As you might be knowing the increasing trend of smoking weed among youngsters, is a topic of concern for us. This is even considered a crime. Supply of weed is considered illegal except Australian Capital Territory and raids are going all over the globe to stop this business. The youngsters are getting drowned in these toxic addictions and thus spending all their fortune on them. They buy weed at the cost of their lives, to be honest. And thus, people are eager to know everything about it and most importantly, how long does weed stay in your blood stream to affect you!
Weed does give you pleasure for a short while but leaves long-term negative effects on your body. In 2013, around two to five percent of our globe was found using weed which ranges from 125 million to 230 million people. They all belonged to an age range of fifteen to sixty-five. If you are one of the consumers or are wondering how long does weed stay in your blood stream, here is your answer.
But before answering that it is advisable to stop the intake of weed as soon as possible and save your life. Your life can’t be less valuable than your weed addiction.
How Do You Get High Through Weed?
Weed or marijuana is derived from cannabis plants, thus known as cannabis. This can be used for both medicinal as well as pleasure purposes. Ancient medications had a great impact on weed among those. Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC is one of the main components of weed along with various other cannabinoids. This could be inhaled through smoking or vaporizing. Or it could be taken with food as an extract like brownies, cookies, or even candies. People make rolled cigarettes also known as joints or they might use pipes known as joints.
The smoke containing THC enters your body and then reaches your lungs. There it gets absorbed into the blood. If you eat weed then it takes a longer period of time to get absorbed in blood. This THC when broken down by the enzymes present in our body gets a hold of your perception of reality and changes it completely. This is how you get high through weed.
Tests Done To Detect the Presence Of Weed In Your Body
If you are wondering if you or any person will never be caught after consuming weed then you are very wrong to cause there are various clinical tests available nowadays to detect the presence of weed and to know for how long does weed stay in your blood stream. These tests are mainly run during selection for sports or to test clinical or medicinal use and by law. There are various tests for it like urinalysis, hair analysis, saliva tests, etc for days or weeks. Here is a detailed description of a few of them-
1. Urine test
A urine test is done usually with a sample of urine where the cutoff for THC exceeds 20 to 50 ng/ml. Here, if 11-Nor-9-carboxy-THC or THC-COOH has a concentration exceeding 50 ng/ml then it could mean the presence of weed in one’s body. This could be done from three to four days after consumption of weed for occasional users whereas for regular ones it could stay up to seven days.
This test is based on an immunoassay test where competitive binding could be seen. Here the drugs that are present in the urine sample usually compete to bind with their specific antibody. When urine moves upward it shows the presence of drugs above the cutoff range, as without its urine won’t bind with the specific antibody.
2. Duquenois-Levine reagent
It’s a simple and basic chemical color reaction where the required mixture of chemicals when comes in contact with the sample to be tested turns purple in shade confirming the presence of weed in it. color variations could also be seen in some cases.
3. Azo dyes
They are the most usable dyes for testing cannabinoids nowadays. They are water-soluble and are used in thin-layer chromatography. Two types of dyes are used namely, Fast Blue B and Fast Blue BB. Fast Blue B is faster than Fast Blue BB whereas to give a prominent vivid color result the Fast Blue BB is much better.
4. Beam’s CBD test
A simple and cheap test where the test sample is kept in 5% potassium hydroxide and 95% ethanol. The presence of CBD could be seen by the formation of violet or purple or pink colors. THC concentration can’t be verified by this test.
5. Hair testing
Weed parent metabolite gets embedded or stuck in the hair shaft of its users. External contamination stops completely. The detection for hair drug tests could have a cutoff as low as 1pg/mg.
6. Saliva testing
By this test parent drug could be tested but not its active metabolites. Here the saliva sample could be used for detection for up to 72 hours after the intake of weed. The detection range is 0.5 ng/ml.
7. Blood testing
They are a less frequently used weed test. These are useful in case of injuries, accidents, etc. The amount of THC or THC-COOH in the blood sample can show the presence of weed in it.
8. Neurological test
Here weed can produce marked depression of motor activity as the CB1 subtype of receptors gets activated after intake of weed. EEG OR Electroencephalography is used in this case.
Factors That Affect How Long Weed Stays In Your Blood Stream
There are a lot of factors that can affect the duration for which weed stays in our body-
- The amount of weed consumed in your body is one of the main factors why weed stays longer in your body. So, the number of smokes a regular user has is higher than the number of smokes by an infrequent user resulting in an increased amount of THC in heavy or regular users than infrequent ones.
- The metabolism rate of a person decides how long does weed stay in your blood stream. The higher the metabolism rate higher the elimination of THC from your body.
- The people who have a higher body fat percentage will metabolize weed a bit slower than others thus resulting in a longer stay of it in your body.
- Your gender can decide how long the weed will stay in your body. Yes! You read it right. Females tend to metabolize weed a bit slower than males.
- Water! Yes, again water. A hydrated body tends to lower the concentration of THC in your body while being dehydrated promotes a higher concentration of THC in your body. So, you can say the consumption of water helps a lot.
- Exercising can make the metabolism of weed faster in your body than in an unfit or inactive person’s body. Therefore, you must exercise well.
How Long Does Weed Stay In Your Blood Stream?
- Weed can be detected from three to five days for casual smokers or for those who take it occasionally.
- This can be detected from one to fifteen days for those who are heavy smokers or heavy consumers of weed.
- For chronic users or for people who have high body fat users this could be detected from day one up till a month.
You can start getting its effect within two to ten minutes of its consumption if you smoke or inhale it. if you eat it then symptoms will occur after a while.
Amount Of Weed That Doesn’t Get Detected
There is no perfect amount of weed that you can consume that is safe for drug testing devices but clinically it is shown that infrequent or rare users or smokers sometimes produce a negative result in the weed detection test. Be it urine test or be it hair sample test, the samples of regular smokers gave 100% positive results whereas non-smokers or occasional smokers gave 60-80% results.
Effects Of Weed On Your Body
Before knowing how long does weed stay in your bloodstream you should know its effects on your body and mind. When the person smokes weed it spreads in your body more effectively rather than eating or drinking it. Here are some of the effects mentioned below-
Mental Effects
- The consumer might have a brighter sense of color or sound. He might see colors better and brighter than usual. Red seems bright red or green seems bright green. They might even feel euphoric while eating a simple cake or sweet as their sense of taste is altered. They might start listening to music as everything is much clearer now as their bodies have a heightened ability to hear.
- The consumer might feel that the time slows down for them. Anything they do they feel like the time is not passing by and feel as if they are stuck in the same thing for hours. Minutes might feel like hours for them. Everything seems to move in slow motion. In some cases, the consumer might feel exactly the opposite to it. For them, time passes by very fast. So, you need to know how long does weed stay in your bloodstream to know what time these effects would last.
- Some consumers might feel mood swings. At one instance they might be singing songs, at another minute they could be crying and laughing at the next instance. Once the person starts to laugh they might keep on laughing for hours without any context.
- Impaired movements are another one of its effects. People struggle to walk properly after consuming weed. They struggle to sit straight or to move their body in any other way. They require assistance for moving from one place to another.
- Weed consumers lose their thinking and problem-solving ability for a few hours after getting high on it. They can’t differentiate between right and wrong. They lose the capacity to understand any situation at that point.
- People start losing memory from the time they inhale weed. They forget every other thing that they did while they were high on weed. As you can see, this becomes a huge problem for some people cause their disabilities could be used by anyone to fulfill their desires. Thus, you should be careful about your surroundings before indulging in any such things. Moreover, you should quit it.
- When you smoke weed there are high chances of getting delusional or having random hallucinations. Some people experience their nightmares and some enjoy having tea parties with God as a part of their hallucinations.
- Some people might experience diseases or disorders like schizophrenia.
Physical Effects
- The nervous system of people might be heavily damaged by smoking weed regularly for a long time.
- Breathing problems can occur as smoking irritates the lungs and windpipe. Daily coughing and lung infections could become a part of it.
- You might feel body pain or headache as an after-effect of weed intake.
- Nausea is another weed-induced side effect that you might face while smoking pot or consuming weed. Other digestive problems might occur as well.
- Your appetite either increases or decreases drastically.
- You might experience insomnia.
- You might experience a heart attack as weed rapidly increases your heart rate.
- You get blood-red eyes as an after-effect of weed. Symptoms of glaucoma could also be seen for a few minutes or hours.
Conclusive Insights
Although you might have gotten an idea of how long does weed stay in your blood stream and how you can reduce its effect you have also read about its side effects and thus refrain yourself from consuming it any further. Cause it causes more harm than good.
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