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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.
Drugs are fun. That's why.
You're going to die, I'm going to die, everyone dies from something. Life is about having fun.
Drugs aren't for everybody, but people like drugs; treat drug abuse as a medical condition, not crime; that approach has failed.
Alcohol, caffeine.. all drugs.
You do what you want. Stop telling other people what's good for them.Live free (and die anyway).
..don't panic
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.
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
You do what you want. Stop telling other people what's good for them.Live free (and die anyway).
Yeah but they want to tell other people what's good for them. So you see their problem now.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
There are also some indications of health benefits of small intake, but they tend to not be conclusive.
Actually, the "health benefits" have, may have been debunked and found to be systemic failures in the studies that originally found them. To put it simply, the drinking group in every test, by necessity, does not include anyone who no longer consumes alcohol due to health concerns, while the non-drinking groups may contain such individuals. This biases the health results on the non-drinking group in a negative manner. It seems when those participants who's health is compromised to the point where they no longer consume alcohol are excluded from both groups, the health benefits are either greatly reduced or vanish entirely.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
(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.
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.