Panicked, Kathia pressed the orange alert us button following her 18-year-old daughter consumed laughing gas at a party. The teenager had indeed symptoms of tingling almost immediately following taking three balloons of nitrous oxide. Our interlocutor today wishes to warn once morest this drug which can have extremely harmful effects on the brain. According to a neurologist, this gas can lead to paralysis, loss of sensitivity and balance and even cognitive disorders.
“My 18 year old daughter took laughing gas. It had neurological consequences. Could you alert the public to the serious consequences of the use of this new youth drug, please? It’s too serious”, Kathia (assumed name) wrote to us via the orange Alert us button. This mother of two lives in the Brussels region and panicked when she learned that her daughter had consumed nitrous oxide in the evening with friends. “She wanted to try”she says.
But quickly, the young girl felt side effects following this consumption. “The next evening, she comes to me to tell me that she does not feel well. She explains that she has ants in her limbs and that she no longer feels her body.” If at the beginning Kathia is not too worried, she understands quite quickly that something abnormal is happening. “She doesn’t like going to the doctor and here she was insisting that we had to go to the emergency room because she wasn’t feeling well”, says his mother. It is only following several exchanges that she ends up admitting that she took three balloons of laughing gas. “She associated these effects on her body with her consumption”notes the mother of the young girl.
Kathia therefore took her to the emergency room and a neurological examination was carried out on the teenager. This one did not indicate anything worrying but the doctors were formal, she must consult a neurologist. “The neurologist did a full work-up and explained that it was a side effect of the laughing gas. It’s called paresthesia and it acts on the nerves, she has no feeling in her hands when she takes something thing”, she develops. Despite this, the specialist was quite optimistic, according to our interlocutor. In a few months, these effects should disappear.
They must know that it can be dangerous for health
If this mother wished to contact us today, it is to warn young people once morest this type of practice. “It’s worrying, young people are consuming it more and more. Apparently it’s very fashionable at the moment and it’s easy to find in stores, these are the little bottles that we use to make whipped cream. They put the gas in a balloon then they inhale it and it goes up in the brain. But they have to know that it can be dangerous for their health”, she testifies. Kathia tells us that when her daughter took nitrous oxide at her party, she had no idea what it was. “She didn’t realize it was dangerous, she didn’t know there were effects on the body. She didn’t even know it was a drug… Today, she is very sorry.”
The risk with laughing gas is that the euphoric effects fade following only a few minutes. To continue to hover, it is therefore necessary to consume balloon following balloon. And according to our interlocutor, some young people take up to ten balloons in a single evening. But too much nitrous oxide consumption can have extremely harmful effects on the brain. “This gas has a very special actionunderlines the head of the neurology department of the Saint-Luc university clinics. It blocks vitamin B12 which is absolutely essential for the machinery of the nerve cell to manufacture what it needs. If vitamin B12 is blocked by nitrous oxide then the production line stops and the neuron lacks things it needs like protein, nucleic acids, myelin sheath which is the insulation of the nerve … Consequence: it stops the activity of certain cells and it damages the cables which must transmit information to the brain.
According to doctor Adrian Ivanoiu, excessive consumption of this gas can even lead to the death of the cell, an act that is unfortunately irreversible. It also happens that the damage is fortunately only partial. In this case, it is possible to recover but “it requires months and months of motor rehabilitation”insists this brain specialist.
Symptoms that don’t necessarily go away
The short-term side effects are numerous: this can range from paralysis, to loss of sensitivity with potential pain followingwards, to loss of balance. In the most severe cases, this can even lead to cognitive disorders of memory, attention, concentration and even psychiatric disorders. “What is worrying is that these people do not necessarily recover and keep the sequelae, probably because we acted too late and the damage was too great. Fortunately, some recover with vitamin B12 treatment and discontinuation of the incriminated product but in some cases, long-term consequences are observed such as the persistence of paralysis, pain or sensory and balance disorders”explains the doctor.
From person to person, the effects on the body may vary. As Kathia explained to us, her daughter is the only one to have had strange feelings among her friends. “It depends on whether the person is already in a state of relative lack of vitamin B12, which is normally stored in the liver. If you have a sufficient quantity, then the danger is less important. But if you are limited in the level of vitamin B12, so even light consumption can trigger symptoms”informs us the neurologist who specifies that it is impossible to know in advance if we have enough vitamin B12 in the liver, even by blood test.
What worries Doctor Adrian Ivanoiu above all is the increase in the number of consultations in connection with this consumption of laughing gas. “Since last year, we have had more and more cases that come with disorders and we realize that it is because of this. We find higher consumption in some people who come to us with tingling in the hands and legs, weakness in the legs, balance disorders…”he warns.
Social consumption?
If we observe an increase in this consumption today, for the ASBL Infor Drogues, it is potentially due to the current health situation and the lack of social contacts from which some suffer a lot. “This consumption is indicative of the period we live in, where we are solitary, at home, alone with less social ties, fewer activities. It is indicative of the need to see people, it is rarely something something that we consume alone”, says Fanny Betermier, communications officer at Infor Drugs. It is true that laughing gas is often consumed in rather festive circumstances. This provides a sense of pleasure and amusement to those who take it. “It’s like people getting together for a beer. So in our opinion, it’s more of a drug that is taken for its sociable effect”continues Fanny Betermier.
On February 4, 2021, the House approved a ban on the sale of nitrous oxide capsules to those under 18. From February 23, 2022, this ban will apply throughout Belgium, i.e. one year following its publication in the Belgian Official Gazette. But faced with this new ban, Fanny Betermier fears that some young people will fall back on alternatives “more dangerous for health”she concludes.
