Woman suffers carbon monoxide poisoning after smoking hookah

A 20-year-old woman has developed carbon monoxide poisoning after smoking a hookah waterpipe, leading doctors to warn that smoking the traditional pipes could be dangerous.They say the “light-headed” relaxed feeling associated with smoking the hookah, which is also known as a shisha or narghile, may actually be the result of severe oxygen deprivation in the brain.Health experts are concerned hookah use may be becoming increasingly common among young people, while more than one in ten Arabic-speaking Australian adults are thought to use them.Doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney said the woman had developed dizziness, nausea and lethargy when she was rushed to Sydney Hospital by ambulance, and eventually transferred to St Vincent’s.But after a few hours the situation got even worse when the woman started developing symptoms of a heart attack, said Louis Wang, a doctor at St Vincent’s Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.