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New Study Shows Marijuana Users Have Low Blood Flow To the Brain (eurekalert.org)
cold fjord writes: State level marijuana legalization efforts across the U.S. have been gaining traction driven by the folk wisdom that marijuana is both a harmless recreational drug and a useful medical treatment for many aliments. However, some cracks have appeared in that story with indications that marijuana use is associated with the development of mental disorders and the long-term blunting of the brain's reward system of dopamine levels. A new study has found that marijuana appears to have a widespread effect on blood flow in the brain. EurekAlert reports: "Published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a sophisticated imaging study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns, demonstrated abnormally low blood flow in virtually every area of the brain studies in nearly 1,000 marijuana users compared to healthy controls, including areas known to be affected by Alzheimer's pathology such as the hippocampus. According to Daniel Amen, M.D., 'Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order.'"
Interesting how science denial has a per-subject ideological bent.
Lord knows that shit is bad for you, but I don't need anybody trying prevent me from enjoying a few fingers of fine rum after a long day at work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Only a complete moron would think that a recreational drug that alters your mood and brain chemistry is 'safe'.
Doesn't matter if it's alcohol or THC, these work by fidgeting with things in the brain that should obviously be left alone (for the sake of health - I think the recreational value is apparent).
We don't do surgery for the fun of it, we don't do blunt force trauma for the fun of it, why should altering our insides via drug or drink be considered 'safe' when no other internal alteration is, and who could possibly be dumb enough to think so?
I know lots of people who drink and this doesn't seem right. Sure, they can be a little goofy at the time of use, but other than that they are completely functional. They're productive, have high paying challenging jobs, one is a biochemist, and their recreational use of drink doesn't seem to make life difficult for them. If the study is looking at impairment at the time of use, how do they equate this to, say marijuana. If someone is really high, I doubt there brain is fully functional at the time either. I don't think drinking is detrimental in any way.
My mother and sister _both_ died from drink. Is that enough anecdotal evidence for you?
No sig today...
The Amen clinics have been accused of using questionable techniques (https://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html and others, just google for information on them). This isn't to say that the data isn't true, but this result hasn't been confirmed by replication of the results by other researchers or more accurate scanning methods.
Drugs are fun. That's why.
But sometimes their effects are not fun. Sometimes their effects hurt other people. Nobody really gives a shit if you drink a beer or smoke a joint. But we do care when your use of those drugs causes undue risk or actual harm to others. We do care if you are not yet an adult and may not fully understand the consequences of your choices.
You're going to die, I'm going to die, everyone dies from something. Life is about having fun.
So you are arguing that we should hurry up the process of dying because we're all going to die anyway? Life is not all about having fun. That's an extremely immature and selfish attitude.
Drugs aren't for everybody, but people like drugs
People like all sorts of things but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have any rules to keep everyone safe.
treat drug abuse as a medical condition, not crime; that approach has failed.
Not that simple. Sometimes drug abuse is just a medical condition. But often drug abuse causes people to hurt others which is (and should be) a crime. See the difference?
You do what you want. Stop telling other people what's good for them.
I'm not telling people what is good for them. I'm telling them what is bad for other people. I honestly don't care if a consenting adult uses recreational drugs PROVIDED they do not hurt anyone else in the process. Problem is that people that abuse drugs are rarely able to avoid hurting others. Want to drink responsibly? Fine. Want to drink and drive? Hell no - now you are a risk to others. Your right to play with recreational drugs stops when it becomes a threat to the safety and well being of others.
But "people with serious neuropsychiatric people who used cannabis have low blood flow to the brain" is both less clickworthy and less politically useful than "OMG pot rots yr brain!"
And I love this: "As a physician who routinely sees marijuana users..." Yeah, that's called "a physician". Cannabis use is common, every physician has seen patients who has used it.
Both Amen and this methodology are poorly regarded. He's in the addiction treatment industry -- look at this is an old marketing pitch of his quoted in a Quackwatch article:
OHOH, Officials at major psychiatric and neuroscience associations and research centers say his SPECT claims are no more than myth and poppycock, buffaloing an unsuspecting public.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There is a reason we are particularly squeamish about handing out legal medicine that works on brain chemistry
I don't think so, bud. Tell your primary physician that you don't feel like yourself and are depressed a lot, and they have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM giving you a antidepressant/re-uptake inhibitor. Hell, they even perscribe such to help stop smoking. That is just antidepressants. Make your way to a psychiatrist and there is no end to the antidepressants, mood stabalizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazapines, etc not to mention drugs like depakote that not only treat seizures and mania, but also migraines. Do you like coffee? Do you know how caffeine "works on brain chemistry"? Get your agenda straight here
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Anecdotal, I know, but the few marijuana users I have known had little drive in their lives (career, education, hobbies). I always wondered whether their personality type caused the use of marijuana or vice versa (or neither). I wonder if this study might explain that.
The ban on marijuana in the US was, from day one, a completely ad-hoc political decision. It never had anything to do with the drug's effect on the brain. Ban alcohol before you talk about the disadvantages of marijuana legalisation with a straight face.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Every intoxicant has risks, some choose the one with lower risks. Cannabis is safer than alchohol in nearly every possible measure of safety.
Viagra also decreases blood flow to the brain. Man has a penis and a brain, but can only use one at a time!.
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(Posted anonymously for obvious reasons)
I was diagnosed 4 years ago with stage IV colon cancer. I did all the traditional treatments (12 rounds of intense chemo, 6 weeks of radiation daily coupled with an oral form of chemo, multiple surgeries, etc.). When it spread to my lungs I had yet more surgery (biopsies, which with lungs is major surgery), and more rounds of chemo. The tumors were at that point widespread, inoperable, and unresponsive to the chemo that was otherwise killing me. Finally my oncologist agreed I had to stop chemo or die, and I was given less than six months to live.
I did 5 months of intesnse Rick Simpson Oil treatment (http://phoenixtears.ca/), mostly because my wife wanted me to not give up and there really was nothing left to try. I didn't expect it to work, and if my wife and my oncologist hadn't both been encouraging me to give it a go, I wouldn't have. It was a miserable experience, being "beyond high" for more than five months (because of the damage 18 rounds of chemo had done, it took 150 grams rather than the 60 it usually takes).
But, I've now had three scans that show the cancer is GONE, I am in complete ("full") remission. The nodules throughout my lungs are dead, there is no sign of other cancer anywhere in my body, and in a few months, if it continues, I go from full remission to officially cured.
By marijuana.
If this were widespread, it would spell the end of several lucrative pharma industries. Oh, by the way, my oncologist admitted that they're required to sign numerous contracts forbidding them from mentioning any treatments other than chemo, radiation, surgery, or hospital-approved drug trials to any patient, and even though more and more of them are aware of the curative value of cannabis oils (especially in the palliative care area where they've given up all hope, and people are going into full remission), they are forbidden from telling their patients.
Unfortunately stories like mine are all anectdotal. The FDA absolutely refuses to consider any study that might indicate a curative value for marijuana. And guess who's running the FDA these days ... yup, that's right. Big Pharma insiders.
Until politics gets out of the way of science, and stops preventing research, there will be no true science on this subject (in the United States anyway). Meanwhile opioids are approved for widespread use on the basis of one article,written by a Big Pharma employee, claiming with no evidence, and no peer review. that opioids are "non-addictive," and how the rest of the industry pounces on that, cites it, and pushes their agenda forward. Funny how big pharma has such a ridiculously low bar for their "science," while real cures for numerous severe deseases, including most late-stage cancers, are held to an impossible standard ("prove it, but we won't allow any studies!") and then dismissed as "not scientific."
I'm alive today because of cannabis, specificlly highly concentrated cannabis oils. Hopefully someone out there who needs it will read this, and not be dissuaded by those wh will no doubt quote doctrine (with no evidence of their own), dismissing this amazing medicine.
My only point was that anecdotal evidence is completely worthless.
Weed is bad, weed kills, it's just a question of percentages.
Some people are OK on weed, some turn into worthless stoners with mental health problems. I don't know the relative proportions but saying weed is 100% harmless is dumb as fuck.
nb. I personally think it's less harmful than alcohol, most other people probably agree. I'll vote for total legalization of weed just as soon as a good roadside weed-detection kit has been widely deployed to the police.
No sig today...
This is just another attempt to define, in threatening terms, another risk for smoking marijuana. We already *know* that smoking marijuana isn't risk free and for some people can be even riskier.
But all of this is a distraction -- marijuana prohibitionists want, and actually need, the debate for legalization to be oriented around the *safety* of marijuana use, both demanding an artificial high standard of safety not applied to other substances and trying to demonstrate unique and insidious risks from marijuana use.
But this isn't really what legalization should be about. We have ample scientific and more importantly, long-term public use, evidence of the relative safety of marijuana. The debate about legalization is about the *failed* nature of criminal prohibition as public policy. Prohibition has been an utter failure, costing trillions of dollars, sacrificing civil liberties, poisoning the relationship between the police and the public, discrediting public health warnings on more dangerous drugs, and all the the while totally and utterly failing to deliver anything remotely resembling the elimination of marijuana use.
It doesn't work. It costs a fortune. Trying to make it work erodes civil liberties. Nobody believes anyone who spins scare stories about marijuana. Prohibition of marijuana is one of the worst public policies advanced by every possible measure.
If the US were more of a republic, it wouldn't bother me because in a more republican state these people (and many of their supporters) could not even vote. However, if we do go full on legalization we will need to veer strongly toward the more pure republic model from the trend toward more "democracy" in order to keep legalization from becoming a crippling effect on our system.
Really... you're going with "drug users should not be allowed to vote"... jeezus it really is the 1980s all over again.
Someone had to do it.