The article you linked to earlier said the opposite, that it occurs LESS with frequent, long cycles.
Huh??
Pulmonary oil microembolism
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Q: After injecting 4ccs of EQ the other day I had a very weird reaction. I got light headed and started coughing violently. It lasted for a couple of minutes. The whole time I was lying on the couch, nonstop hacking away. I thought I was going to die. Do you know what happened? I've used half a bottle of that stuff already. Could it have gone bad? Could I have died?
A: What you describe sounds like a relative rare complication with oil depot injections called a pulmonary oil microembolism (POME). The occurs when a large volume of injected oil is picked up by regional lymph nodes, overriding their capacity to drain into the thoracic duct.
What actually happens is some amount of oil is carried into the lungs, causing a violent reaction (a "coughing fit" like you described). The exact cause in your case is a little hard to say, but perhaps it was due to frequent use of high volumes of oil. You mention you were injection 4ccs of EQ at one time. If you have been using one of those 50mg/ml 50-100ml jugs of EQ, I might guess that you have been taking large injections for a while now; maybe just too much in one spot.
It is understood that the threshold for POME is reduced with frequent repeated injections, as the local tissue becomes more saturated with oil. Or on a similar note, perhaps the oil was accidentally injected into a blood vessel. Oil carried into circulation (as when it is injected intravenously) is another was to trigger a pulmonary oil microembolism. This is actually done for certain diagnostic tests, in which a contrast oil (maybe 6-8ml of it) is injected directly into a vein. The oil is used to aid the photography of certain lung tissues.
POME, if indeed that is what you have described, is a serious reaction to injectable medication, but rarely a life threatening one. That should really only be the case if a very large dose of oil were deliberately given. Death from even IV injected oil is not easy to produce and is caused by administrating so much that the cardiovascular system becomes clogged. In rabbits, for example, acute toxity studies have determined that the lethal dose (LD50) for intravenous infusion of sesame oil was 0.74ml/kg of bodyweight. If those numbers translated perfectly to humans, that would be over 70ml of oil injected directly into a vein to kill a 220 lbs adult male. Not saying you should take these numbers to heart (please don't try this at home), but they illustrate that "death from bad injection" is not a major risk for the bodybuilder.
-bron: Body of Science (summer 2005)
The "threshold being reduced" means it happens at a lower level, meaning it is more likely to happen. EG "You have a low threshold for pain" Threshold is the point it is triggered.
