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Marijuana Could Prevent Alzheimer's, New Study
Chickan writes "'A puff a day might keep Alzheimer's away, according to marijuana research by professor Gary Wenk and associate professor Yannic Marchalant of the Ohio State Department of Psychology. Wenk's studies show that a low dosage in the morning of a certain canavanoid, a component in marijuana, reversed memory loss in older rats' brains. In his study, an experimental group of old rats received a dosage, and a control group of rats did not. The old rats that received the drugs performed better on memory tests, and the drug slowed and prevented brain cell death.' My fine university's dollars at work!" Maybe it works even better in combination with brain-preserving sips of coffee.
Marijuana is memory enhancing? What?
I have yet to hear/see a rational reason why marijuana is still illegal.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Now they'll be able to remember how to get to the cheese in that maze again! Maybe they should replace the cheese with Cheetos though?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"Mommy, I'm really worried about grandma. She couldn't remember my name this morning. Is she sick?" "It's fine honey, that's not alzheimers, grandma is straight buzzin from her medicinal doobie."
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
I wonder which will be first to market -- marijuana spiked coffee, or coffee-flavored marijuana?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The full text of the research paper is available at-- http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/marchalant/pdf/marchalantetalneurobiolaging2008.pdf on the co-author's Departmental website. Might be helpful since TFA is an article out of the University's student newspaper which tends to be a little light on details (speaking as an alumni).
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Cannabis/Marijuana is carcinogenic, and about four times as carcinogenic as tobacco.
They say that if tobacco were "discovered" today it would be outlawed straight away.
Alcohol has serious long-term health effects too, but in the short term it also leads to intoxication and injury and death by accidents. Not just road accidents either. That would be banned as well.
Really, the banning of all drugs is absurd. In an ideal world, adults would be responsible for their own actions and deemed wise enough to decide for themselves what and what not to ingest into their own bodies, and for their actions while under the influence of those substances. However, we live in a conservative, irrational, authoritarian world. And besides, have you seen the shockingly childish and ignorant behaviour of many adults?
Stick Men
yeah, cause we all know how good acetaminophen is for your liver, how good ibuprofen is for your digestive track not to mention how good opiods[/ates] are for your brain but thankfully they're completely non-addictive and nobody's ever died from overdose...
please tell me you're a troll...
Just don't smoke before bed so you get all of your REM sleep. Best time is to smoke is after the dishes are done.
So the way to not be addled and forgetful from Alzheimer's as an oldster is to be addled and forgetful as a youngster from the reefer.
Thanks, science.
So, you can swap possible long-term memory loss for probable short-term memory loss. I'll wait for the large, double-blind study after they've isolated what exactly in the marijuana, if anything, reduces the risk of Alzheimer's. Meanwhile, there have been recent reports that coffee and red wine could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. Seems like a safer, not to mention legal, alternative to experimenting on yourself by breathing smoke. Most doctors will agree that any smoking is harmful, and before you say that it can be eaten or steeped like tea, carcinogens can still cause cancer even if not smoked.
Make love, not reality television.
Marijuana doesn't prevent Alzheimer's so much as give you little, reversible doses of it with every joint. So when the Big A comes along and tries to eat your brain, your brain just goes, "Oh, this again. Glad I remembered to pick up the Cheese Doodles".
It's a training thing.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So you are saying that illegal-to-drive-while-baked is difficult to enforce.
That utterly fails to justify making it illegal to use when not driving.
You are merely punishing the law-abiding citizens because a *different law* is difficult to enforce (and will be broken by the criminals anyway).
That is irrational.
Dr. Tod Mikuriya told me that he had done some research for the government (during the Carter years), but when his findings indicated probable therapeutic benefit and lack of harm, the report was suppressed.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
they joke about this in the auto insurance ads. However, we could start seeing the *real* effects of mj use, if there are any.
granddaddy was a drunk in germany and ireland, and so alcohol is familiar
while marijuana was something that was first encountered as something brown-skinned people used, and therefore, exotic and scary and somehow more dangerous
the first american anti-marijuana laws were in the western states in the early 1900s, and they were explicitly pointed at mexican and mexican american behavior:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is the rosesforalgermon some subtle joke having to do with Alzheimer's disease preventing them remembering that it's actually called 'Flowers for Algernon?' If so, brilliant.
Something tells me it wasn't though ;)
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
The problem with the current legal status of marijuana it that legitimate medical research is hampered. Sure, there is some medical research happening but nowhere as much as there could be. There are many components of marijuana that are not involved with getting you high and these components may have medical benefits. The problem is that we just don't know about them because of all the hysteria generated by "Reefer Madness". We need a calm and rational investigation about all the components of marijuana.
There are an infinite number of dimensions to the whole argument, and basically there are few, if any, good reasons for MJ being illegal. I'm sure someone will trot out each one.
Hemp would pretty well wipe out cotton as a fiber crop, and might well wipe out many of the oil seed crops as well.
Technically I believe that in most states with the proper permits and using approved commercial seed you CAN grow hemp as a crop legally. The problem then is that the market for it is a lot more limited than that for cotton and there are various hoops you have to jump through.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Alzheimer's is plaque build-up on your brain receptors. While smoking weed - THC binds (then later releases) from these very same receptors. Think of weed as brain cleaner.
Marijuana, Schedule I:
Findings required (from Controlled Substances Act):
(A) The drug or other substance has high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
None of these conditions are met for marijuana, so why isn't its Schedule I classification being challenged in court?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Too bad for you that marijuana is a completely non-toxic substance. Chew it 24/7 your entire life and you wont get mouth cancer. Look into it. Find out what an LD50 level is.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Alan Ginsberg wrote a reasonably scholarly treatise a few decades ago called "The Marijuana Papers" detailing the campaign of Harry J. Ainslinger to portray marijuana smokers as some deranged combination of heroin and speed addict. Nobody knew any differently, and the media channel was rather narrow in the late 30's when Ainslinger used the weed as a plank in his senatorial campaign. We would somehow need to unravel and counter that in order to repeal the damage. I'd suggest you're right, that some form of education campaign is in order here.
And marijuana wasn't actually rendered illegal in subsequent legislation, it was simply given an egregiously high federal tax per ounce on its sale. By avoiding the tax, traffickers were able to be pursued by federal rather than state authorities, thus its entrenchment in federal pursuit.
It was postulated that since the perception was that only blacks smoked hemp, the idea of this "social disease" being transmitted cross-culturally implied a form of sanction for racism, and thus appealed to the fearful white anglo-saxon protestant (WASP) that made up most of Ainslinger's voter demographic in 1938.
Anyway, if you can find a copy it makes very interesting reading.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"Canavanoid" = cannabinoid. If the professor himself described the substance in that manner I am skeptical of the conclusions of his research as it would seem that, after exposure to all of that chronic, he has forgotten how to spell!