Does The Weed Stop You From Freezing?

2009.05.03

Has your Dentist ever said to you, “can you feel this“? and you said “yes don’t start yet!” Though there are many techniques to give you a freezing effect so there is no pain, there are two main ways to administer a local anesthetic to your mouth to eliminate discomfort.

Infiltration and complete nerve block.
An infiltration freezing will allow the dentist to freeze one or two teeth at a time, compared to a nerve block, which freezes a whole quadrant of your mouth and is generally divided into four sections. The idea of either remains the same in the sense that after the original needles, the exploration of the mouth and tooth problem should be pain free. The wooden effect is where a patients mouth should have no more feeling than a piece of log and is a sign of a class A anesthetic success.

On the other hand its reported that 15%, or say 18 to 20 people out of 100 have had  freezing and find it will not have the effect needed to prevent discomfort or pain. Many reasons come into play and marijuana is still being explored as one of them. Whether it’s a bad batch of an anesthetic solution or someone who has accessory innervations these variations are still being looked at. There may be an infection issue, a wide flaring mandible, a problem with the gums, an over anxious patient or even a rapidity of the delivery of the solution that can cause limited freezing to the patient.
  
Lifestyles and habits change throughout the years and dentists have been trying to cope with these problems when dealing with patients that don’t seem to have general anesthetics work for them. Whereas weed use was seemingly predominant in younger users, the rise in adult use has become quite high and dentists seem to think the distribution of an anesthetic can somewhat be inhibited by having THC in the system.

 Lipid solubility, protein binding qualities and concentrations have also been considered to be a factor. Its has still yet to be proven that smoking a joint may make you less susceptible to anesthesia but scientists and the medical field are looking at the issues at hand. In the past dentists may have used a variety of anesthetics to achieve the results needed to work on a patient’s mouth with the variables they had to deal with, but today they can gauge the acidity and tissue samples to find the right course of action. With these results, they can find the optimum time for freezing.

Sustained drug use can definitely affect the outcome of having work at a dentist done or anywhere else you may need some type of an anesthetic, be it a local or not, to aid in your recovery. For instance, though marijuana use may trigger a higher liver enzyme that breaks down the chemicals in anesthetics, the use of Cocaine can be far more dangerous, could cause problems in your blood pressure, and should not be used at least 24 hours before getting any form of an anesthetic.