In recent months, a dozen young people have been admitted to hospital after being intoxicated on nitrous oxide for a long time.
That’s according to senior doctor Merete Vevelstad, who is a poisoning expert at the department of forensic medicine at Oslo University Hospital (OUS).
There, they have seen a development they do not like:
– In the emergency medical and neurological department at OUS, 10 patients with walking difficulties or paralysis that require crutches or a wheelchair have been admitted in the past six months. Common to all is the extensive and long-term use of nitrous oxide, she tells Good morning Norway.
Vevelstad says that they have hardly seen such damage in the past – until recently.
Damages the nervous system
When Vevelstad hosts Good morning Norway, she brings a bottle she herself found out in nature.
THROWN: Flasks like this are scattered out in nature. Vevelstad himself has found this. Photo: Bjarte Ragnhildstveit/Good morning Norway
– This flask is something I found in a free range. I see flasks like this almost weekly when I cycle to work. This is a flask containing nitrous oxide. We didn’t have this in Norway before, and one like this contains 175 doses of nitrous oxide. This is a huge amount, says Vevelstad.
The head doctor says that the price of getting high on nitrous oxide, while being intoxicated, also depletes the brain cells of oxygen.
– The brain and spinal cord are very sensitive to lack of oxygen. It is very stupid if you do this many times in succession, says the superior.
Vevelstad can confirm that it is the same gas that births can get, but that there is a significant difference between what you get in the hospital – and what you find in a cylinder.
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– It’s the same type, but when you give nitrous oxide medically, it’s because it has a light pain-relieving and light-sedating effect. Then there is always a total of fifty percent oxygen, she says and emphasizes:
– The gas in itself is not dangerous, but what is dangerous is the lack of oxygen at the same time and if you repeat the intake on a very large scale often and for a long time. Then it damages the nervous system.
Don’t know about the consequences
The senior doctor believes that many young people are not clear about the consequences, but that it must be explained what damage it can have on the body over a long period of time:
– Nitrous oxide consists of two nitrogen atoms and one oxygen. This must become something in the body. The body breaks everything down into smaller units. When it turns into nitrogen and oxygen, which do not come together, a number of harmful products are formed.
CLEAR CONSEQUENCES: The head doctor says that the product used to make cream and cooking – is now used for intoxication. Photo: Bjarte Ragnhildstveit/Good morning Norway
– Those products damage, among other things, an important B vitamin in the body, which is B12. If you lack this vitamin in your body, you get nerve damage, such as damage to the spinal cord and brain.
The product the gas is found in is intended for making cream and cooking.
– The extent of the damage you are now seeing is connected to the fact that you have received the large cylinders of nitrous oxide – and not the small gas cartridges that contain a small dose, she says.
An age limit has been introduced for this in several other countries. There is so far no age limit for buying nitrous oxide in Norway.
– We have no reliable figures on how widespread this is. But there is every reason to believe that there is an increase in Norway as well. We see many of these cylinders in the cityscape, she says.
Seeing an increase
The superintendent says that the poison information agency reports on several inquiries about nitrous oxide and several poisonings, nevertheless she emphasizes the following:
– Most everything in the world is poisonous if you take too much of it, but you can teach young people the consequences. The price for getting high on nitrous oxide is that you empty your brain of oxygen. It’s like being in an emergency on top of Mount Everest without an oxygen mask. It is very harmful to the brain. The brain can handle it once, but not many inhalations.
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– We are concerned that young people should learn to protect their brains. It is much easier to prevent than to treat these when they occur, she says.
She says that being a teenager is a time to try and test things, and she advises parents to talk to their youth.
– This is not something you can see on a person. So parents just have to ask.
