Woman Loses Control of Legs and Hands After Inhaling Nitrous Oxide From Balloons

A British woman has damaged her spinal cord after regularly inhaling nitrous oxide, leaving her unable to walk unaided.

Olivia Golding, 24, was effectively paralysed by a condition called subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord after developing a 15-balloon-a-week laughing gas habit, she told the Daily Mail.

The gas—commonly sold in cartridges marketed as whipped cream chargers—can cause a brief sense of relaxation and elation, as well as sensations like tingling and numbness. But regular use of "whippets" or "hippie crack," as nitrous oxide is sometimes known, can prove dangerous.

Nitrous oxide is thought to affect the absorption of vitamin B12, the newspaper reported. Without enough of this vitamin, the coating around nerves can become damaged, according to Medline. This damage can progress to the entire nerve cell.

Also known as Lichtheim's disease, the condition can lead to numbness, clumsiness, loss of balance and, in Golding's case, severely impaired control of her limbs.

"About a month before I was doing a balloon and I got pins and needles in my neck and back. I started feeling numb in my body. But I never dreamed it was the balloons so I just carried on doing them," she told the Mail.

"The disease has caused different parts of my body to shut down leaving me now unable to walk and feel my body from the chest down—giving me limited use of my hands without them closing in or shaking," Golding wrote in a Facebook post. "I'm on a ward with elderly people with nerve damage and I know I really shouldn't be here."

The illness can be treated with injections of vitamin B12. Early intervention can fully reverse the condition. "My treatment has begun so now it's a waiting game of the reversibility and the praying that it's reversible," Golding wrote on Facebook. She is undergoing rehabilitation in hospital to aid her recovery.

Golding cautioned against others using nitrous oxide, writing, "It's really not worth it." "You do not want the feeling (or no feeling shall I say) of what me and my family are going through," she added.

Humans have experimented with laughing gas since at least 1799, when British chemist Humphry Davy began recording what happened to him and other subjects when they inhaled nitrous oxide. Today, the gas is commonly used as an anesthetic.

It's not just the nitrous oxide inside whippets that can be dangerous. In 2017, French fitness model Rebecca Burger was killed in a freak cream siphon accident, when a pressurized cream dispenser exploded and hit her in the chest.