Cannabis and civilization diseases
Consumer society lifestyle is at the cause of many of the so-called civilization diseases which massive spread threatens longevity of the current population in rich countries. Recent research performed around the world show that the cannabis might play an important role in their treatment.
The evidence of importance of substances of the cannabinoid type for human organism is suggested already by the existence of chemical substances produced naturally in humans and animals that bind to the same receptors as do plant-derived cannabinoids such as THC. A study published in the Harm Reduction Journal researched the endocannabinoid system and has found out that it appears to play a major role in maintaining homeostasis (metabolic equilibrium) in humans and other living organisms. Biological functions regulated by endocannabinoids include appetite, body temperature, blood pressure, reproductive activity, learning capacity, and motor coordination.
"Endocannabinoids protect [living organisms] by fine-tuning and regulating dynamic biochemical steady states within the ranges required for healthy biological function, [and...] counteract[ing] biochemical imbalances that are characteristic of numerous damaged or diseased states, in particular those associated with aging," according the researchers.
Endocannabinoids might be also very promising for obesity treatment. German researchers note that their "findings support the presence of a peripheral endocannabinoid system that is upregulated in human obesity."
Marijuana might cause new cell growth in the brain as concluded the study seeking what effects a synthetic cannabinoid called HU210 had on rats’ brains. In mammals, new nerve cells are constantly being produced in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with learning, memory, anxiety and depression. Other recreational drugs, such as alcohol, nicotine and cocaine, have been shown to suppress this new growth, but not cannabis. Research indicated that it was this cell growth that caused an anti-anxiety effect otherwise obtainable with dangerous medicaments like Prozac.
Cannabis can be equally used for the treatment of many serious diseases as i.e. Parkinson disease, Crohn disease, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, asthma, glaucoma etc. As a very promising area for the cannabis treatment is emerging also the very disease, that the cannabis following its opponents was said to cause - the cancer.
The first experiment documenting cannabis anti-tumor effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the U.S. government. The research had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, but to the great dismay of politicians it found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia, and thus prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."
The U.S. government banished the study as usually, and refused to fund any follow-up research until conducting a similar - though secret - clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.
However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn forwarded the story to the national media. In 1998, a research team at Madrid Complutense’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology discovered that THC could selectively induce program cell death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting the surrounding healthy cells. Then in 2000, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine that injections of synthetic THC eradicated malignant gliomas (brain tumors) in one-third of treated rats, and prolonged life in another third by six weeks.
Last year, Italian researchers reported in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that non-psychoactive compounds in marijuana inhibited the growth of glioma cells in a dose dependent manner, and selectively targeted and killed malignant cells through a process known as apoptosis.
A recent study performed again by the researchers at Madrid’s University found that cannabis restricts the blood supply to glioblastoma multiform tumors, an aggressive brain tumor that kills only in the United States per year some 7,000 people.
Equally there were many studies performed in order to investigate the influence of cannabis smoking on cancer risk. Most of them find out that cannabis smoke may be less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke because cannabinoids possess anti-cancer properties. And finally, this month, researchers reported that marijuana’s constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies from patients who had failed standard cancer therapies.
French epidemiological review published this past summer in the journal Alcohol concluded that the moderate use of cannabis is not associated with an increased risk of tobacco-related cancers, such as lung or colorectal cancer.
A case study carried on at the University of California has found out that even strong and long-term cannabis smoking would not be associated to the lung cancer nor to other types of cancers.
Bushka Bryndova
