Chronic Pot Smoking Affects Brain Chemistry, Scans Show

slimvictor

slimvictor

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"Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness.
Damage may be reversible if the drug use stops, researchers say

TUESDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Imaging scans show that chronic daily use of marijuana can have a detrimental effect on the brain, according to a new report.

In the study, researchers revealed that chronic use of the drug caused a decrease in the number of receptors involved in a wide array of important mental and bodily functions, including concentration, movement coordination, pleasure, pain tolerance, memory and appetite.

cont at
http://health.usnews.com/health-new...ot-smoking-affects-brain-chemistry-scans-show
 
It only effects my memory when im learning something I'm not really interested in. Plus if i am not stoned at the time I am learning something then it has none of these "side effects" if i smoke it every night b4 bed..
 
When I say this thread I thought twice about reading, as I think Id rather not know,curiosity got the better of me, but with what Ive learned Ill have forgotten it by the time my lunch is over. Phew!
 
Hmm interesting. I wonder what causes the receptors to decline since endocannabinoids wich are basically the same as THC, CBD and other cannabinoids also bind to these same receptors(CB1 atleast), and are produced by our body itself. But then again when you smoke cannabis you flood the brain with cannabinoids and it might put a too-big strain on the receptors. Just thinking out loud.
 
Exactly, overstimulation causes downregulation/desensitization to try to maintain homeostasis. It's really not suprising that this happens, and that the lost receptors return on stopping the drug.
 
again, is this particularly surprising?
i'd think using any drug often will cause (at least temporary) changes in the brain...and pot is something that quite a lot of people literally smoke all day, or multiple times per day, its not too much of a surprise that ingesting psychoactives on a regular/daily basis may change brain function temporarily.
 
slimvictor said:
Damage may be reversible if the drug use stops, researchers say

TUESDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Imaging scans show that chronic daily use of marijuana can have a detrimental effect on the brain, according to a new report.

In the study, researchers revealed that chronic use of the drug caused a decrease in the number of receptors involved in a wide array of important mental and bodily functions, including concentration, movement coordination, pleasure, pain tolerance, memory and appetite.

cont at
http://health.usnews.com/health-new...ot-smoking-affects-brain-chemistry-scans-show
Click to expand...
umm... this sounds like tolerance.

most drugs induce tolerance at least partly by down-regulating receptors. this study could be deceptively misleading...
Hmm interesting. I wonder what causes the receptors to decline since endocannabinoids wich are basically the same as THC, CBD and other cannabinoids also bind to these same receptors(CB1 atleast), and are produced by our body itself.
Click to expand...
same thing with heroin and morphine... the receptors down-regulate automatically when they receive "too many" signals (relatively)
article said:
With this study, we were able to show for the first time that people who abuse cannabis have abnormalities of the cannabinoid receptors in the brain
Click to expand...
it took you this fucking long?

before you guys fear for your brain cells, note two things
1) study is by NIDA lol
2) two regions of the brain actually grow more brain cells when you use cannabis. same regions as SSRIs. i forget which areas, and somebody correct me if this information has been outdated. (not that making brain cells is necessarily a good thing)
 
I thought we'd established a long time ago that chronic ANYTHING affects brain chemistry?
 
^ it's new and scary-sounding to middle class parents reading the news.

thumbs up to journalists for causing paranoia and division in households across america.
 
i'd prefer to damage my liver than my brain. but yeah, alcohol also has effects on the brain that are, compared to marijuana's, downright poisonous.
 
Next thing we need to check is whether there's adenosine receptor abnormalities with caffeine use. 90% of the population could be suffering from this terrible affliction.
 
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^bingo. i googled "brain scan change caffeine", here are the first two results

Are you wrecking your brain? Chilling pictures reveal shocking ...

Pictures Reveal Shocking Effects Alcohol, Cigarettes and Caffeine ...



again, thank you, journalists, for helping to separate families, for spreading myths that allow people to needlessly die when they could have used safely, and thank you, journalists, for helping perpetuate the wonderful cause of prohibition... a policy that has nothing to do with "how bad" drugs are, but rather, with economic/political/moral/religious* reasons.

* there is a meme taking hold of america, the idea that pleasure in and of itself is naughty. "don't let the night of the christian right fuck it all up for us and the rest of the world!" (pink floyd/roger waters)
 
Dumb-as-fuck researchers keep researching bud and telling us how bad it is, but then secretly telling us under their breath that it's completely reversible. Water might lower your IQ if you drink too much but it's reversible. This doesn't mean SHIT.
 
^the empirical data that this study gathers is basically us shining a flashlight on the mechanism of tolerance. the study shows that you gain tolerance to cannabis, that's all. you don't need to hate on this study, only how it is reported (as if there is something peculiar about cannabis in this study, when in fact *virtually all* drugs do what this equipment is showing: neuron receptors down-regulate themselves after repeated exposure to the drug)
 
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