Use High Quality Products
Avoid smoking low-quality herb if you can. Not just because mediocre cbd hemp flower or concentrates offer a disappointing high, it can actually be unhealthy to smoke low-grade product.
The onus is largely on you when it comes to choosing the right strains to smoke. The industry is largely unregulated and without good quality control, so unless your flower is being lab tested, there’s no way of telling whether your herb is contaminated.
What contaminants are often found in bad marijuana? Pesticides, fungus, miticide, fertilizer and even mold – if you find mold on your ganja, either return it to the dispensary you purchased it from or throw it away. Don’t smoke moldy weed – it could make you ill. Inhaling too much smoke from contaminated weed can cause irritation in the throat and lungs, allergic reactions and coughing.
Progress Is Being Made
With CBD vape pens now legal medically and recreationally in many states, consumers are demanding an improvement in the quality of marijuana available to them, and rightly so.
Many cultivators and dispensaries now conduct and publish lab tests. Preferably these will be carried out by a third-party, but in-house testing from quality brands tends to be pretty reliable.
How To Keep Your Lungs In Healthy Condition
Just because you smoke doesn’t mean that you cannot keep your lungs in healthy condition. In fact, you can even “clean” your lungs.
How? Regular exercise, even if it’s only a few minutes a day helps limit the negative effects of smoking CBD joints. Deep breathing is also considered very beneficial.
The Importance Of Good Breathing
When we breathe, our lungs take in oxygen. There are a few types of breathing, but the main two are shallow breathing and deep breathing. With practice, we can train ourselves to improve our breathing patterns.
Lungs require a constant replenishment of fresh oxygen to stay healthy. Shallow breathing, or when we take short breaths, only brings a small amount of oxygen into the lungs, leaving pollutants, allergens, toxins and stale air stuck in our organs. Fuller, deeper breaths allow for the entire organ to be consumed with fresh oxygen, removing the old air.
Stale, toxin-filled air can be damaging to our health if it isn’t taken out. In addition to harming lung tissue, bad air may also cause tiredness.
Give Your Lungs A Daily Workout
Lungs need exercise and movement every single day. When we’re sitting and resting, our lungs only operate at 50% capacity.
At rest, our lungs only operate at half the capacity they do when we’re up and moving. Therefore, it’s imperative we give our lungs a good workout through either light or intense exercise.
Cardiovascular and pulmonary physical therapy expert, Jennifer Ryan, PT, says that “20 minutes of consistent, moderately intense movement daily” is the minimum we should be doing for our lungs every day. If you’d rather not get in the gym, a brisk walk will suffice.
Cleansing your lungs from general particle build-up and harmful toxins caused by smoking is vital. Nobody expects you to go on a run after blazing up, but maybe carry out some breathing exercises after your smoke to freshen up your lungs. We clean our teeth after eating, so why not our lungs after smoking?
Great Breathing Exercises To Keep Your Lungs Healthy
Let’s go over a few common breathing exercises to try after smoking. These will help keep your lungs fresh, clear out any toxins and they may even reduce stress levels too.
Maintaining a good posture for these exercises is very important. louching on the couch isn’t going to cut it, as such positions prevent you from breathing deeply and utilizing your entire lung capacity. If you choose to sit down, keep your feet on the ground, your back upright and your chest open.
Lying flat on your back, with your arms relaxed and palms open is another good position for destressing and to carry out your breathing exercises.
Deep Belly Breath Breathing: to do this exercise, breathe as deeply as possible into your belly. When inhaling, raise your chest and navel – try inhaling and exhaling for five seconds at a time.
4-7-8 Breathing: the 4-7-8 method involves breathing in for four seconds, holding it for seven and then exhaling for eight. A technique used by those who suffer from anxiety and insomnia, 4-7-8 helps to calm you down and clean your lungs at the same time.
Diaphragmatic Breathing: Picture expanding your diaphragm when you inhale slowly and deeply with the diaphragmatic breathing technique. Exercising your diaphragm, a muscle situated at the base of your lungs, helps to increase lung capacity.
The Cleansing Breath Pranayama: You’ll need to stand for this technique. Position your feet a hip-width apart, and after breathing in, exhale using the power of your abdominal muscles. Keep your mouth open for the Cleansing Breath Pranayama exercise.
Clean Out Your Lungs With These Powerful Herbs
Cannabis isn’t the only incredible, therapeutic herb on the planet – various other plants also help to promote good health, and have been used by civilizations all over the planet as natural medicines for thousands of years.
Celery is known medically for its antispasmodic properties, and ancient English and Chinese cultures use the plant as a home remedy for bronchitis, asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Other herbs have anti-inflammatory qualities, help to calm allergic reactions, reduce coughing, kill harmful bacteria, break down mucus, limit cell damage and much more.
After vaping a bowl, why not fill another – or brew a herbal tea – with one of the following herbs: peppermint, ginger root, oregano, eucalyptus, peppercorn, horehound, orange peel, chaparral, lungwort, lobelia and elecampane.
If vaping isn’t for you, then maybe brew a marijuana tea or a Bhang Ki Masala Chai, an Indian speciality.
Cannabis research is far from finished, and it’ll be years before we fully appreciate all of the herb’s properties. Let’s not pretend that smoking marijuana for decades is healthy, but the evidence isn’t there to suggest it presents serious, consistent risks either. Lung cancer is one of the main arguments we hear from anti-cannabis activists, too.
Are you a long-term user of marijuana? Why not share your experiences with the plant in the comments section.
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