[Plantagenet]

Marijuana addiction linked to DNA markers

if-you-have-this-gene-don-t-smoke-weed

A new study at Yale finds that people who become addicted to marijuana have certain DNA markers that make them susceptible to marijuana addiction. The Yale study recommends that people who this particular DNA signature avoid smoking marijuana.

For their study, which was published in JAMA Psychiatry, Dr. Gelernter and his team analyzed the genes of nearly 15,000 people sampled from three independent substance dependence cohorts. The participants were being followed for several years in order to try and understand the genetics of various types of addiction.
Between 18 and 36 percent of the sample had an addiction to cannabis. These percentages are proportionally higher than the 10 percent of people who, on average, develop a dependence to cannabis. In order to up their chances of finding predictive genes, a higher number of people with CAD was needed.
While the discovery of genes specific to cannabis dependence is interesting in itself, what’s even more telling are the disorders these genes share. “We also showed that genetic predisposition for cannabis dependence overlaps with genetic predisposition for major depression and schizophrenia,” Dr. Gelernter said, adding that his team was particularly surprised to find the gene overlap between cannabis dependence and major depression.
These results help explain prior research into cannabis dependence that Dr. Gelernter alluded to earlier. For instance, a 2002 study found that 90 percent of people with CAD had some other psychiatric condition. If cannabis dependence shares some of the same genes with disorders such as major depression, then that finding of a 90 percent co-occurrence makes all the more sense.

I found this study interesting because I didn't even know there was such a thing as "addiction" to marijuana. Now we know (1) lots of people get addicted to marijuana---perhaps as many as 10% of pot smokers are dependent or addicted to pot (2) many people who get addicted have a certain DNA signature which makes them susceptible to marijuana addiction and (3) there is an overlap with a population of people with a DNA signature associated with schizophrenia and chronic depression and other mental diseases.

Cheers!

[SeaGypsy]

Interesting. You should quit calling cannabis marijuana, the latter is a made up word from the devil's weed era. Meanwhile me & my two brothers all smoked a lot of cannabis. I have always been able to quit easily, one of my bros has never tried to stop in over 30 years, the other turns into a psycho & everything turns to shit when he tries to quit, never lasts more than 2 weeks & everyone is glad when he choofs up again.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I')nteresting. You should quit calling cannabis marijuana, the latter is a made up word from the devil's weed era. Meanwhile me & my two brothers all smoked a lot of cannabis. I have always been able to quit easily, one of my bros has never tried to stop in over 30 years, the other turns into a psycho & everything turns to shit when he tries to quit, never lasts more than 2 weeks & everyone is glad when he choofs up again.

[SeaGypsy]

I knew cannabis was-is addictive from observation. I only ever had a mild psychological addiction, but besides my brothers I have known many full blown chronic choofers who become unbearable if deprived. Of course this study doesn't look at what the same people would be like without it. The brothers I describe are both successful professionals, more or less successful than without the herb nobody knows.

[vox_mundi]

The DEA will decide whether to change course on marijuana by July

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') In a lengthy memo to lawmakers, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it hopes to decide whether to change the federal status of marijuana "in the first half of 2016."

Marijuana shares Schedule 1 status with heroin, and it is more strictly regulated than the powerful prescription painkillers (like Oxycodone) that have killed more than 165,000 people since 1999.

First set in 1970, marijuana's classification under the Controlled Substances Act has become increasingly out of step with scientific research, public opinion, medical use and state law. Citing marijuana's potentially significant therapeutic potential for a number of serious ailments, including chronic pain and epilepsy, organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have called on the DEA to change the drug's scheduling status.

[Plantagenet]

I'm surprised its taken the Obama administration so long to move to re-classify marijuana. Obama himself was a serious pothead when he was young, and has said on several occasions that he doesn't have a problem with marijuana.


Choooooom gang!

[vox_mundi]

The brain on LSD revealed: First scans show how the drug affects the brain

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')esearchers from Imperial College London, working with the Beckley Foundation, have for the first time visualised the effects of LSD on the human brain. In a series of experiments, scientists have gained a glimpse into how the psychedelic compound affects brain activity. The team administered LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) to 20 healthy volunteers in a specialist research centre and used various leading-edge and complementary brain scanning techniques to visualise how LSD alters the way the brain works.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveal what happens in the brain when people experience the complex visual hallucinations that are often associated with LSD state.

A major finding of the research is the discovery of what happens in the brain when people experience complex dreamlike hallucinations under LSD. Under normal conditions, information from our eyes is processed in a part of the brain at the back of the head called the visual cortex. However, when the volunteers took LSD, many additional brain areas - not just the visual cortex - contributed to visual processing.

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the research, explained: "We observed brain changes under LSD that suggested our volunteers were 'seeing with their eyes shut' - albeit they were seeing things from their imagination rather than from the outside world. We saw that many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD - even though the volunteers' eyes were closed. Furthermore, the size of this effect correlated with volunteers' ratings of complex, dreamlike visions. "

The study also revealed what happens in the brain when people report a fundamental change in the quality of their consciousness under LSD.

Dr Carhart-Harris explained: "Normally our brain consists of independent networks that perform separate specialised functions, such as vision, movement and hearing - as well as more complex things like attention. However, under LSD the separateness of these networks breaks down and instead you see a more integrated or unified brain.

"Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world.

In addition to these findings, research from the same group, part of the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme, revealed that listening to music while taking LSD triggered interesting changes in brain signalling that were associated with eyes-closed visions.

In a study published in the journal European Neuro-psychopharmacology, the researchers found altered visual cortex activity under the drug, and that the combination of LSD and music caused this region to receive more information from an area of the brain called the parahippocampus. The parahippocampus is involved in mental imagery and personal memory, and the more it communicated with the visual cortex, the more people reported experiencing complex visions, such as seeing scenes from their lives.

Dr Carhart-Harris added: "Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature.

In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."

http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2016/04/05/1518377113

[dinopello]

Nowadays, most things, like marijuana us is so casual.

Back in the 70's, it was much more formal

[Plantagenet]

New study shows pot smokers tend to die sooner

heavy-teen-marijuana-use-may-cut-life-short-by-60

A new Swedish study shows that people who smoked a lot of pot as teenagers have a 40% greater chance of dying by the age of 60 over people who didn't smoke a lot of pot. This is a pretty big number and very similar to the enhanced health risks faced by cigarette smokers---for instance for ex-smokers the chance of dying due to cancer by age 65 is increased by about 33% over people who never smoked cigarettes.


Cheers!

[SeaGypsy]

Maybe they aren't really dead... You know old pot smokers never die they just go 'Bomb Shanka Shiva'

[careinke]

In States With Medical Marijuana, Painkiller Deaths Drop by 25 Percent.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')merica has a major problem with prescription pain medications like Vicodin and OxyContin. Overdose deaths from these pharmaceutical opioids have approximately tripled since 1991, and every day 46 people die of such overdoses in the United States.

However, in the 13 states that passed laws allowing for the use of medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010, 25 percent fewer people die from opioid overdoses annually.

“The difference is quite striking,” said study co-author Colleen Barry, a health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The shift showed up quite quickly and become visible the year after medical marijuana was accepted in each state, she told Newsweek.

[Plantagenet]

Marijuana causes damage to DNA leading to cancer and genetic mutations

Smoking-cannabis-ALTERS-DNA-causing-mutations-trigger-illness-including-cancer

Some pot smokers used to call themselves "freaks." The discovery that marijuana causes genetic mutations in pot smokers suggest their children and grandchildren may inherit damged DNA and genetic abnormalities from their pothead parents.


Sure. Mom and Dad smoked pot all the time. Why do you ask?

[SeaGypsy]

As a disability advocate I object, though I did get a chuckle. I suspect what is happening in a lot of the negative generalized stats is there is no factoring for risk taking in general. If you want to mass test pot, first make it fully legal so people don't bother hiding it, then find groups living otherwise very similar lives.

This hasn't been done, so I call phooey again, cheers

[vox_mundi]

Research program studies industrial hemp

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]North Dakota farmers are growing industrial hemp for the first time in more than 70 years, and the New Crops research program in the NDSU Department of Plant Sciences is conducting research to assist them.

Federal regulation of industrial hemp production changed recently. Previously, according to federal law, all Cannabis sativa plants were defined as marijuana regardless of the Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, content. Industrial hemp is legally defined as less than 0.3 percent THC, which makes it unsuitable for drug and therapeutic uses. The Agricultural Act of 2014 allowed research institutions and state departments to grow industrial hemp if allowed under state laws. In March 2015, N.D. Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed House Bill 1436, which creates guidelines for industrial hemp production, and the North Dakota Department of Agriculture then implemented the industrial hemp pilot program. NDSU began conducting research in 2015 and farmers could apply to produce industrial hemp under state and federal guidelines.

Seventeen farmers applied to the pilot project and four were chosen. The selected farmers' applications indicated that they would grow industrial hemp for hemp oil and a building material called "hempcrete," which is manufactured from hemp plant pulp, and as a transitional crop for conversion from conventional to organic production. Other possible uses for Industrial hemp include fiber, food, paper and textiles. It also can help suppress weed growth and improve soil quality. North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goering said, "The program's primary goal is to increase our knowledge of how industrial hemp fits into the existing agriculture landscape and economy."

The research at the Langdon Research Extension Center in 2015 included 12 industrial hemp varieties originating from Australia, Canada, Finland and France. Three of the tested varieties are used for both grain and fiber production, three are primarily for grain production and six are primarily for fiber production. All varieties were evaluated for grain and fiber production, as well as various agronomic traits such as seed mortality, seedling vigor, plant height and test weight. The results of the trials indicated the Canadian industrial hemp cultivars better adapted to the Langdon region of North Dakota and grain and fiber yields were similar to those seen in Canada, where industrial hemp has been grown since 1998.

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/langdonrec/crop ... management

[Plantagenet]

Scientists believe the danger of marijuana smoking causing brain damage and psychosis is significant enough that "warning" labels should be put on all marijuana products

cannabis-scientists-call-for-action-amid-mental-health-concerns

The risks of heavy cannabis for mental health are serious enough to warrant global public health campaigns, according to international drugs experts who said young people were particularly vulnerable.

What are the true risks of taking cannabis? --- The warning from scientists in the UK, US, Europe and Australia reflects a growing consensus that frequent use of the drug can increase the risk of psychosis in vulnerable people

[SeaGypsy]

Do you know that Autism (ASD) is growing as an exponential factor throughout the developed world, with a massive cost, equivalent to third world countries GDP already, billions upon billions spent on decades of research, yet NOBODY KNOWS WHAT AUTISM IS. We can describe behaviours, assign assistance & cost & talk about therapy until the cows come home, but that doesn't change the fact of a trillion dollar epidemic without a known cause.

Alcohol. Ask any random person in the street about alcohol. About damage. Seen any frikken warning labels? Unless pregnant, I think not.

Planty, honestly, you are getting stuck in a lift for a few hours. You choose, are the other ten people in there drunk or stoned?

[Timo]

A good friend of mine went to college out in California, LA area, back in the 80s. All i can say about the transformation he took was OMFG!!! I had no idea we were so sheltered here where i live, and where we both went to high school. One summer during his break, i chaperoned the gang (6 buds) while they all did shrooms, and i stayed clean to make sure they didn't do anything stupid. Back in those days, i actually was a goody-tooshoos. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. WTF did i do???? Anyway, after 5 hours, all ended well, and the guys came back to earth from where ever they went off to. No stupid moves by anyone. Just a lot of walls bending, and trailers behind the birds when they flew by.

Well, through his college years, he became a Dead Head, and followed that band around the country for months at a time. Fast forward 10 years, and this friend of mine in now an attorney with quite the resume, and claim to fame. He won the planet's first major internet spam case. He was married for several years with three kids. His oldest is autistic. Good kid, but he honestly has no idea what is going on around him. 24/7 supervision required.

Cause? No idea. I remember reading about a study suggesting that pregnant women who lived near a freeway were more apt to produce autistic children than mothers who lived in the countryside. Seems like a stretch to me, much like the direct correlation between the decline in piracy and rising global temperatures.

As we are today, my-oh-my! How times have changed. He brought back some seeds for me to plant in my garden, and i buried them inside a little film canister. Now, i can't remember where in the hell they are! They are out there somewhere, but WHERE????

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '
')
Planty, honestly, you are getting stuck in a lift for a few hours. You choose, are the other ten people in there drunk or stoned?