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.

Comments

Dude... like... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Marijuana is memory enhancing? What?

Re:Dude... like... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely is that it stimulates retrograde signaling pathways, which are implicated in the formation and maintenance of long-term memories.

This is because the chemical receptors of neurons implicated with this process are stimulated by "endo-cannabinoids", or, molecules created by the brain which are chemically similar to THC found in cannabis. Ingesting THC (in one form or another...) will stimulate these receptors, which then triggers neurons to fire.

When you stop to consider that an Alzheimer's afflicted brain has major damage going on, and then also consider the implications of neuroplasticity along with this induced retrograde signal propagation, it could be seen that by stimulating neurons that are failing or near inoperable, their information could be transferred to healthier tissues, and retained, rather than simply "lost."

It's a bit like running FSCK on your brain, in an attempt to recover data from bad sectors.

Re:Dude... like... what?

[shaitand]

This is a misnomer anyway. The old studies showing that marijuana causes memory loss were refuted long ago. In fact, almost all of the supposed negative effects of marijuana use were reported by one biased research team and their work can generally be dismissed outright.

There is a short term memory impairment caused by consistent regular high dose usage but it returns in an extremely short period of time after discontinuing marijuana use. The memory effects of years of marijuana use are reversed after as little as a month of discontinuing use.

The real negative side effects of marijuana use are 'a false sense of well being' *scratches head over that being considered negative*, the aggravation of already existing heart conditions, and the ability to cause and/or exacerbate lung conditions/cancer. The last is actually caused by the inhalation of smoke and can be avoided by using other means of ingestion.

Whole marijuana, like any other herb, will NEVER be considered a legal treatment for any condition by the AMA or FDA for Alzheimer's or anything else. The medical profession as a whole does not recommend natural supplements and herbs, they prefer prescription medications that are composed of purified and isolated chemicals.

The best that can be hoped is that prohibition and prosecution will be stopped against those using, posessing, distributing, and selling what is a fairly harmless herbal supplement. Addiction rates and known side effects (and liklihood of incidence) pale in comparison to over the counter medications like ephedrine, cough syrup, and asprin; not to mention prescription medications.

Rational

[Rinisari]

I have yet to hear/see a rational reason why marijuana is still illegal.

Re:Rational

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Because America is divided between people who hate risk more than they love freedom and people who hate hippies more than they love freedom.

Re:Rational

[Nursie]

"So, you get pulled over and they decide you're baked. They can't really prove it because there is no "immediate intoxication test"

So we'll develop one, and in the mean time continue to use co-ordination and driving ability. driving without due care and attention is still an offence regardless of whether you're baked or not. Believe me, the market will fill this niche in seconds. This is just another stupid excuse.

Hey, where's the roadside test for vicodin? Prescription codeine or morphine? Dextromethorphan?

Thought not.

Re:Rational

[dragonsomnolent]

I will merely point out that according to the FDA rules for a schedule 1 narcotic, something has to meed all of the following requirements:

        (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.

    Does Pot have a medical use: Yup, check out marinol (the THC pill). Bang, struck from schedule 1 right there. It has a currently accepted medical use in treatment for HIV and cancer patients. Not to mention that it could be prescribed off label for a multitude of things (low doses for anxiety, insomnia, etc.) I have in the past smoked and it is a neuro-seditive. Side effects? Yeah, smoke too much, you get paranoid, short term memory lapses, etc. Same with alchohol though, in addition, you can die from alchohol poisoning (and yes it would be possible to OD on THC, but I don't think anyone could stay concious long enough to smoke that much, you'd have to have a high dose IV drip of it or something).
    The simple fact of the matter here though is the FDA keeps it illegal not for medical reasons, but political ones. No one wants to be the one who gets smeared for "caving to the drug cartels", despite the fact that the best way to take them out is to take away thier products and sevices. In addition, the DuPont family paid a lot of money back in the day to keep people using wood pulp for paper so they could keep selling thier chemicals. For a good read, check out "Ain't Nobody's Business if I Do" by Peter McWilliams. Available for online reading.

Re:Rational

[tsalmark]

It is often assumed that, in the US at least, marijuana was made illegal to protect alcohol profits. here is one link: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html

Re:Rational

[scubamage]

No offense, but wtf are you talking about? Safer? The LD50 of THC is somewhere in the range of 25 POUNDS of crystalline reagent grade product. Its physically impossible to overdose on marijuana - you simple can't fit 25 pounds in your bloodstream. No other pain killer or appetite stimulant has that sort of LD50. It is about as safe as you can get - even safer than sugar.

Re:Rational

[The End Of Days]

ARGHHH

Please stop making this ridiculous argument. Beer is easy to make at home, but is legal and taxed. Food is easy to grow at home, but is legal and taxed in some (many?) states. Clothes are easy to make at home, but are legal and taxed in some (many) states.

The evidence flies in the face of this absolutely retarded claim.

Re:Rational

[p00dl3]

Actually, vaporization is far more efficient than combustion. The material is heated to the point where the organic volatiles (cannabanoids and terpenes) go through a phase change from semi-solid to gas. Because they are not being combusted (burned) more of the active compounds reach the bloodstream. Conversely, fewer harmful compounds are taken in, thus making vaporization less harmful. Oral consumption (when combined with a lipid carrier such as butter or chocolate) is one of the most efficient methods of use, although the effects are somewhat delayed when compared to smoking or vaporizing. Wow, $200. You clearly have not been to the market since the 1980's. High quality cannabis, consisting of seedless female flowers, goes ~$400/oz in most parts of the country.

Re:Rational

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny...

My job is very intellectually challenging, and pushes the bounds of my memory daily. And I smoke pot every day, even regularly before I go into work. And yet... I'm still seen as the best person we have there, and I'm constantly picking up everyone else's slack, most of whom see pot as such a bad thing. In fact, I'm the only one there that I know of that ever even smokes it at all...

Not only that, but a large group of people I know (some friends and some not) decided to do our own little experiment: smoke pot and study for a college exam. We couldn't find any correlation at all. I wish we got this published, but we were somewhat paranoid about someone coming after us for it, what with it being illegal and all.

Physically, there might be something, but I, like many people I know, have difficulty doing our daily exercise routines without smoking pot before hand (mostly psychological reasons that is the reasons we smoke pot in the first place).

Your argument doesn't make sense to me at all.

Re:Rational

[p00dl3]

Cannabis was renamed by white US politicians as "marijuana" to associate it with itinerant Mexican laborers. It was claimed to cause madness and violence in the "daker races". It was claimed that it caused "our" white women to seek relations with "negroes". Criminalizing it was a way to control the Mexicans and the blacks. Thelonius Monk was banned from playing New York clubs because he had a "marijuana" conviction and had his club card pulled.

Re:Rational

[spidercoz]

and a job

Re:Rational

[WiseWeasel]

Come out to the west coast for a while sometime. Marijuana is very much a part of mainstream culture in several parts of this country, and people already take the drug to very unhealthy/unproductive levels, only outnumbered by those who consume it responsibly. What we're doing now has approximately zero effect on keeping a lid on the substance, and the only real consequence of the current prohibition is that a vast, vast underground economy, one that dwarfs large sectors of legitimate agriculture in many states, is allowed to grow and prosper, at the expense of the government's ability to tax and regulate this trade. Even for harder substances, criminalization is hardly an intelligent way to deal with most of these cases of abuse, when medical intervention would be so much more appropriate than tossing someone in jail. The current drug policy in the US is completely indefensible, and is only allowed to continue due to the political sensitivity surrounding the issue, thanks to propaganda campaigns that were able to find a sizable target of gullible people in this country. Still, marijuana is very much a part of mainstream culture in many parts of the US, and trying to fight it with laws only serves to call the value of law enforcement into question. If you were looking for a way to alienate a large portion of the population from the law, then the War on Drugs is a tremendous success.

Re:Rational

[Mister Whirly]

Yes. For more information I suggest you look into Prohibition in America. It basically created organized crime and made a lot of people, Al Capone being one of the most famous, very rich. For more further reading, also check out what happens to prices of goods once they go from being sold legally to being sold on the black market.

Re:Rational

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but is growing /good/ pot as easy as throwing seeds out in the backyard? I mean, you can make hooch in the bathtub - you can even make it in prison. But it's not very good. For that matter, you really can grow tomatoes by throwing seeds in your back yard, but how many people do that instead of buying them for $excessive at the supermarket? Growing good, potent cannabis takes time and effort the same way making good wine does, which means there's easily potential for corporate commoditization. Never underestimate people's willingness to buy things they don't need to.

As someone who has both grown dope and made homemade hooch (and grown tomatoes, for that matter), I can attest that growing good dope is *much* easier than than making good booze. This is not taking into account the risks of legal issues.

Making truly good beer or wine requires a lot of equipment as well as broad knowledge of fermentatation, sanitation, transferring liquids with minimal oxygen exposure, and a thousand other factors that can produce "off flavors". Distillation is even more intensive to do truly well. You can make bad booze without much trouble, but making something comparable to (or possibly even better than) commercial products takes a serious amount of will.

The difference between growing good pot and bad pot, all growing conditions being equal, is simply genetics. No, it's not as simple as "throwing seeds in your back yard" but then neither is growing good tomatoes really either. But if you can provide the necessary light and nutrients to bring a female cannabis plant to mature flowering, whether indoors or outdoors, the potency of your product will virtually entirely depend on the plant's genetics. A novice grower can likely grow better pot than he/she can buy with good seed, but the most experienced grower in the world can't make Sour Diesel from ditchweed seeds.

The real skill in growing pot is how to achieve good yield, and of course, navigating the the minefield of legality. While not *everyone* who smokes bud would grow it if it were legal, people like me who know how to grow it already could grow lots and give it away to friends just like people do now with their tomatoes and zucchini.

I've always felt that a main reason why such a stupid law persists is that there is simply far more money in it being illegal than could ever be profited or taxed out of it in a legal market.

Full Text of the Research Paper

[Ohio Calvinist]

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).

Um...I forgot

[hyades1]

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.