effective,
and the crash isn't all that bad. Now the bad news about ma huang.
It is very hard to kill yourself with caffeine. Sure, over years and
years of consistently elevating your heart rate and blood pressure
through its daily consumption, you might burn your heart out earlier
than it would otherwise go, but this makes it dangerous only in the way
that, say, fatty foods are dangerous. With ma huang, it is a different
story. The dietary supplements that contained ma huang in its purified
ephedrine form, whether as fat burners or stay awake aids (called
“no-doze”), were sometimes safe at recommended
doses, but when the doses were doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled,
this drug can put a huge burden on the heart and lead to cardiac
arrest. In addition, ma huang was often packaged with ginseng because
of the high which these two drugs created when combined together.
Unfortunately, this high was very dangerous, seriously increasing the
risk of cardiac injury or amphetamine induced psychosis. So if you do
decide to use ma huang, please be careful!
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A Healthy Dose of Good Advice
