How Does Ephedrine Affect the Body?
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What is "ephedrine?"
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Ephedrine is a chemical that was found in many supplements in the late 1990s. It is made by taking fluid from an ephedra plant. Ephedrine, as of 2003, was banned in the U.S. because of its adverse health affects. People who took ephedrine sometimes suffered from heart attacks, strokes and psychiatric disturbances. Patients with preexisting medical illnesses like hypertension, found their conditions were made worse by ephedra. In an attempt to "dodge" bans on ephedrine, manufacturers also made pseudoephedrine. It is a synthetic variation of ephedrine also banned by many governmental agencies, too.
Effects on the Body
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Ephedrine is a stimulant that causes a person's blood pressure, heart rate and pulse to increase in a dramatically rapid fashion. Adverse symptoms can include nausea, profuse sweating, heart palpitations and vomiting. Death may also result from prolonged use of ephedra products. Patients who suffer from hypertension and respiratory illness have been known to go into shock after ingesting even small quantities over a prolonged period of time. Ephedrine use has also been known to cause these conditions in people who are relatively healthy. Grand mal seizures and cardiacs arrests are two main aftereffects of taking ephedrine in some people. The seizures can cause severe oxygen loss, which may scar internal organs irreversibly. They may also generate long-term or even permanent brain damage. Ephedrine effects the heart muscle by essentially poisoning it into paralysis.
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Research Studies about the Affect of Ephedrine
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According to the FDA, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, substances containing ephedra adversely effect the human nervous system, especially those systems which regulate breathing. In 2005, more than 20 percent of all ephedrine users developed health and medical related illness where they had none before. A large portion of this percentile were women between 18 and 35. Directly as a result of using ephedrine, some patients' autonomic systems ceased to function entirely. The human autonomic system is a portion of the central nervous system that controls heart rate and breathing. It tells the lungs when to expand and contract, and tells the heart muscle when to open and close. Former baseball pitcher Steven Bechler died from similar health and breathing-related effects of ephedrine in 2003.
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