The Effects of Cannabis (Marijuana) on the Brain & Body
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neutral logy and optometry at stanford school of medicine. Today we are discussing cannabis, also referred to as marijuana.

Cannabis includes many different compounds that have profound impact on the brain and body. So while many view you have probably heard of T, H, C, there are also compound in cannabis such A, C, B, D. And of course they're different types or trains of cannabis, including sativa trains and indica strains and hybrid strains.

And believe or not nowaday, there is also an entire literature, meaning a scientific and medicinal literature, about type one, type two and type three trains. I'll explain what all of that is and how they work. I'll talk about some of the medicine applications of different strains of kenna is and combinations of cannabis is strains, as well as some of the potential health hazards of cannabis use.

I want to emphasize that any discussion about cannabis has to be framed within the context that the legality of canada varies tremendously depending on where you are in the world. So depending on which country you're in and even which state you're in or which area within a country, possessing and using and certain ly selling cannabis can be either highly illegal or entirely legal or decriminalized or largely overlooked, you, of course, our obligated to know what those local laws are for you, where you live and where you travel. With that said, today's discussion really will include a full picture as to wear cannabis, and the various and even very specific compounds within cannabis can be extremely useful in the treatment of some elements, and where certain compounds in cannabis can be extremely dangerous for certain individuals to use, in particular individuals that have preexisting genetic propensity for psychosis.

That thing is going to come up again and again, but we are also going to talk about the role of cannabis in anxiety and depression, both positive and negative effects. Will talk about sex differences in terms of women versus men and how they react differently to cannabis. And I would be entirely rems if I didn't include a conversation about cannabis, meaning T H C C B D hybrid trains at sea in creativity, in different modes of thinking.

Because as many of you probably know, or at least have heard about, cannabis can impact the way that we think the types of memory systems we can access, and what's called convergent and divergent thinking, which is one way of conceptualizing what is commonly refer to as creativity. So today's discussion is going to include a lot of information, but I promise to make a clear and accessible to all of you regards of whether not you have a background in biology or not. And today's discussion will also be quite nuanced.

You'll find me routinely reading directly from specific research paper or something that, of course, we always do on this podcast. But today, i'm really going to dig into some of the finer points of the theology and papers and some of the statistics that were used and the specific populations of people that we're studying. Because as IT turns out, there are instances that we will discuss in which the use of cannabis is can be immensely beneficial to one group and yet can be entirely detrimental to another group, even at equivalent dosages and depending on a number of different factors.

So we will discuss what those factors are just to give you a brief overview of the kind of structuring to put on today's episode. We will review, of course, cannabis in its various forms. I'll talk about some of the biology, but we are going to really drill into how dosage, that is, the concentration of T, H C relative to C, B D impacts, whether or not cannabis going to have one effect or another.

We will also talk about the frequency of use, daily use, multiple times per day use, weekly use, or monthly or occasional use. We also talk about different professions and how some people may have a little bit more lead in terms of whether not they decide to use cannabis or any of its various and chemical constituents, that is C B D R, T H C, etta. And for other professions, that might be entirely inappropriate because of the particular kinds of cognitive asas professional demand.

We will also talk about genetic predisposition, again, in sex differences, hormone effects. And I will also touch on what I think is the most important variable in determining whether or not cannabis is right or wrong for you, and that is your age at which you are considering starting or continuing use or seizing use. What I can assure you is that by the end of today's podcast, you will have a quite thorough understanding of cannabis, how IT works, what IT does, what its potential benefits can be, what its potential hazard or, and whether not it's right for you and the people that you know.

Before we begin, i'd like to emphases that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers. Stanford IT is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is element. Element is an election lighting ink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electronic sodium, magnesium and patasse um all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of the hydrazine can diminish cognitive and physical performance is also important that you get adequate electronics the electorate sodium, magnesium and patashie are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your nerves or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes IT extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrical lights.

To make sure that i'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electro lights, I dissolve one packet of element in about sixteen to thirty two ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning, I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that i'm doing. They have a bunch of different great taste flavors of element. They have watermelon.

Siri, it's at a, Frankly, I love the mall. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element dot com slash huberman la B2Clam a f re e ele ment sam ple pac k wit h the pur chase of any ele ment dri nk mix. Again, that drink element dot com slash huberman la B2Claim a f re e sam ple pac k. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eda sessions and n sdr non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens, and I started doing yoga edra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had allowed different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate. Other times I have longer to meditate.

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Let's talk about kenna is and when we refer to kenna is we are indeed referring to marijuana or the marijuana plant. Now cannabis plants come in different strains or different varieties, and those different strains are indeed different genetic strains. So just as animals and humans have different genetic backgrounds and they can be crossed to one another to yield further genetic variation in the offspring, plants can be hybridization to one another in various ways through grafting or through the use of different types of seed combinations at seta.

In order to generate different strains, there are also naturally occurring differences in the strains of plants, and the cannabis plant is no exception. So for instance, in the context of the discussion about cannabis and its medication users and recreational uses, we need to distinguish between the sativa variety, the indal variety, a variety called ruder Alice that's not often discussed, and hybrids of sativa indica and ruder als before diving into the different strains of cannabis and how they impact the brain and body, both similarly and differently, I want to emphasize that the cannabis plant contains a number of different psychoactive compounds. That the most powerful of those compounds is thc.

Technical name for IT is delt nine tech o hydro canabal. But T, H, C, as I referred to, IT, is just one of the psychoactive and biology gc ally active compounds within cannabis plants. There is also C, B, D, which is technically referred to as kaabi al and kai dial.

CBD is known to be used for things like pain management, taxi management, another medication purposes. We will talk about the efficacy of C B D for those purposes as well as some of believing or not some of the dangers of cb, depending on where it's source in the dosage at sea. So we've got T H, C, C B D and also C B N or canabal.

C B N is less often discussed. You're going to hear a lot less about C B N containing products out there, cbn containing medicines. But IT is relevant to today's discussions. So we will come up a bit now.

I will be sure to provide more specificity to what i'm about to say, but very broadly speaking, T, H, C is largely responsible for the psychoactive effects of cannabis, that is, the changes in move, the changes in bodily state and sensation sea, where as C, B, D, and to some extent C, B N have profound effects on the brain and body, but they don't tend to give people the sensation of altered perception, altered mood at sea. Some people might say they are not. The component of Kenny is that court and court gets you high, although today, we will really drill into what the high itself represents in terms of chemical systems in the brain body.

And what we will soon learn is that what we think of as being high actually includes a number of different changes in the brain body, some of which. Can be best explained by C, B, D, not by T H C, which runs counter to what most people out there now in belief. So broadly speaking, and we have T, H, C, C, B, D and C B N.

But I want to point out that the kenna is plant has over seventy seven zero, seventy different psychoactive compound, many of which still have not been studied in isolation and in detail. So there's a big future of research for cannabis and for T, H, C and t hc related psychoactive compounds as well as for C B D and C B N. Today, we're mainly going to focus on T H C and C B D.

As I mentioned before, I should also point out that the cannabis plant has over four hundred biologically active compounds. So these are biologically active compounds that may or may not have psychoactive properties that mayor may not be useful for pain relief at seta. Again, there is a vast landscape for exploration of the cannabis plant and of hemp for what they include that could be beneficial to us or detrimental to us.

So even a lot more work to do today, we're going to really try and stay on target with what we already know and where there are certain exciting mysteries or intriguing mysteries about what we ought to explore more. I was certainly highlight those. Let's go back to the different strains of the cannabis plants, sativa indica and rude Alice, and explore how each of those differentially impacts the brain and body.

Because there, and I think we can start to learn a lot about this incredible plant, that is, the cannabis plant, and whether not you are a user of cannabis, or whether not you are entirely opposed to cannabis use. Understanding how cannabis works in the brain and body itself is absolutely fascinating and constitute a lot about how your brain in body work at a basic level, and can tell you a lot about how your brain body will react to different life events, and how your mood is established and stabilized, and how your appetite is established and stabilized and so on. So we have the three major strains of cannabis, sativa and ruder Alice.

And for sake of today's conversation, we can much cross off. Ruder Alice is not often consumed, and components of riderless are not often consumed from a distinct recreational purposes. Let's focus on sativa. In indica, people will consume the sativa variety of cannabis either by edible or by smoking cannabis, or they will consume the intake of variety of cannabis again by edible or by smoking cannabis. Or sometimes they will take IT in a transferral form or subsequent al form.

There are a bunch of different ways to get the cannabis into the body, but there is a clear distinction between sativa and indica that actually shows up first in the structure of the plant at their extremes, meaning in a pure strain of sativa. IT tends to be a taller plant, a longer stock, believe or not, and actually the length of the leaves is quite a bit longer, whether the index plant tends to be more short and stout. And for those few anos out there, i'm sure you know a lot of the other specific features of Steve, a verses in to a but already what we're talking about is the same plant with two very different orthologic or shapes might wise is interesting and important to know how IT affects me or affects other people for medicinal recreation purposes.

Will turns out that even though they are the same plant, these two different genetic varieties, because of the way that they grow and the way they capture sunlight, and the way, believe or not, that the different plants within that train interact with one another, because, believe or not, plans are interacting with one another. They actually bring different elements of the psychoactive compounds to different components within the leaves. And the so called the takeaway is that when consumed, and when I say consumed, I want to be very clear.

I don't necessarily just mean oral consumption are eating candida by edible. I also mean smoking IT. And that could be, you know, people will, just like with tobacco, the way that they bring the psychoactive components into their bloodstream and into their brain and body is to essentially heat the dried leaves of the cannabis plant.

Then the heat liberates some of the psychoactive components that, when inhaled into the lungs, because the lungs include a lot of 加 cultor， a lot of basically blood vessels in capitalist, that the psychoactive components are actually directly absorbed from the lungs, into the bloodstream, and they can cross into the bloodstream and permeate throughout the body and cross the so called blood brain barrier. So in other words, burning the plant liberates the smoke that contains the psychoactive compounds, and those are inhaled into the lungs and then get into the brain and body and act on the brain and body. And the major effect of sativa varieties are to create, hi, if you will, and i'm bring this an airport ads for those who they are listening.

But to also act as a stimulant, the city varieties tend to make people feel kind of invigorating. What alert doesn't tend to be as much of a sensitive as some of the other varieties. Some people report heightened sense of focus or heighten sense of creativity.

We'll talk a little bit later, honest, or whether or not they actually are achieving heighten levels of focus and creativity, or whether not they just perceive them ls that have higher levels of focus and creativity. The step of varieties tend to make people feel a little bit less suspect ble to pain and noxious stimulus are basically stimulate that you don't like. So the static varieties are often prescribed or are used in the recreational context for pain management and relief.

Basically, the satio variety is known to include a sort of head biased effect. So here we're talking about objective effects. And of course, these will vary from one individual to the next.

Some people will smoke. Kenna is sativa and just kenna is sativa orally and will feel an entirely different of effects. But most people, the majority of people, experience a sort of head centered, high alertness focus and a sense that they're more creative.

Contrast that with the inside of varieties of cannabis, and when people smoke or eat, or just indica varieties, the psycho active components of indica. And again, this is pure indica, so not hybridizing with all, but tend to lead to more full body effects. People report feeling more complete, full body relaxation, more a sensitive effect.

Indica cannabis is often prescribed and or use recreationally in order to achieve a state of sleep or to help leaving xiety. So less of a stimulant effect. And we will talk about why, literally, the underlying erle circuits that lead to the city of variety causing more of a elevated mood and a head high, if you will, and the intake of varieties being more full body relaxation.

One of the ways to remember the distinction between the effects of canada ativan canna indi, was relate to me by a friend who actually was a chronic, meaning every day, all day, a consumer of marijuana. He basically smoke marijuana for twenty years before quitting about four, five years ago. He said that, uh, in da is often referred to as in the couch, meaning laid back in the couch.

And that can help you remember that the index arie ties of cannabis do tend to be more sensitive in their effects. okay. So there's sativa and there's indica.

And then now there are hybrid strains. So marijuana grows. And people who specializes in creating novel varieties of the canvas plant, again, i'm using the words cannabis. And marijuana more less interchangeably here. They are very good at creating new strings of plant that might be twenty five percent sativa and seventy five percent in da vice verse, or fifty, fifty or ninety ten.

Essentially what's happening now is, is that through planned biology, planned genetics, I should say growers are getting quite efficient at creating a variety of different strains of the marijuana plant that give rise to very nuances and distinct effects on brain and body. In fact, so much so that there's now a new nomenclature, a new language emerging around cannabis and the development of novel strains of cannabis for medicine and or recreational purposes. And well, this might sound a little bit medical or a little bit clinical to some people.

Believe or not, this is the nominal nature that is now typically used. People still referred to the sativa indica and hybrid strains, but there is now also a description of so called type one, type two and type three strains for any given sativa indicate or hybrid strain. okay.

So just to put this clearly in your mind, you've got city of varieties, that is, pure city of varieties. You have indica varieties, again, pure indica. And then you have hybrid varieties. And beneath feature those, you have type one, type two and type three strains of indica, a sativa or hybrid varieties.

What are type one, type two and type three? Well, type one, type two and type three strains, or strains that have varying amounts or ratios of T, H, C to C, B D. So for instance, type one strain, so for instance, you could have a purity of type one, or a type one pier sativa, or a type one indica a.

Those are going to have the greatest amount of T H C relative to C B D. And I really want to emphasize this understanding the ratio of T H C to C B D can help explain a lot or even predict a lot about how a given strain of cannabis will impact somebody, for instance, because T H C is largely responsible for the typical psychoactive components of cannabis. So what I mean here is, if somebody y's interesting to, and IT routinely, makes them feel more energize, elevates their mood, gives them a heightened sense of creativity, if that's what they experience.

And they're taking a type one version of that, that means that it's quite rich in T, H. C. And very little C, B. D. However, if they were to take a type one version of sativa and IT feels far too strong, like too much energy, they felt like they were too much in their head. Nowadays, there are strains of sativa that have been genetically engineered.

And I don't mean by an engineer tinkering away with a, you know, gene engineering and kind of crisper creating mutes, but literally by hybridizing crossing different plants to one another, okay, creating in a natural context, the same way plants in the in the outside world would sometimes hebrid ze to one another, creating a variety that perhaps type two, which is going to have less T, H, C and more C, B D. Or a type three, which is going to be very high CBD and very little t. hc.

And the same is also true for the indica of varieties. So I want to make sure that everyone understands this, because IT becomes very important for understanding the biology of cannabis and predicting positive versus negative effects of cannabis. Sativa has this kind of stimulant like effect, intends to be more of a head high, if you will.

Indica tends to be more full body than lead to more indications. Ch, as I refer to her before, a punt intended. Deep relaxation, reducing sommat seta. Now within each of those a tivo indica, you have type one, type two and type three.

And that has everything to do with how much T, H, C, which is the dominant psychoactive compound, versus C, B, D, which has other effects mainly on the body, but not so much on the brain, and modes of thinking and mood at set a. How much T H C versus C B D is present. And again, type one is T H C dominant.

Type two, equal ratios, if you will, of T, H, C and C, B D. And type pretend to be high C B D OK. So already we've got some categorization here that hopefully isn't overwhelming to you.

But this turns out to be extremely important. You won't understand how cannabis works and predict the effects of cannabis. okay.

So somewhat surprisingly, we're going to set aside cannabis. We're going to take what we know about sava enda, type one, type two, type three, CBD eta. We're just going to set that aside for a moment.

Why would we do that? Well, we have to ask ourselves, why would any of these plants, why would any of these compounds, T, H C C B D sativa, indicate at, said, why would any of that have any effect on us at all? And this discussion that we're about to have very much resembles the discussion that we had on a previous episode about nickey.

Because, as many of you know, nicotine is a commonly used substance. In fact, if we were to look at the three most commonly used drugs, alcohol will be at the top of the list. Many billions of people regularly use alcohol or occasionally use alcohol.

Many billions of people also use nickel is the second most consumed drug. So more than one billion and probably closer to two billion people consume negative. And then the third most consumed drug is cannabis in one form or another.

And many of you are probably shouting, what about caffeine and what about caffy? Well, in the context of drugs and a pretty ler addictive drugs, caffeine doesn't quite rise to the list. But if we were to look at caffeine and including that less cain would be above all of those.

okay? But the most commonly used drugs or alcohol, second after that is nicotine. And then the nickey, as some of you may know, if you listen to the episode on nickem.

But even if you didn't nicot comes from the tobacco plant and there few other plants that include nicot, typically it's brought into the brain and body by smoking tobacco, dipping tobaco, nothing tobacco or vipan naki. Nick exists in the outside world in these plants, the tobacco plants. But the reason IT hasn't effect on the body is that there are so called nickey's ic receptors in the body. Now those negotiations ic receptors were named after nicotine, the compound, but existed in the brain and body, not because of existence of a tobacco plant, but because there are other chemicals in the body that naturally occur, namely a eto coin that bind the nickey recept.

Those chemicals, such as he to calling the bind, the nick ti nic receptor in your brain and body, creating a sense of focus at, at, at, at a but nickey from tobacco buds, that same receptor, but with much greater affinity, and therefore also creates a stata focus, but a much greater one than we can achieve without negative o so you can see the naked tine epo de, if you want to learn more about that. In a very similar way, all of our brains and bodies from the time that we are conceived believe they are not very shortly after conception. If we want to be accurate, very early conception when you are in the womb, and still now, if you're listening to this, you have water called cabinet receptions because you also have indigenous canoes.

What do we mean that you have receptors which are like little parking spots that are present on cells in your brain and body? And what we call a legend, which is basic, just a chemical that's released parks in that recept and causes the number of different biological effects. Cannabis contains compounds that also buying to those receptors. But here I want to make a really clear distinction.

We have what are called indigenous legend, so that just mean chemicals from within us that we make naturally, even if we never go near the cannabis plant or any other source of cannabis, we have chemicals that are created in us that park in those receptors, ors and caused biological effects on mood, on perception, on the immune system, on hunger at seta, again, without ever going anywhere in near cannabis. We have these indigenous canoes, india, genus canabal es. Are floating around in us, where, I should say, they are released in us, in particular ways, bind to these receptors and cause changes in mood, appetite that set.

They have many different effects on the brain and body. We will talk about those, but just like with their substances in the outside world, in this case, cannabis contains these substances. So things like T, H, C, and like CBD that when ingest ted by smoking or raping or by ingesting edibles, also will park in those same receptors that can abundant receptors and lead to biological effects.

Now it's a little bit misleading because we call them can abandon receptors as if they were there to bind kenna is. Or just like we get all the nicotine I receptors and neutronic receptors, IT makes IT seem as if they were there in order to bind nickey from tobacco. But that's not the way our brains and bodies evolved.

Our brinton bodies evolved for these receptors to make use of chemicals that exist within us, called again in dogen's chemicals. And those indulgence chemicals lead to certain effects. As I mentioned before, the key thing here, if you haven't understood anything I ve set up until now, please understand this.

The key thing is that T, H, C and C B D and the other components of cannabis buying to those receptors, those endogenous can ability receptors, the ones that we naturally make with much greater affinity and exert a vastly greater potency and effect on mood and perception at SATA. Then do our endogenous can abodes another analogy that one could take in order to understand this would be hormones like testosterone and estrogen. Many people, I would say all people make test stern into into varying degree.

It's going to depend whether your male, female, your age, whether you ve gone through puberty. Sea, but let's just take testosterone for example. There is testa strone circulating in your body.

That's true if your male or female. And there are receptors ors called androgen receptor, or we could even call them to stop one receptor ors. And the testosterone binds to those receptors and has effects on cells. IT causes pair row changes the voice that can affect libido, affects all sorts of things in the brain body, depending on which organic issue you're talking about. But of course, there are people that take synthetic testosterone or derivatives of test to and some of those derivatives, for instance, in the body building community and the sports community, they will take things like Diana.

These are modified versions of of testosterone, can bind to the testosterone receptor with much greater affinity, or I should say, the android receptor with much greater affinity, and have super physiological effects, effects that would essentially never be seen from testosterone. That was A Y, excuse me, ously released within the body. We could say the same thing for estrogen. There are astrological receptor, is they bind estrogen.

okay? But if someone were to take synthetic extradition or to injust a plant compound that contains various estrogens compounds, and those plants certains exist out there, they can have super physiological effects on those recept tors. Why am I telling you this? Well, many people believe that because cannabis, marijuana is a plant and plants brought out of the ground, and they're naturally occurring, and because we have receptions in our body that are there without the need to engineer them from some external source right there in our genome program for IT.

And we're born with these things, and we keep the things our entire life. Many people mistakenly think, oh, you know, these plant compound ounds are safer for us or Better for us or are some appropriate for us to ingest. But that simply not true.

And here, i'm not saying that kind of us is always a bad idea for people. There are certain populations and certain people for which IT can be relatively safe recreationally, that's the truth. And there are other populations for which I can be downright dangerous, recreational or medicinally.

And of course, there are medically purposes they are being explored. We'll talk more about that. But this is vital to understand because I think that when we hear, oh, it's from a plant, it's natural. And then you also have a reception for these dodger's conabar receptors.

And therefore the marriage of those two, the coming together of the chemical t hc or CBD, or both with these recept tors, is somehow supposed to happen as if this was A A purpose of having these receptors. But it's simply not the case in the same way that the nick tonic receptors are not there because nickel is good for us. They're there because there are compounds that exist within us that are good to bind to those receptors from time to time.

Now here's the key thing about, I guess today i'm saying their y things, but there's another key thing about understanding cannabis in the way that IT works, which is that T H C in C B D when they're brought into the brain in body by smoking or you know, edible eta, they bind to those receptors as dodgers can abandoned receptors, and they tap into the same systems that you're dodginess can aboitiz would tap into the ones that affect mood and energy and creativity and relaxation at at a. But they do so with thousand fold greater potency. And as a consequence of that, your industrious can abodes are outcompeted.

They really get no opportunity to interact with those receptors. And understanding that can lead to a very clear understanding of why, for instance, when people use cannabis to relieve anxiety, or they use cannabis to enter a certain brain state for creativity or to enter sleep, why a dependence on kenna is starts to emerge. Because if they don't ingest cannabis, and again, inject could mean smoke to bring T H C N or C B D N, or are just early or even transdermal, or take ture one of the other varieties.

If they don't do that, then what happens is not only are the receptors not stimulated to the same degree or with the same potency that they Normally are, but the in dargental can abenoz can no longer have the effect, so people experience heighten levels of anxiety, disrupted mood, disrupted brain state and so on. Again, I want to be very clear that i'm not trying to paint a picture of cannabis is all bad or even partially bad. What I want to do today is give you as much information I can as to how kind of this works, how it's different component parts work, how the different types of cannabis work, and point to some of the valid medicine uses and some of the recreational users.

And then. Lay out the landscape for U. S. To who is really most at risk in terms of psychoactive components, immune components and so on, and so far, so that you can make the most informed choice for you.

I am not here to tell you what to do or what not to do, as I like to say, you know, do as you wish, right? I mean, don't do as you wish, but harms other people yourself. But do as you wish, but know what you're doing.

So that's really my goal here. So as we begin to die further into the biology, I think you'll start to get a clear picture of why cannabis is so effective in some context. But also why can create such massive suffering in other context, because of the way that IT outcompete your own natural endogenous can abode systems.

So let's talk about those in indigenous genomic systems, what they are and how they work. Because that will give us a lens into what the higher potency for maximum impact of the various kinna west plant varieties and trains and T, H, C, and CBD and so forth, how and why those work. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens.

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If you'd like to try athletic Greens, you can go to athletic Greens dot com slash huberman, and they'll give you five free travel packs that make IT really easy to mix up athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, at sea, and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin d three k two. Again, that's athletic Greenstock comm slash humans to get the five free travel packs in the year supply of vitamin d three, k two. So what are the indulgin? Ous can abodes these chemical substances that everybody makes? You make them, I make them.

You've been making them basically from the time that you were conceived. And you are going to make them until the time that you die, whether not they have the impact and the biological functions that are about to describe will depend a lot on whether or not you are using your own indulgin. Ous can happen on IT to park in those receptors that you also have from birth until death, or whether or not you are tickling those receptors or strongly activating those receptors, or using some external source like Kenny's T H C eta.

The two main indulgence can abodes that we want to consider are an endemic, which we refer to as E A E, so an animist. And another one, which is A C oil gera ord o gal, which we will prevent two A G. So let's just take E A E and two ag, lump them together and talk about the independent and avenues, just to make IT simple.

But if you want to do the deep dive on anatomize versus to A G, please be my guest. The indulgence ous canabal ids are released from neurons. What are neurons? Neurons are nerve cells.

And nerve cells should be conceptualized like this. You have personally tic neurons and poison optic neurons. personality.

Tic neurons basically contain little vehicles, little bubbles full of neurotransmitter, which are chemicals. And when neurons are stimulated electrically. And that could be from a thought, I could be from the desire to move. IT could be because of a drug IT could be because you're hungry.

The relevant neurons will vomit IT out or will fuse, as we say, those are low packets, those little bubbles of neil transmitter, into the gap between the pre posit afternoon call, that a sync apt c caf, or the synapse, a little gap of space. And the neurotransmitter flows across that synapse. And some of IT will park in little parking spots that we call receptors on the post and optic onside, depending on which no transmitter IT is in a bunch of other things not worth going into right now.

The parking of that chemical in those neurotransmitter of receptor ors will either cause that neuron on the poster epic side to itself release no transmitter elsewhere, or IT will quiet IT down. So called exciting and innovation. It's kind of neural transmission in a nutshell.

If you don't understand IT no big deal. It's not going to prevent you from understand to this discussion. If you understand even a small fraction of what I ve just said, then it's going to allow you to understand just today is discussion, but a lot of news science with a lot more new ones and depth of understanding.

The key thing to know about the endogenous canabal ids is that, unlike most neurotransmitters ors, they are released from the post and optic side. So what happens is neurotransmitter goes from prison optic neuron to post and optic neuron, but under certain conditions, the post apt on itself releases a chemical, and that chemical goes backward, what we call retrograde to the prison optic neon bines receptors there, and changes the probability that the person optic neuron will release no transmitter. Put simply, in dougan ous canabal ids tend to decrease the probability that that a neuron will release na transmitter.

Or they are sort of a break on the system. They're a way of shutting down the communication between neons, regulating IT, not to make IT completely quiet, but to adjust the levels with a lot of nuance. Now the other thing that the indulgence can abodes do is sort of a mind bender because we're talking about cannabis and a commonly known feature of cannabis and marijuana consumption is disruptions in short term memory.

And there is essentially zero debate as to whether not that occurs and will talk about the mechanism a little bit later. And yet, in dogen's camino ts, the chemicals that you naturally released from these personal tic irons that travel retrogrades back to the personal tic neuron actually can lead to strengthening of connections between the personal pitic neuron and the personal PC neuron through a process called long term potential, or L T. P.

They can also cause what's called depression of communication between a personal pic iron and a personal pic neon. Long term depression has nothing to do with depression as a psychological state or as a illness. Long term potential.

Long term depression simply referred to the probability that one neon will be able to stimulate and activate another neuron. And as I just told you, the delicious can aboya can either turn up the dial or turn down the dial. They can either increase the probability or decrease the probability that a given connection between neurons will function more or will function less.

So if you think about the communication between neurons as cross talk is a conversation, well, the endogenous can abodes can dictate whether not that conversation is likely to occur or not to occur. Think of them is either um you putting someone at the top of your text chain in your phone, which would be long term potential, or essentially blocking their number, which would essentially be long term depression. So if you're getting the impression that the indulgin ous canaanites are working in a number of different ways and it's not very straightforward, you're right, in fact, that the message i'd like you to take away the genus can have its are sometimes increasing neuronal communication.

This can lead to increases in mood or increases in the likelihood that someone will talk a certain way or behave a certain way or feel a certain way. They can also lead to decreases in synaptic transmission, that is, communication between neurons in ways that will make somebody's mood lower or will make them less hungry or more hungry. And here's the really key thing.

There are two kinds of in doggy ous canabal ID receptors, referred to A C, B one and cb two. And we can say with confidence that cb one is highly enriched in the nervous system, and especially within the brain, it's found not everywhere, but almost everywhere in the brain and elsewhere in the nervous system, a spinal cord and other aspects of the nerve system. C, B, two, the can abreast t cb two is largely located on the tissues of the body, including the immune system, the liver, even the genitals at sara.

So what this means is that the indulgence can have a oids are having the sorts of effects on neons that I talked about, but they're also having effects on immune cells, on reproductive organs, on liver, on digestion, on hunger. Set a through mechanisms that are divorced from the function of the nervous system of neurons. Now, in reality, no system of the brain body is divorced from the nervous system, because the nervous system is controlling everything.

IT is really the master controller, and everything's feeding back to the nervous system. So it's a two way street. But the simple way to think about a cb one receptors are mainly in the nervous system, and C, B two receptors are mainly in the body and indoors can again, E A E anatomie and two ag irade oil glister al are impacting C B one N C B two receptors.

Today, we're mainly going to talk about cb one receptors because they are the ones that are responsible for most of the familiar effects of canvas. But the key takeaway at this point is to really understand that the major effects of your indulgence can abodes on these receptors in this particular cb one are very new on IT depends on context, depends on which neurons, you know, sometimes increasing communication betwen neurons sometimes decrease IT. And then along comes cannabis.

And that cannabis, again, can arrive by smoking, by vapor, by edible, and cannot contains T, H, C and C, B, D. That potently bind the C, B one receptor. And now the effects of the C, B one recept being occupied by T H C, being occupied by C B D are not very new once.

In fact, they are very predictable and especially important to understand that they are so strong, and they park in that receptor with such affinity, with such forcing precision and stumbles and refusal to leave that receptor, or that they completely outcompete the indoors inst can abode system. In fact, they leave the indulgence can aborted system essentially dsf unctions, which in some cases may be a good thing, but in most cases is going to lead to problems of various kinds. We will talk about what sorts of problems.

And again, I feel obligated to say this is not me saying don't adjust cannabis or T H C R C B D. It's not what i'm saying. What i'm saying is if you evaluate the potency, that is technical terms, that would be the affinity with which. These compounds, T, H, E and C B D and C B N, bind to these indolent ous receptors. That would be like how it's are gone, like a can in going off as compared to endogenous ous can abode, whether not it's E A E or two ag, which is more like a cap gun level of activation, at least in this analogy.

So now you have what at least I would like to think is a fairly complete understanding of the different varieties of cannabis, at least at a broad sweep, and the different biological effects that they can have, at least in terms of the major receptors and retrograde signals at at a now let's take a step back into the real world and evaluated. Think about what happens when somebody smokes cannabis, or in just cannabis by way of edible, or take sure or something that sort. Cannabis is very fast to enter the bloodstream.

In fact, within thirty seconds, it's going to enter the brain and permeate throughout the brain and body. That's very, very fast to me. We contrast that was something like alcohol, or even nick team, depending how the nick team is delivered.

That is a very fast delivery of the psychoactive and biologically active compound, which in this case is T, H, C and C, B D, and probably some other things as well. So within thirty seconds, IT reaches the brain in bodily tissues. And within thirty to sixty minutes, it's going to reach its peak concentrations and have its peek biological effects.

Those are always the same thing. But in the case of canada, again, here i'm using kenna is as a kind of umbrella m for T H N C B D. The effects are going to peak about thirty to sixty minutes after bringing those compounds into the body in somewhere another.

And the effects ten to last anywhere from three to four hours, although there are some variation on that depending on individual metabolic, whether not somebody is familiar with the compound, believe they are not psychological familiar, but also biologically familiar, or where they not the first time use or occasional use and so on. T, H, C, N, C, B, D and other components of cannabis are highly what we call a lip of phillip, that is, they have an affinity toward, and they can actually pass through fatty tissues. Now, every sell in your body, but especially neurons, have a double layer of fat on the outside.

And of course, when people say, hear fat, they always think of fat, bad fat, ever. You know, most of the world seems to want to lose fat or bodily fat. Here we're talking about the fatty membrane, the barrier around each issue.

In this case, we're talking particularly about neurons and T, H, C and C, B D. And the other components of canals are highly lipo, phillip, so they can get into essentially all cells just simply flowing into them. They will also remain in those cells for a long time.

So I know that a number of people opinion, whether not they get tested for worker, for sport or otherwise, for cannabis, C, B, D and T, H C don't take this as a strict number, but typically if one in just C, B D or T H C smokes cannas and just by orally IT set a doesn't matter. It's gonna in that fatty tissue and can be detected for at least as long as eighty days after a gestion. And there's a whole industry as to you know how to accelerate the clearance.

And um you just tell you that just losing bodily fat isn't going to eliminate IT from your system. H may be partially in those fat cells, but uh certainly a introversion ral fat and other fatty tissue that's around the brain and body is going to harbor that T H, A molecule in the CBD molecule for quite a long while, at least eighty days OK. So if someone smokes cannabis, or they in just cannabis, very rapidly gets into the bloodstream and the components that psychology to get into the bloodstream and are immediately able to access neurons and other cells and start having these effects of parking in those in doggy ous canabal ic receptors and impacting the signals between neurons, which leads to the subjective effects of cannabis, including T H C, N, C, B, D.

So let's talk about with those different subjective effects are, again, this is going to very, depending on whether not people adJusting sativa varieties of cannabis just reminded us to be elevated mood, alertness, talkativeness. People who takes the tip of our aletes tend to talk a lot more than they would otherwise. Again, there are exceptions to this.

Of course there are exceptions. I'm sure there are people out there shouting. Although I guess if you're the quiet people who don't talk too much, you're probably ly not shouting.

If you not, you're not doing on, joe contended. But in any event, there are exceptions, but there are also general rules. And the sativa tend to meet people who are mood elevated, energetic against this of head high. And indica varieties tend to do the opposite, more of a sensitive relaxant, IT said.

Why and how would they do that? Okay, without going into an extensive deep dive into the different neurotransmitter or systems of the brain body, what we know for sure is that cb one receptors are present on an enormous number of different neurons in brain structures and neural circuits, so that the save of varieties that act a sort of a stimulant making people feel happy because in general, they do tend to elevate mood, at least at certain dosages. Talk of tend to make people feel um like they have ideas that are interesting that they might want to share um tend to narrow their context.

I intend to increase focus. This is something is not often discussed about kenna. But I can especially the city v of varieties can increase people's level of focus to particular things at something they're watching or something they're doing or music allows them to narrow their sense of focus.

That's going to occur by activation of C B one receptors in the so called prefrontal cortex, which is just behind the forehead. And the prefrontal cortex acts as a strong modulator of the olympics circuitry and other circuitry that is more stress oriented. The way to think about the stress in limit circuit, such as the amiga la, which many people have heard about, is that they aren't really circuits for fear and stress.

They are circuits that are constantly evaluating one's own internal state, heart rate, sea and what's happening externally. And sorry to say, but the default of those systems is to detect danger, the serve threat detection systems, and then the preference to cortex largely acts as a break on those systems. Sort like the rains pulling back on a steed of horses that would others SE just kind of take off.

And so the tip of varieties tend to increase, be one activation in the prefrontal cortex and in other circuitry that then leads to a kind of overall reduction in stress because of the way that preferences circuitry can reduce activation of the amygdala. Now that course does not explain why some people become very stressed and very paranoid when they smoke city va varieties or other varieties of cannabis, or in just other varieties of cannabis. We will talk about the paranoid effect and why that occurs and who might predict that would occur to them in in a little bit.

But just want to give your sense of how this is working because, as I mentioned before, T, H, C and C, B D are going to bind that cb one receptor, let's say, in prefrontal cortex. And neurons of prefrontal cortex is going to bind there, and then they'll be a real gate signaling back to the present optic neuron. In the case of preferences cortex, what's happening is it's increasing transmission, increase in the release of newer transmitter in prefrontal cortex.

However, at the same time, the very same T H C N C B D that was brought into the system is binding the very same type of receptors, C B one receptors in other brain structures, such as the amiga, and causing a retrograde sagging back to the prisoner tic neurons in the emigre, but is quite the activation of those neurons. So this is interesting, right? We have the same compounds, T H E N R, C, B D, brought into the body and brain binding the same receptors, in this case, the C P one receptors.

But depending on where those receptors are located and which brain areas were referring to, there are either causing heighten levels of alertness and activation of systems that are designed to make you talk ative and alerts and mood at at a focus, or they are causing suppression of those circuitry. So we have kind of a sea saw effect here where the same compound is increasing mood and alertness and focus on the prom tal cortex, and is decreasing stress and threat detection in the ami gala. And that's one of the reasons why, especially the sativa varieties of cannabis, allow people to enter these states of focus.

Some might even say flow, although I don't want to go into what flow states really are, that's for a different discussion. And it's very poorly defined as IT is. And I certainly don't want to give people the impression that canada increases flow states because that's not always the case and certainly most often is not gona be the case. But the idea here is that this molecule comes into our brain and is shifting everything towards the state of focus, elevated mood, of heighten sense of importance, about whatever is that we happen to be doing. And now, of course, whatever we could happen to be doing could be writing a song, writing poetry, communicating with somebody.

But IT could also be something as real as watching cartoons or watching a movie, which is, you know, not trivial in its own right, but in terms of thinking about the creative aspects, or the creative tivy stimulating aspects of canvas, not sort of productivity oriented, so narrowed focus, elevated mood, more relaxed and yet energetic, as the major effects of the seva varieties. Except, and this is a really big, bold face, triple underline, except, except in some individuals, depending on dosage, but also depending on preexisting neural circuitry and propensity for anxiety. Some people ingest or smoke city of varieties, regardless of weather, needs a type one, type two or type three variety.

Okay, regardless of the ratio between T, H, C and CBD, people will experience intense anxiety and paranoia. Now, how do you predict who will experience intense anxiety and paranoia and who will experience intense relaxation, focus, sense of creativity from ingesting or smoking in a type one, type two or type three sativa? Well, there is no way to predict that.

And there's a lot of of what I will call street lower or dorm room lower or kind of um pure not pure reviewed but sort of peer discussed mean among friends and people in acquaintance lower out there that what one needs to do is simply smoke more right, or just ingest more. You hear that, oh, will listen. If IT makes you paranoid, you simply need to use more.

That is absolutely, categorically false. Everything we know about the way that T H C N C B D work is that they tend to potentiate, that is, increase the effects. Of these different systems at given synapse ism in different areas of the brain and body. That is, if someone that experiences paranoia or anxiety from a given strain of the marijuana plant or from ingesting an edible in a particular way or a particular kind of edible, that person is very likely to experience the same effect every time than just that trainer variety. This is part of what's LED to this enormous industry.

I think there are number different reasons, but this is part of what's LED to this enormous industry of highly customized cannabis, where people will spend some time really seeking out the different strains of cannabis in hy hybrids of cannabis that work best for them and work best for them in particular context. I wish I could tell you that if you are a person who is in between five hundred, eight, seven and sixty tall, and you have blue eyes or Brown eyes, that the a tev of varieties are going to be right for you, or that the of varieties are going to give you panic attacks. I can't do that.

The only way to determine that would be to actually experience interesting. Those are smoking those, which are certainly also not what i'm suggesting, right? That's up to you not telling you what to do or what not to do, but there are no good predictors.

In fact, if you look in the literature, IT is not at all clear that people who have a heightened level of anxiety when they do not smoke, any of us will experiences cannabis as less paranoid in doing or more relaxing. That's simply not the case. Now what we can say for sure is that a general categories of effects such as increased focus and reducing anxiety, are largely due to activation of areas like the prefrontal cortex.

Now, unlike other compounds like nickey or alcohol, or know transmitter systems like doping, when we talk about the canadian wheat system, and I say effects, biological effects, psychoactive effects, I want you to keep in mind always, please, please, please keep in mind that those effects can be varied and often opposite in direction. So let's just give an example of that. I just mentioned that when people smoker or eat sativa, that intends to lead to one specific set of, or generally leads to one specific set of, effects, hint, focus, mood at that, wherever they industry, smoke indica and its components, right? Again, we're still talking about T, H, C and C, B, D in varying ratios, but now indicate canals.

And he said, well, why would you improve the transition time to sleep, or at least give people the impression that they improved the transition time to sleep? Will talk about what indica actually does for sleep in a little bit. But indica also tends to the press activation of the amidon threat detection centers in the brain, again binding the same C B wonder sectors in those retorted signals mechanisms to talk about before.

But IT also tends to shut down the hip campus at the area of the brain associated with memory, which is why indi varieties lead to pronounced where, I should say, profound defects in short term memory and sometimes in long term memory as well. If it's consumed over a long periods of time, we will talk about short, medium and long term consumption, occasional consumption going forward. So what i'd like you to take away from this component, the discussion is, first of all, the mechanism of action by which cannabis impacts the brain body.

But in particularly, the brain is going to be through cb one receptors. And those cb one receptors can lead to other acceleration or a break on particular biological mechanisms. And there are going to be a conStellation of different accelerations in breaking of different neural systems in the brain and body, depending on whether or not people in just sativa or indicate or some hybrid strain.

And perhaps most importantly, even if you didn't understand anything I ve said about the biology of these different strains in the receptors, please do understand that there is no way to predict what the effect of a given strain will be on an individual. There has been extensive exploration as to whether not people who are so called mellower or more anxious or any yet number of different personality dimensions will respond in one way or the other. But in fact, there is no way to tell layer on top of that, the fact that doing T H C N C B D can be fairly straight forward in the form of right, because there can there can be, at least of it's a controlled source, a defined number of milligrams of T H C, A defined number of milligrams of CBD.

That's true for injustice, les. It's much harder to gage that from the smoker. Forms of cannabis, especially of those some kable forms of cannabis, are obtained through sources where there isn't a lot of clear information about the total amount of in that product.

Now this is all changing quite a lot nowaday because of the commercialization of T, H, C and C B D products in cannabis in a number of different areas, including in the united states. But still many people are interesting. Cannabis is G, C B D through sources where they don't really know how much they are bring into their system.

And so whether not someone gets incredibly anxiety relief, enhances sense of mood and focus in well being, pain relief at sea, or whether are they a fool on panic attacks, etta is very hard to predict based on dosage information alone. Now of course, we can create broad categories, and we are going to talk about studies that create broad categories of low dose moderates and high dose, frequent use and infrequent use. But unlike alcohol, unlike nickey, we can't really point a specificity of x amount of alcohol, grams of alcohol per week, which is safe, for x amount of alcohol, which is not safe.

So I know a lot of people out there are wondering, you know, how often can they smoke cannabis or how often can they eat cannabis or T H C or C B D and any number with different forms and products safely. Well, we have to really define what means and we have to really acknowledge that there's a pretty loose set of controls over what one is bringing into the brain in body. Is they in just T H C, in C, B D? But even under conditions in which is very controlled, it's very hard to predict what those effects will be.

So before moving into specifics of taking cannabis or not taking cannabis, who should, who should what the medicinal purposes are in what some of the newer exciting data point? I just briefly want to make a lesson, I promise very briefly. I know i'm not often concise, but I do try to be thrown for your sick.

I want to make a very brief list of the different brain areas that are impacted by T, H C and C, B D, and why teachin C B, D have the various effects they do. When somebody smokes are in just cannabis, doesn't matter what the T H C A C B D ratio is, if they experience deficits in memory, and that's almost always present. That's going to be because of reductions in electrical activity within this brain region we call the hippocampus.

Hip camps mean sea horses and sea horse animists like to name things after what things look like. But hip campus memory, memory is reduced, in particular short term memory. That's to regardless of whether one is using sativa indica or some hybrid in general, the preferences cortex is going to be activated by the seva varieties, which is going to increase thinking and narrow ly constraint focus to some activity.

And that's more commonly associated with the step of varieties. The into of varieties is a mention before tend to lead to a suppression of activity and prevented cortex, believe IT or not. And I turned off thinking in planning. This is why inc. Varieties are often used for relaxation and for promoting sleep, regardless of whether that sativa or indica variety.

And again, regardless of the ratio of thc, the CBD, there is a general suppression of neural circuits within the so called basal ganglia and cereBellar basel, gangly and cereBellar, or areas of the brain that are involved, action planning and withholding actions. Theyll be the base of ganga so called go no go circuitry and the cereBellar, which is involved in baLance, but also motor planning and motor's sequencing. This is why people who smoke marijuana, regardless of the strain, will tend to be less physically mobile.

Other common effects are reining of the eyes dance at the mouth. That's actually caused by the same general mechanism, which is a reduction in the secretion of saliva and of tears, and lubrication of the eyes from the lack room glands of the eyes, because of the presence of largely cb two, but also cb one receptors in the mouth and on the eyes. And there tends to be, especially with certain strains of cannabis, increasing appetite, so called months.

And that has everything to do with very, very high density of cv one receptors in the hypothalamic, in particular areas of hypotheses like the argue in nucleus, the hypothesis, other areas as well, of course, that have tons of cb one receptors buying T, H, C. And CBD and activate the neurons that strongly stimulate appetite through two mechanisms. One is a cognitive mechanism of creating a preoccupation with food.

And anticipation of taste, as well as the experience of takes, are the narrows of focus to what you want to go eat. Really crave pizza seems to be high fat hybrid er hydrate foods but really crave pizza and narrowing of focus that you're not thinking about anything else. But also sydney, from the hypothalamic, the gut to neurons within the stomach itself that regulate blood sugar.

So there are strong effects on blood sugar of T, H, C and CBD that generally lead to increases in appetite. So two parallel mechanisms, one within the brain, one within the body, increasing appetite here. So there's an array of different effects.

And as I mention before, cb one receptors, a present all over the nerve system in the brain, the spinal cord. In fact, the presence of C B one receptors in the spinal cord largely explains the fact that T, H, C and C, B D, to some extent, although it's not very well studied, can provide some pain relief. I say some because a lot of people perceive or believe that they experience more pain relief from cannabis than they actually do.

IT actually has a lot to do with a perception shift to basically focusing on other things. But there does nothing to be some and diagnosis etive of, meaning anti pain effects of cannabis, T, H. C, in particular, and that is exerted largely through effects on cb one receptors in neons of the spinal cord.

So I brought a ray of effects are taking place regardless of what you take. And then you eat the cannabis, or you smoke the cannabis. And the broader rave effect can be explained by the fact that that retroactive can lead to activation or suppression of activity in various around. So now I like to take a step back. The biology of cannabis and T, H, C and C, B, D and all the signaling and receptors at sea, and really just focus on cannabis use and wherever possible, I will point to the specific explains that been studied and the ratios of T H C to C B D.

But I have to say that unfortunately, most studies of marijuana, cannabis, while they have been very careful to detail the amount of T H C, low dose, medium dose or hydro, and actually getting very specific, right down to the number of milgram, even how much circulating T H C is present after somebody smokes a joint in just cannabis. Most studies have not distinguished between sativa an indica strains that, unfortunately, because in the real world, people are distinguishable tween sativa and indica strains in their patterns of use and what they prefer, what they don't prefer, even, but they prefer to smoke during the day or industry in the day versus night. Believer not.

There are people who are using certain strains during the day and other strings at night, but the science is yet to catch up to that. Or I should say more accurately, the general public and the themes that are emerging and the practices that are emerging around cannabis, especially in states where it's decriminalized or legalize, are occurring at such a rapid rate that there is absolutely no way that the science could keep up. This is a naturally occurring experiment.

Not to say it's natural like people should do IT, but an experiment is happening in real time, in the real world, much faster than controlled studies within university laboratories. Other laboratories can keep up. So at this point, I think it's appropriate to ask ourselves, why do people even use cannabis? Mean, what are they trying to achieve? Is is always about not feeling pain, is IT always about reducing anxiety? Well, sometimes IT is, but often times people are using kenna is in order to achieve a particularly state.

And we could use a broad russian say, well, they just like being high. But well, that may be true in a lot of circumstances. Have to believe that actually is during a lot of circumstances, there are a lot of people who use canvas in a very directed way, or they get coin call high in order to achieve states that to them are particularly attractive.

And one sea state is a state of creativity. And this brings us to a broader theme, which is, does cannabis increase creativity? And if so, is that the T, H? See the C, B D. What's the appropriate ratio or the best ratio for accessing creativity? This is an interesting and important discussion, I believe, because creativity is one of the more sought after and more elusive states that humans can experience. And yet, if you look at human evolution, you look at our progression in terms of technology development and culture and music and poetry at sea, we really can look to creativity as the state that Foster red so much of that evolution.

So whether not you're into technology area, into art or music, whether not you're just somebody who wants to expand their understanding or their experience of life, in some way, creativity is a fundamental important state to try access and to try access regularly and to try tap into, in order to eventually produce something, in order to create something of meaning that exists not just in that creative state, but to yourself after that creative state has gone away, right? So the painting that you paint in the creative state, hopefully, is a painting that still inspires and has impact after you exit that creative state, and that will inspire others. And this could be true for any number of different things, is not just painting.

So does kind of us increase creativity? The short answer is IT depends. First of all, we need to define creativity. Right here we are as as thinking of scientists, if not already scientists. And there are basically two modes of thinking, they associated with creativity, and they don't completely explain creativity.

But if you look in the research of psychology research, in the neth science research, you'll hear about convergent thinking and divergent thinking. Conversion thinking is taking loose ideas and going to bring them together, finding a common thread, synthesize zing, and organizing those different ideas into some common or specific framework in order to get or create some specific outcome. So conversion thinking is basically the person in the room who is listening to all the ideas and taking them all.

And maybe it's A A panel of you know how should we um you know how should we get a certain product out to market or you know what are the what are the different motifs that we should include in a piece of music or you um what should we do in terms of a rearchitects ting given a physical space taking in those different opinions, those different ideas from different people and then synthesizing them in coming up with one or a small subset of coherent ideas that incorporate summer all of the ones that they heard. Okay, so that's convergent thinking. IT doesn't have to involve a panel of people talking to you.

I use that as an example of what goes on inside your own head when you are engaging conversion thinking, you're thinking well. So so said this. And I think that and you can't breaking them through and trying to get some common theme, some common vector to emerge from that divergent thinking, on the other hand, is best described as brainstorming is expLoring ideas and continuing to move into the variation in the vastness of ideas in hopes of eventually being able to converge on some novel idea of framework.

Okay, so these are similar and related, but typically the creativity process involves first brainstorming and divergent thinking. And then in order to arrive at something, to actually create something, right, the verb create, not just thinking about what you might create, which you curse in division ging a bit, actually creating something, a specific painting, a specific song up, specific body of literature, a specific scientific project or experiment, and so on. That usually involves conversion thinking.

Now these can be explored in the laboratory, and they can be explored the laboratories through sets of different types of question errors, or even tasks that you can give human subjects. And this has been done extensively and across the entire body of data. And by that I mean literally hundreds of studies that have explored the the relationship between particular neural circuits and neurochemicals conversion and divergent thinking we can arrive at at a principle in the print.

Incipit involves a molecule that many of we've heard about before, which is dope, dope me is a neo modulators involved in motivation and IT tends to direct our attention to things outside of us, but is also closely related to convergent thinking and divergent thinking into the creative process. And therefore, you should come as no surprise that diseases of the the nervous system, excuse me, such as bipolar disorder, which we have done an episode all about, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia or mood disorders that impact the levels of dopamine, either make IT way wait too high or way wait too low. Strongly impact whether not people will be creative.

And I think the short take away that makes the most sense in terms of framing this. And we covered this on the episode on on bipolar disorder, sometimes called bipolar depression, is that in professions, whether is a lot of creativity required in order to succeed, so again, musicians, composers, artists at a, you tend to find more manic depression. And manic depression, at least in the manic states, the hyperactive states are correlated with elevated levels of developing.

Likewise, IT has been seen over and over throughout history that that individuals that have mild forms of schizophrenia, or even fully on schizophrenia, a many famous painters, for instance, or musicians, they are known to have elevated levels of dopamine, and they are quite creative. Now that doesn't mean everybody whose creative has elevated levels of doping, although it's likely that their levels of doping are at least not diminished. And IT doesn't mean that non creative people have low levels of dopamine.

E, so don't get Carry away with the interpretation here, but the point is this, dopamine levels strongly relate to the probability that you can engage in, convergent in and divergent thinking, and they do so in the following way. When dopamine levels are high, divergent thinking is more likely. That is, when people have a lot of dopamine circulating in their system, they tend to be very expensive with their ideas, they tend to brainstorm a lot.

They tend to be comfortable and even want to, or reflexively throw out a lot of ideas that sometimes even seem little disconnected. Some people might think of this is kind of attention deficit, but it's not. It's really the idea of throwing out desperate ideas, right?

You know, you hear sometimes, you know, you throw things against the all and see what sticks, what these people, obviously an analogy, but people are throwing a lots of things against the wall and seeing what stick, and then seeing how the things that stick fit together. That's divergent thinking. And elevations and dopamine tend to increase divergent thinking.

However, they tend to do this in the kind of inverted u shape way. For those who they are watching on youtube, i'm just drawing of A A hump, obviously. And for those of you listening, just imagine a you the shape of a letter you, and then just flip IT upside down that looks like a bub.

Turns out that when dobbie levels are very low, there's a low probability of divergent thinking. When dob amie levels are high, as eventually before, there is a high level or probability of divergent thinking, but when dobbin levels go very, very high, then there's again a reduction in divergent thinking. In other words, there's a kind of a sweet spot of elevated dopamine for divergent thinking.

And again, divergent thinking is critical for the creativity process, because creativity, by definition, is taking a novel set of ideas and arranging them in a particular way, or taking existing ideas and arranging them in a novel way, that then you eventually converge on some new product, new idea, new song eeta. Now, convergent thinking follows a very different pattern when dopamine levels are high, convergent thinking is not very likely. And when doome levels are low, convergent thinking is very likely. So here, using a arguably a very reductionist view, we're looking at all of this thing of, we're calling creativity through a very neuroscience, cy reductionist lands. We can say this, the creative process involves going into a state where you're willing to consider a lot of options, many of which seem distantly tly, are not even connected to one another.

And dopamine facilitate that divergent thinking state in which you are perfectly happy and in fact, experience a kind of a joy or relation, a comfort and a pleasure in organizing all these different ideas that to anyone else might seem not that related, but when your double mean levels are elevated, these all seem like great ideas and that maybe there are connections there, right? You're not accepting all of them is true and valid and interesting in combining them, but there's this idea that it's worth entertaining the possibility, at least for moments. And then as dopamine levels drop, there is the process of conversion thinking, which is taking options down off the wall, saying, no, no, that doesn't fit with, that doesn't fit with that, but h, that fits with that, and that can work.

That feels right or sounds right or looks right. That's the creativity process. And so I think this is not just important for understanding canvas, which will get back to in a moment, but it's important for understanding creativity and brain states in general.

Brain states are not, as we would say, a square wave functions, you know, just drop into a trench of creativity. Creativity is not an event. It's a process. And what i'm telling you that the process involves divergent thinking and consideration, a lot of different ideas that correlated with high, but not too high, depine.

And then one has a transition into a state of convergent thinking, which is really hosing in on the ideas that seem to have validity or that could have validity and getting rid of everything else. And that's associated with low dopamine. It's more about logical implementation and consideration as supposed to thinking about and considering everything.

So let's now return to the question of whether not cannabis and its different components increase creativity. And when you look at the literary on this, you find studies that very clearly point to a, yes, IT increases creativity and is not surprising, therefore, that cannabis can increase dopamine e transmission, that is, dopamine levels in certain brain areas, but to the brain areas involved in thinking and planning. Okay, so canada increases, dooming in these areas.

Elevate, dooming increases. Divergent thinking and divergent thing is associated creativity. And there are studies that support the idea that cannabis can increase creativity. However, there are at least many studies that say that kenna is does not increase creativity, that cannabis increases consideration of multiple ideas, perhaps through elevation of dopamine and related systems, but that ultimately the ideas that converge from that are not truly creative ideas, at least they don't make the criteria for creative brainstorming and extraction of ideas that are truly novel. So IT doesn't increase creativity.

So which one is IT? Well, fortunately, there's an entitlement distinct t set of literate that is taken all the other literary into consideration. And here's where we arrive. So there's a really nice study that explored creativity and cannabis users, and we will provide a link to the study.

First author is Emily with france, and the title of the paper, uh, somewhat am using its own right, which is that starts with a question inspired by mary jane, of course, mary je being one of that kind of old school versions of our ways of talking about cannabis or marijuana nowadays. Ys, people refer to IT mainly as pot, as other names to a course. And the title of the paper is inspired by mary jane mechanisms underlying enhances creativity in cannabis users.

And I really like this study for a couple of reasons. First of all, they looked at people who did not use cannabis as well as people who use cannabis, so two different groups, but they did not evaluate creativity of the cannabis users while they were under the influence of cannabis. They looked at the level of creativity in these cannabis users when they were not under the influence of cannabis, and asked whether or not their ability to be creative with enhanced by cannabis.

Now we're going to compare these studies in which people come in to a laboratory, ra, and actually use cannabis in IT than they evaluate creativity under that context. But this study has some unique takeaway that I think you're really interesting. First of all, they did, yes, see evidence for enhanced creativity.

And when I say in enhance creativity, I mean, within the context of this divergent thinking thing that I talked about a moment ago, and when I say in hands, I mean significantly greater than in non users, so people that don't use cannas. So right now I can imagine that all the cannabis users are, are cheering. Yes, kennebec's increases creativity, makes people more creative than they would be otherwise.

Well, this interesting. We have to ask ourselves how that was accomplished, and turns out that one of the major ways in which he was is that cannabis users, even if they are not under the influence of cannabis, are far more open to novel ideas, and they have a more exploitive. And so reducing xiety, or as is a lowering xiety mode of thinking when they explore novel ideas, which is essential for divergent thinking.

So they observe both enhanced, divergent and convergent creative type thinking in canvas users. And the source of that they conclude, is, and here all just quote, cannabis users, higher levels of openness to experience are responsible for their enhanced self reported creativity and convergent thinking test performance. So it's not necessarily that cannabis is increasing the capacity of the brain areas are associated with creativity, but rather canvas appears to be increasing and openness, and probably doing that in part through lowering anxiety, in particular people.

And that openness is leading to inclusion of more ideas during the division gent thinking process, right? They're willing to consider throwing up more things on the wall to see if they stick, so to speak. So in their conclusions, they have a really nice statement.

Again, i'll just read from the paper because they said IT Better than I ever could quote. While mainstream media has propagated the idea that Kenny's expands the mind in hands creativity, our result shows the links between kanna is and creativity is largely a specious correlation, meaning that is not the case that cannabis increases creativity. But, and I I inserted the, the, but in this quote, but driven by differences in personality that are related to canada use, for example, openness to experience that are related to both kenna is use end augmented creativity.

This is a real chicken egg argument. What do I mean by that? What I mean is this paper finds that people who are more open to experience are more likely to use cannabis.

And people who use cannabis are going going to be more open to new experiences. And that combination of features, openness to experience, and what that openness to new experiences brings enhances the convergent and divergent thinking that is characteristic of the creative process. So in short, cannabis increases creativity, but through changes in personality that tap into the creative process, rather than directly impacting the neural circuits that, for instance, turn on creativity.

And I have to say, this study is really important, because by expLoring cannabis users not well under the influence of cannabis, they were able to tap into this very important, what I believe to be fact. Because if you think about a study in which you would have one group using cannabis and another group not using cannabis, and then you give them some task that taps into creativity, you will see effects. And very likely, you'll see effects where kenna is might even increase divergent convergent thinking and creativity that those results have actually been publish many times before.

But given the very effects of cannabis and t actually that we talked about earlier through all the complex sydney stuff, you can imagine that there will also be other studies. And in fact, there are where divergent and conversion, thinking and creativity is not. Assisted by cannabis and might even be reduced by ingesting cannabis.

However, if one considers that divergent thinking is absolutely crucial to the creativity process, and the range of things that one will explore will be enhanced by openness and by produce levels of anxiety. So a willingness to explore different options, some of which might seem completely crazy, and cannabis increases the personality types and the reduces the anxiety that create that sense of openness. Well, then IT makes perfect sense why cannabis would increase creativity in certain individuals, but not directly in this study.

The one I just referred to, which I should say, was published in the journal consciousness and cognition, and again, will provide a link to IT did a wonderful job of teasing out this impact of cannabis on personality, which then impacts creativity. So somebody asks you, if you're wondering, or if you feel like cannabis increases creativity, in some sense, the answer is yes. But the answer is yes because of the ways that IT shapes openness to new ideas, and can, should say, can, because not everybody, but can, in some individuals, reducing xiety.

What this means is that if you are somebody who experience anxiety or increased levels of focus from cannabis, regardless of the strain you have to imagine, people are expLoring different strains if they are expLoring them at all, expLoring different modes of delivery, smoking or injustice setter. If you're somebody who experienced anxiety, it's very likely that you won't have the increased openness to experience and divergent ideas that will facilitate creativity. However, you are somebody who achieves heightened levels of relaxation and reduce levels of anxiety from cannabis, regardless of which string we happen to be talking about.

Well then yes, IT will position you to be in a heightened state of creativity, at least as defined by convergent divergent thinking. One of them more characteristic, where I is a stereotype qualities of people that smoke lot of marijuana, or in just cannabis through other means, is there changed patterns of speech. In fact, there's a kind of a or in the clinical room that you can predict or get some strong indication as to whether not somebody is a cannabis user and pot smoker based on their voice and their particular tone of voice and their lack of inflection.

There's a speculation here, but fortunately, it's been studied. So I like to discuss now whether or not cannabis can impact patterns of speech, both acutely meaning, while under the influence of cannabis and over time in chronic cannabis users. And when I say chronic cannabis use, I want to be very specific.

What I mean, chronic cannabis use does not necessarily mean that people are smoking cannabis or interesting kanna is every day, although certainly if they are, that qualifies as chronic youth. Chronic use is regular use over time of anywhere from twice a week or more. So using canada once a month would not be considered drones use, even if it's for many, many years.

Using cannabis or injustice cannabis in somewhere form twice a week would be considered chronic cuse. And of course, some of you are going to ask me to split hair and say, what if somebody uses a twice a month? Well, listen, uh, the clinical literature and the scientific literary don't get that specific.

And of course, there are an infinite number of ways to arrange one's a canvas, use everything from zero at all to constantly, every day, all day, never were in between. But think of rony use as twice a week or more, think of occasional use as less than that. And realized that within the realm of chronic use, excuse me, that or more can be anywhere from twice a week to every day to just in the evenings at set up.

The effects of chronic use of cannabis, as I just to find IT on speech have been studied. Because of this characteristic, drawing out certain syllables are slowing of speech, and in many cases, a total change or alteration in the way that people speak and use language, both when under the influence of canvas and when not under the influence of cannabis, if they are chronic users. And here we really wanted distinguish between T, H, C and CBD, and just make IT really simple and say that CBD is not responsible for most of the psychoactive effects of cannabis, where as T H C is.

And again, the ratio of C B D to T H C is going to be relevant there. But let's just think about cannabis and T H C as one in the same for this portion of the discussion, realizing in the course they are not exactly the same thing. There's an excEllent study entitled adults with history of recreational kind of issues have altered speech production.

And we will provide a link to that. First author, adam vogue, really like this um paper IT was publishing the journal drug and alcohol dependence. We will provide a link to IT for you if you would like to approve IT in more detail. The title itself adult with the history of recreational can you have ordered speech production tells you pretty much everything you need to know except there's some important nuance here because, as I mentioned earlier, people who smoke sativa varieties of cannabis often times will become more talk of much more talk tive.

However, whether not people tend to rely on sativa canada use or indica can of suse, there is a very consistent finding that people who are rony users again twice a week or more recreational use or medial use, undergo pretty profound changes in the way that they speak, but in a very specific set of ways. Now, first of all, the changes in speech shouldn't surprise us at all, because both sativa varieties of canada and go varieties of cannabis impact those brain centers involved in movement. The basal ganglia, remember the go no go circuit tree, the circuit tree that makes you want to do things, and the circuit tory that makes you want to with hold action and IT tends to shift the body brain toward more inaction.

And cannabis impacts C, B, wonder sectors in the cereBellar, which is involved in motor planning, execution and baLance. So regardless of whether not people are using cannabis of the nativity or the index of variety, there are disruptions in motor circuitry. And as you may have heard, if you listen to our episode with rock fellow professor doctor java, who works on speech and movement, speech is movement right? The movements of the mouth, the movements of the hands.

Those are intimately related in terms of our speech. In fact, the centres of the brain involved in hand movements are part of the speech areas, and vice versa. Eric actually point out that if you put your hands behind your back, provided you Normally do have use of your hands, IT actually will reduce your fluidity of speech.

And so i'm going to put them back in front of me. Now the point is, smoking marijuana or consuming marijuana by edible changes once speech and doesn't a very specific. And in this study, by advocating colleagues, they explored a huge different variety of aspects of speech.

And this can be done using spectral processing, which is fanti nerd speak for looking at how much inflection there is, looking at how long people hold value or consequent at. And again, these are people not under the influence of cannabis, but rather people who tend to be under the influence of cannabis when not participating in the study. Another words, chronic recreational cannabis is users.

So what are the two major shifts that cannabis causes on our part? Terns of speech. But the first one is a change in what's called spectral tilt.

Can that fancy nerd speak for vocal effort and intensity? So i'm not a pot smoker, I confess um but if I were to say the sentence vocal effort in intensity are important components of speech that's the way I would say that identify was striving to enunciate very carefully and to accent certain words and sills a pot smoker or somebody uses recreational cannabis fairly often, would have reduce spectral tilt A K A vocal effort intensity and might say spectral till is vocal effort in intensity and a differ tween groups and appeared to change in line with the duration of absence. Ts from cannabis use data, I think is not a far cry from the change in spectral health that they observed here.

In addition, there are changes in verbal timing, that is, pronunciation of words and accepting particular silly balls of words in people that consume cannabis or smoke cannabis. So rather than emphasize particular words within a sentence, so again, all we just use a sentence from the paper so that you can gain more knowledge from the paper. Cannabis, and i'll say that the way that I would say IT, since not a cannabis user, cannabis, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world, with proximately four percent of adults age fifteen to sixty four years reporting recent use.

And the cat is from the united nations office on drugs and crime twenty nineteen. So that would be the way that I would typically read that sentence. And having gone into the data on this paper and of course, evaluated references therein and listen to some of the spector analysis that they include as data, you can literally go to these papers online, in here, recordings of people who are kinda users and on kenna users.

And i'll try and give you a clear sense without picking an extreme example of how somebody who's a fairly consistent to even occasional cannabis user might read that very same sentence. cannabis. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world, with approximately four percent of adults age fifteen to sixty four years reporting recent use.

And the citation comes from the united nations office on drugs and crime twenty nineteen. Now you'll notice that wasn't a dramatic rence. And of course, I could have taken the liberty to pick an extreme example of the sort that they did occasionally observe in evaluating subjects for this paper.

I could have said something like cannabis. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit job. But Frankly, that would have been selecting an outlier example. And I don't want to do that. I don't want to screw the data, as they say.

Rather, if you heard the first time or at the sentence and the second time or at the sentence, what's mainly different is the difference in the amount of enunciation in accepting a particular words and symbols within a sentence. So the total content that delivered is exactly the same. And while I wasn't measuring my pace, the overall rate of communication is essentially the same. But there's less sort of wilting in the falling of the voice and less accepting that the major consistent effect of cannabis views.

Now, of course, there are examples of people who are using a lot of cannabis and IT impacts, brain centres involved in movement in speech so much so they really do have the really drawn out kind of um and often times this will be detected in the laugh you there's a sort of steroid pal stone or laugh as IT sometimes called rather than say or that to fake laugh obviously it's hard to make myself laugh if something not actually funny out to think of something funny when people say, like that's a bit more of the way I might laugh like sort of the inspiratory laugh or the which is expat's laugh. People who use kind is chronically will often do the right, which is sort of the back of the throw IT sort of the it's either inspiratory nor expiratory laugh and believe that there's an entire literature on inspiratory inhaling versus inspiratory fs, and there's also a literature on cannabis altering the pattern of inspiratory invitation laughs. IT almost sounds like a sarcastic laugh, when in fact, they may not be feeling sarcastic at all.

And I have a very close friend and colleague, a phenomenal neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, by the name of doctor edy chain. He's the chair of neurons, gery usf and his lab and him are expert in the study of neuroscience controlling language and speech. And he often tells me that he can predict with almost certainty whether not somebody is a regular cannabis user, based not just on the patterns of speech that they use, but even just by recording specific neurons in their brain that underlie the laugh reflex and certain patterns of speech.

So this idea that kind of us use changes your ability to speak, and enunciate clearly does appear to be true. And the stereotype that cannabis use tends to create more of a draw, or kind of a, if you will, a laziness in the life. And some of the reflexive inanities that people use does also appear to be true.

And I say all that, of course, with the caveat that many people out there will no individuals, or perhaps yourselves, or individuals that may use canvas, but that have incredible articulation, probably Better than mine and Better than other people out there who speak for a living. So i'm not saying that one hundred percent of people that use cannabis regularly can speak well or clearly. That's simply not what i'm saying.

And I don't want to communicate that idea at all. But IT is the case that people who are regular kind of this users are impacting the neural circuits involved in movement. Movement also control speech, and therefore cannabis is impacting speech. Now i'd like to turn attention to whether not cannabis can increase sexual activity, sexual desire and or sexual function. So we're going to to be talking about libido, about sexual desire and about effects of cannabis on hormones.

And while this might sound like a discussion that purely oriented towards the recreational use of cannabis, that is, people using cannabis to in heighten or increase in their sense of alzo for sexual activity, IT actually ventures into the clinical alm two, meaning there have been excEllent peer reviewed studies that i'll describe to you in a moment, expLoring the use of cannabis, or T H C, more specifically for something called hypo active sexual desire disorder, which refers to a persistent or recurrent efficiency or absence of sexual fantasies and thoughts and our desire for or receptivity to sexual activity. This is a disorder that is fairly common anywhere from six to nine percent of people, both males and females, used to be considered higher prevalence in females than in males. But now those numbers seem to be evening out.

So basically, there are anywhere from six to nine percent of people out there who have very dim I sexual desire, and so a number of those people are interested in figure in out ways to increase the amount of sexual desire. And of course, there are people in the general population who may not have hyperactive sexual desire disorder who are interested in using cannabis recreationally in order to increase their desire for or their experience of sexual activity. Now first, we have to acknowledge that sexual desire activity is a complex set of processes, meaning it's not just one event.

Sex, the verb IT involves ousel. IT involves sex. The verb and IT involves a whole set of mindsets in emotional states that vary tremendously between individuals. But once again, we can distill out a few basic principles.

And I should emphasize, these are by no means the only chemicals in neural circuits involved in the sexual archest will call IT desire the active sexy, but they are sensual to IT. They are vital to IT. They would be considered what I would call necessary, but not sufficient.

okay? So they'll be other chemicals involved, too. But the main chemicals in neural circuits are those involved in dopamine. So this is so called me olympic reward pathway. In particular, a brain structure called nuclear accumbens will talk about more in a moment, is vital to all motivated behaviors and to the seeking out of all particular types of pleasurable experiences. And sex is no exception.

So when we hear that the nuclear accumbens activated, that almost always means that dopamine e has been released in that area and other areas of the brain and body, and we can consider dooming central to the desire for pursuit of an act of sex. In addition to that, there are molecules like oxytocin, which involved in pair bonding, and they're going to be neural circuit specific to the oxytocin circuitry. But in terms of sexual arial and sexual behavior is really the dopamine, an pathway in the nuclear accused, which are especially vital that allows us to address the question, does cannabis increase, decrease or have no effect on sexual desire and or the ability to have sex? And therein we will find some very interesting answers.

And because once again, IT will point to the fact that the effects of cannabis on different individuals can be highly divergent, meaning in one set of individuals, cannabis will make them far less anxious, and in another set of individuals, the same strain of cannabis at the same dosage will make them extremely anxious. The same can be said also of sexual activity. And this was beautiful ly, illustrated in the context of sexual desire in the journal psycho.

Farmer ology in a paper publish in twenty seventeen the title of this paper is individual proactive reactivity modulates response of nuclear occupants to eric stimuli during acute cannabis and in fmr pilot study so give a little bit of definition to some of the terms in the title that will make IT easier for you understand the paper, but then i'll just march to the results because they are very straight forward and easy to understand and very interesting. F, M, I is just functional magnetic resistance imaging. So basically, subjects in this experiment came into the laboratory.

They were either people who had not used cannabis before or who had used cannabis before they were placed into a brain scanner, one of these F M devices that looks like a two but that people are backed up in two on um and then they can view images and there and their brain can be image without having to remove any school or drill into the scholl known or a surgery. The participants in this study were group according to whether not that experience any afd J A effects during the indexing with cannabis. So that would be the first group, group a.

They literally call the group a for affordable a and then the second group, and this is the only thing I don't like about the studies, is rather than call a group b, they call them group non a, which is just gets a little confusing. So i'll try to simplify this. There are two groups, and one group experiences sexual arse.

Al went under the influence of cannabis, T, H, C. specifically. The other group does not IT.

Turns out this is a very commonly observed divergence of effects of cannabis. Some people experiences a lot of sexual arise from cannabis and T. H.

C. In particular, and some people do not. In fact, they experience suppression of sexual desire. And it's always been a little bit mysterious as to why that is.

Well, in this study, they showed people in both groups erotic images, and they measured sexual arousal through a number of different measures. We won't go into all that. IT was largely subjective.

They're been other studies where theyve actually measured things like directions in males and vaginal liberating, ation and females. These are so called atomic responses that people can lie about, so to speak, and that tap into other aspects of the so called sexual sl process. In this study, they also took blood samples to look at the concentration of things like can above.

So this is a really nice study. And that they actually measured how much T. H. C. Was in the bloodstream, in different individuals who reacted to these ero extremely in different ways. And they measured hormones, namely cortisol, which is a stress hormones which tends to negatively correlated with sexual rosal and prolactin.

And the interesting tag way from the study was that for people, and I didn't matter if IT was males or females because they looked at both for people that experience elevated pro acting levels under cannabis and taxation, that's how they refer to IT. People take cannabis, they measure process, and some people had elevated process and some people did not. Okay, for the people that had elevated levels of proactive, they did not observe activation of brain areas associated sexual rosal.

In this case, the right nuclear accomba. You have two nuclear by, I guess they would be called one on each side. The brain and the activation of that brain area is strongly associated with dopy and with a ousel.

And sexual is on particular in the study. And if people had elevated proactive, they did not experience activation of nuclear oculus and they did not report feeling sexually arouse to those pictures, at least not to the same degree as the other group. So some people's protection levels go up when they in just cannabis.

And those people do not achieve eleven levels of sexual arises when under the influence of cannabis, even if they're looking at the erotic stimuli. That makes sense because proactive is mutually inhibitory. As we would say, it's have been a push pull with dopamine. When dopamine levels are high, proactive levels tend to be low, and when production levels are high, doomy levels tend to be low. The other group, so called group a, that experienced elevated levels of sexual arsa when under the influence of cannabis and viewing erotic, that group did not show elevated levels of proactive in response to cannabis.

So this, I believe, resolves a lone standing controversy in the field, which is, does cannabis increase the sexual well? IT depends if you fall into the category of person who has elevated levels of proactive in response to cannabis, then no, actually kinda is, will suppress your sexual response and desire. If, however, you are in the category of person that does not have elevated levels of protein in response to cannabis, well, then erotic extremely can potentially, and in fact do increase sexual alisal in the majority of individuals.

Now, many of you are probably hearing this and wondering whether or not you fall into one category of individual or another. And the key thing here to understand is that levels of production heading into the study did not predict, did not predict whether not people would respond to cannabis with elevated or non elevated or even reduced levels of sexual ousel IT was whether not people's proactive levels went up or did not go up, that predicted whether not their levels of a ousel would go up or not. So if you are somebody who, yes, does experience elevated levels of sexual arousal in function, went under the influence of cannabis, well, that's very likely that cannot does not increase your proactive levels, at least not to a significant degree while you're taking IT.

And if you are somebody who does not experience increases in sexual roussel function or even to mini sexual rsl function, went under the influence of cannabis is very likely the cannabis increasing your levels of proactive. Unfortunately, there is no way to know or predict based on some other measure. I think the outcome measure that is increased or not increased or even reduce sexual razzle is really the limited by which one can figure that out.

While we are on the topic of the effects of cannabis on sexual function and hormones like prolactin, probably worth mentioning, the cannabis has been studied extensively for its impact on other hormones, and we can summarize those literature in the following way. In here, i'm referring studies only on adults. We will talk about the developing brain body in a little bit, but IT is very clear that smoking cannabis increases protein levels.

Very, very clear. Now you might say, I didn't you just describe a study about set of individuals whose products act didn't increase and as a consequence, their level of sexual desire went up. Yes, there are subset of individuals for which that's true, but people who smoke cannabis do experience increases in proactive, and that's especially pronounced in people that smoke canada more than twice a week.

So this is important for acting as a for two earlier is reciprocal, mutually inhibitory ory with doping. One way to think about this is in the context of the Normal sexual arse, or arc weren dope increased from people are sexually 的， but then after orgasm, both males and females protein levels skyrocket. This is actually what creates the so called reactor period for males, during which they cannot achieve a action again for some period time.

That relates directly to how long the product increase. Lass, okay. Product is also increased in new parents of all species, including humans, which at least partially explain some of the reported or typical reductions in sexual desire activity in new parents. Now there are other reasons for that to sleep deprivation, but nature is smart and has arranged a set of hormones circuits in the brain and body, such that when tending to a newborn, e is the most important thing IT relegates IT reduces the importance of producing more children in sexual activity in those moments and days in weeks, sometimes longer. So when proactive love are up, doing levels are down, smoking marijuana more than twice a week significantly increases proactive.

There are fewer studies expLoring whether not edible marijuana has the same effect, although the preliminary evidence suggested that does not get into this in a lot more detail in a future episode, all about hormones with doctor cogia tt, who's been on this podcast before, but he verified that in my read of the literature, is that the edible forms of marijuana, cannabis, probably, again, let's put an astro s next to this, but IT appears, do not have as much of a process and elevating effect, and therefore not as much of a dopamine an suppressive effect, and therefore not as much of a testoon suppressing effect. And that is the issue of testosterone. Does cannabis, marijuana, a suppress testosterone? And this is a very controversial literature, and here's why some studies say, yes, it's suppresses testosterone in males and females and keep mind that testosterone in females is vital for libido in cogan function seller repair at sea.

So it's not just important in males, of course. However, other studies say that cannabis does not decrease. The astro and IT seems to depend on whether not the cannabis has brought into the system by way of smoking or edible, and IT seems to depend on whether not the cannabis is used chronically by an individual or acute.

And here I just wanted zoom out and say that studies on cannabis or drugs of any kind in humans are really complicated. If you think about IT, someone has to come into the laboratory and let's say you want to study chronic kind of us use, we can keep them in the laboratory all the time. So you have to rely on their self report of how often they use kinda is and in what form.

And you can't really control from one individual to the next of how much cannabis and T. H. C. They are bring into the system.

One person might smoke cannabis out of a bang and take big, deep longs for bang inhalational or such. Other people might smoke joints. Other people might use edibles.

IT becomes a very complicated to know what people have done and that they're reporting and accurately and no joke care, especially if marijuana impacting the short term memory systems, they might not actually remember, they might not be tracking IT that well. Contrast that with studies of the acute use of canvas and T, H, C, where people who are not regular users come into the laboratory. And now suddenly, with institutional guidelines and safety protocols are under the influence of T.

H. C. In canada. Now you're dealing with a person who may not have experiences with the elevated heart rate and blood pressure that's characteristic of cannabis, because IT is a stimulant, at least when initially brought into the system, even if IT might eventually lead a relaxation.

So now you got someone who's anxious or somebody who's not exist deeply relaxed, and you're trying to study this effect. So it's a it's a moving targeted sorts. It's very complicated to study marijuana and cannabis and its various derivatives in this way.

Now you can probably appreciate Better as to why there's so little nuances data about sativa versus index versus different ratios of C, B, D and T H C. It's really difficult to do these studies in the first place. That said, the general rules are smoking. Marianna increases proactive men and women, which will reduce dopamine and test astre ones smoking marijuana. Roni ally, meaning more than twice a week, does appear to reduce testosterone significantly and elevate so called aromas enzymes, which the enzymes that convert testa stern into astrogation.

This might partially explain the effect that occurs in about thirty five percent of males, which is na massa, which is a development of breast tissue in males, in particular Young males who have elevated levels of distortion or who are taking exogenous test aston one for testoon placement therapy or if they're taking hydas is animal externalise, or in females, that increase in breast size, which is due to additional estrogen from testosterone, covert estrogen. So IT does appear that marijuana and cannabis increased x rogen reduced a saw and were increased protein, especially in chronic users. Now i'm sure that some people out there will say, well, their testosterone levels are exceedingly higher or they are fine, meaning the conStellation of symptoms associated with low test astro, an elevated estrogen, are not present in them.

That probably means one of two things or both, they either had eleven levels of testosterone to begin with, so their ceiling was higher, so bringing IT down and have that much of effect, or that they have very low levels of a omitted in their system. There are some anecdotal evidence that smoking particular parts of the marijuana plant, in particular the seeds, can increase a romance in the conversion of testosterone tester's en, I think in the old days, the lower was the seeds make you sterile. And I think that was related to what I just told you.

This increase in conversion of tester to estimate there is a vast literature on the effects of kenna is on fertility. IT does seem yes. IT does seem to alter sperm motility and sperm health and function when taking colonic ally more than twice per week in particularly high doses of hypotension.

T. H, C. This is something we will cover in far more detail on a future episode all about fertility. And in females, there's an increase in estrogen as a consequences, smoking marijuana in increasing proactive, in emerging in parallel.

Whether not that detrimental isn't clear, although I point out that elevated exogenous product and can be associated again can be associated not necessarily and certain ly not positive, but can be associated with eleven levels of or frequency of breast cancer detection. So cannabis and its effects on hormones are not without consequence. There are effects of cannabis on cortisol in some individuals are greatly increases cortisol to the anxious and paranoia you can create.

And other individuals IT reduces cortisol. Again, we have these diversion effects. But I want to be very clear, the effects on proactive, meaning elevated product, and the effects on testosterone, meaning at least most studies point to reduced the levels of testosterone and increased emergent.

That seems to be true for most all individuals that cloning ally use cannabis. The effects on cortical and to be divergent kind of increases cortisol l in some individuals and decreases cortisol and others in general. Increases in cortisol that are ongoing are not healthy for us and so on.

And then of course, there are other effects on hormones, and i'll just briefly summarized those that T H C in particular, not cvd, but T H particular, is known to be strongly inhibitory for something called gynt, a trope in releasing hormone. This is a hormone e that's released from the brain, from the hypothalamus, that then feeds on to where, I should say, signals to the patuit tory gland, which is also near the roof, your mouth, lot of of happening near the roof, your mouth. That turns out, biology, gicquel and reduced levels of canada tro and releasing hormones caused by cannabis use, reduce levels of lh, uti, zing hormones and F, H, which reduced levels of testosterone and sperm production and males and egg health and violation and menstrual function in females.

Now i'm sure there are a number of women out there who would say they have perfectly Normal menstrual cycles despite using kenna is, i'm sorry, not going to dispute that. But if you are somebody who is trying to maximize fertility or regular or baLance ormonds marijuana in cannabis reduces G N R age, that is the the roban released from, and thereby reduces luti zing hormones and follow stimulating hormone, which are released from the pituitary and travel in the bloodstream to support Normal ovarian function and health and Normal testicular function and health in females and males respectively. Up until now, i've been discussing the biological and psychological effects of cannabis.

Now i'd like to shift our attention to some of the negative health effects of cannabis and shine light on some of the individuals or groups out there that need to be especially wary of and probably avoid kind's entirely, including section of cannabis by a way of edible. And I frame things that way because I think there is an increasingly large number of people out there that appreciate that smoking tobacco or smoking cannabis vapor tobacco, yes, raping tobacco or raping cannabis, each and all have negative health consequences on the lungs and on the so called and the theory, al cells of the body, the cells that make up the vast culture, the capitalists and blood vessels. If you don't already know this, i'll make IT very clear and i'll make IT very brief.

Whether not you smoke or vb tobacco or cannabis, you are severely impair ing the function of antithetical cells that make up the capitalists and blood vessels of your brain and body, and that is known to decrease cognitive capacity over time. Increased probability of strokes severely impact lung function, and also lead to things like purple erl neuropathy. IT leads to sexual this function because of.

Lack of blood flow to the genitals can lead to other aspects of reproductive damage, including to the overall and tests. Essentially, there is no other way to state, except that smoking and vapor have negative health consequences that are independent of the substances that people are trying to get into their bloodstream by smoking or vapor. So people smoking vague tobacco in people smoking vapp cannabis.

And in both cases, if we just set aside the direct effects of tobacco and the direct effects of cannabis, we can confidently say that the process of smoking, of inhaling, smoking the lungs, and yes, also waiting, bringing the chemicals that transport nick ino, in this case, cannabis, in the lungs by way of waking, are both severely detrimental to india. Theo yourselves, I think a few years ago, when vapp wasn't as prominent, there was this question in this idea that maybe vapor was going to be far healthier, or at least not as bad as smoking. But now we can see a huge number of negative health effects of making, some of which are distinct from the effects of smoking.

So if you'd like more information on smoking versus wapping, please see the episode that I did not nickey. We will also do an entire episode about vipon in the future, but there's really no way to sliced IT and dice or Candy coated. The fact of the matter is that smoking has clear and severe negative health consequences regardless of whether or not you're smoking tobacco or cannabis.

T hc and raping has negative health consequences, whether not you're using the vate to bring in nicotine or T H C or some combination of T H C in C B D. Simply the way is with that said, now i'd like to focus our attention on the direct effects that cannabis has, either by way of T H C action or by way of C B D action, in terms of positive or negative health effects on the brain and body. And we're going to explore that first as a function of age.

And the reason we're going to do that is relate to the fact that I mentioned the beginning of the episode, which is that the C B one and the cb two receptors, the two receptors for cannabis, to which T H, C, N, C, B, D and cbn and all other psychoactive of compounds of cannabis bind to, to have their actions are present throughout development. Believe IT or not, they are present very soon after conception. And the C B one and C B two receptors actually play a critical role in the development of the federal.

Now you might wonder why that is, because, of course, the developing fetal doesn't necessarily expect to see cannabis or to be exposed to cannabis. T H C N, C B D. But as you recall, in doggy ious, conabar tes are present in the adult brain and body, and in doggy conabar ids, IT, turns out, are also present in the developing fetus.

In fact, indigenous canabal ids are present at much greater levels in the developing fees than they are or after a child is born. And levels of indolence can have nose actually go down across development. I find this really interesting.

What this means is that in dodges can avoid an activation of the cb one and cb two accepts are an integral al part of neural development. And this is going to become especially relevant in considering whether not pregnant mother's shouter should not use cannabis or C, B, D. And IT also points to some very interesting biology in terms of how the brain develops and how the body develops.

Now, the development of the brain and nervous system and body is a fascinating and vast literature, certainly far too vast to covering today's episode, especially at this late hour as they were. But we will have a future episode all about brain development. In terms of the effects of cannabis, it's sufficient to say that canabal receptors are present and active in the developing fetal.

They're present and active in the newborn e. They're present active in adolescence. And across that time, from conception until adolescence, indulging ous conventional ids are mainly responsible for the actions of those conventional ID recept tors.

During that time, the cabinet receptors are having very specific effects that are distinct from their effects later in life, and those effects can largely be explained in terms of neural development. Again, we don't have time for an entire lecture on this now. But during development, your body was a collection of a bunch of cells that actually called a blast sua, which he means a ball of cells.

And then those cells actually have to grow out connections and duplicate themselves. And this is a very interesting process by which neurons initially are situated far apart. And then they grow out connections and make contacts with another. They remove certain connections, depending on what kind of life events you're exposed to. If you have a wonderful event, early life for a traumatic early life, those connections change at at a the important point for today's discussion is that the C B.

One reception in particular, is expressed on every neuron in the developing brain and has been shown to be important for every aspect of neural development, from the proliferation of cells, meaning getting enough cells to create a brain, to the outgrowth of the so called axon, to the wires that connect up neurons with one another, to the steering, the direction that which those accounts go in development, which is essential. And even so far, to explain the connections that form between neurons, the so called synapses, is, and then how those synapses work. So the basic statement here is that indulgence.

Canadian ids in cv one or separate activation are critical for every aspect of brain wiring and development. With that in mind, the statement i'm about to make is absolutely terrifying, at least to me. And Frankly, I should be terrifying to you as well. And the statement is, the current statistics on use in pregnant mothers is absolutely shocking.

The most recent survey of pregnant mothers in united states show that fifteen percent, one, five, fifteen percent of pregnant mothers report using cannabis in some former another, either smoking IT or more likely, injustice of an edible, because they are aware of the negative effects of smoking on the developing fetal injection of initial to increase D H C and or C B D during pregNancy, which to me, I have to say, as a developing neurologist, is Frankly, it's a, it's scary. It's absolutely scary because that C B one recept is not just a minor player in neural development. IT is absolutely central to every critical aspect of brain wiring and development.

Now the long term implications are even the short term implications of this. Fifteen percent of mothers self reporting the use of cannabis at some point during pregNancy are not yet known. This is as would say, it's an experiment that's ongoing. But i'd be remiss if I didn't point out these data and just epr.

You, please, please, please, if you are pregnant, considering getting pregnant, your cannabis user, whether or not using edibles, if you are C, B, D use, please do whatever is necessary to not ingest cannabis or smoke cannabis or injust CBD during pregNancy. Now there may be certain clinical indications by which your physician and your O B G Y N and your the pediatrician that will venture be the pediatrician for your child will prescribed C B D. Although it's hard to imagine what those are. I contacted the number of different pediatricians and O B G I S, and not a single one said they would ever suggest in, in fact, would strongly discourage their patients from using cannabis during pregNancy.

But I think that the advent of edible forms of cannabis and the combination of T H C and C B D and certain products, in the fact that most people view C B D as safer, because IT does not include as, or does not have, I should say, the psychoactive effects that T H E does has LED to a situation where where you have fifteen percent of pregnant mothers using kenna is at some point during pregNancy and may be even frequently throughout pregnant y and the effects on the developing fears are completely unknown. But recall that cannabis and T, H, C and CBD outcompete, meaning they park in the receptor for indulgence, conabar ids, and prevent indulgence can abodes from having their Normal level and pattern of action. So this is absolutely critical.

I cannot encourage you enough. Or rather, I should say I cannot discourage enough. The use of cannabis and any related compounds in cannabis, edible or smoke, certainly not smoke, but even edible during pregNancy and certainly in breast feeding, locating mothers.

The same is also to recall that cannabis and T H C and C B D are incredibly lip phillip. They they are fat soluble, and they get into cells very readily. And they cross the blood brain berrier.

They, they cross the blood percenters barrier. So when I encounter this statistics, I added going to write my eyes a few times. I could not believe IT.

And yet I cross check that number with a few other studies. A few others have come in a little bit lower at, you know, somewhere like thirteen to fourteen percent. A few have come in a little bit higher, but the average of fifteen percent is both striking and shocking.

So I don't know how to make the message more clear. I hope that is clear. Please do not use any cannabis, T H C or related things, including CBD smoke or edible if you're pregnant lacking at setter.

Now we are at the point where we need to consider some of the negative health effects of cannabis that have been well documented in imperial reviewed studies. And before I do this, I want to return to a point that I made earlier, which is that nothing I am about to say relate directly to issues of legality. If we consider alcohol, for instance, alcohol is legal in most areas of the world that certainly legal in the U.

S. And yet there's an age limit for it's use. Typically, it's not available to people until they're twenty one or older.

It's not to say that certain people don't use IT before age twenty one, but it's not legal. IT is illegal to buy a possessed alcohol. Consume alcohol before is twenty one. And I think with good reason because the brain is still developing.

Likewise, we can have a informed discussion about kenna is in its various components that can fully acknowledge the reality, which is that one of the major forms of cannabis in the past has been the legal ramifications of cannabis being illegal. I that's a statement that is no longer controversial. And this is not a discussion about legalization or non legalization.

You look to the scientific nature, the epidemiology, ical literature, there are wonderful data of carton university and elsewhere in canada showing that you many of the negative effects of marijuana and T, H. C. Are due to the criminal justice system itself, that is, the creation of illicit drug businesses, the creation of organized crime, the creation of a number of different features related to the illegality of cannabis.

And again, this isn't the topic of today's episode, but that should be acknowledged. And at the same time, we need to acknowledge that. When a compound, a drug or what everyone to call IT becomes legal, there is a tendency to assume that it's safe and safe for everybody.

And with respect to cannabis and T, H, C, and perhaps even CBD, but certainly for T, H, C. And cannabis that smoke are vague or consuming inevitable form. That is simply not the case.

There are clear data pointing to negative health effects of cannabis use and T, H, C. Use, which again is not to say that there are not positive effects on mood, anxiety, pain relief at that. Those are out there and they exist.

And we will mention some of those, of course, and we've talked about some of those creativity, for instance, eta. But if we do not acknowledge the negative health effects that are documented in literature, then we are overlooking some very important data, especially as IT relates to the development of psychosis in certain individuals. So with that said, there are very strong data, and I will provide links to these resources. Point into the fact that for people who are chronic users of cannabis that is using IT twice a week or more, that over time with their levels of anxiety actually increase.

And this is true even for individuals that are using strength of cannabis, that, while under the influence of cannabis, reduce anxiety over time, meaning over the course of twelve or more months, there is a well documented effect of the anxiety relief that cannabis in today initially brought being less and less potent, that is, people need to smoke more of IT or in just more T, H, C, in order to achieve the same level of anxiety relief. And in some cases, a switch from anxiety relief to increase in anxiety. And again, that increase in anxiety not just when the drug is not being consumed, but also well under the influence of the drug.

Why would that be? We have to go back to our understanding of the C B one recept and the potency with which T H C bind to that cb one recept when T H C is brought into the system over and over again, meaning twice a week or more, the binding of teh you that see be one receptor eventually causes a sort of habituation or attenuation of the entire process of binding the receptor in creating the psychoactive effects. So initially IT creates anxiety relief, but over time, the affinity for the recept doesn't change me.

He can still park in that slot with a lot of authority, a lot of strength, but there are fewer, fewer receptors available, and then the signaling that downstream of those receptors becomes less and less robust. Now this is a topic we didn't get into in too much detail today because I didn't want to include even mobile ological detail. But the C B one receptor is a so called g protein coupled receptor IT.

That's a mouthful, but A G protein coupled receptor, or basically is like a bucket brigade. So while some recept tors in the brain body are such that when something, a chemical, binds to them, that receptor has a direct action like IT, opens and allows stuff to rush into the cell, increases the excitement. The cell, so called fast effects, these g protein coupled receptors and C, B one is A G protein couple.

They are more like a bucket brigade, where they kick off a process through one molecule that then is handed off to another molecule. That this then is handed off to another molecule is a long trainer cascade events. Those long change or cascades of events have a lot of opportunity for regulation, for adjustment, recept your systems in the brain and body, especially recept our systems like the canabal ent system, that are used to being kind of tickled, not punched, tickled of by indulgence.

Can everyones in a while, some bins has an effect, but certainly not bound with incredible potency. And over and over again, as they are in T. H. SHE is coming into the system. Well, those systems eventually, over time, they adjust themselves so that the body and those cells can achieve so called homeostasis.

So when people are using T, H, C more than twice a week, what ends up happening is those g protein, couple receptors in the downstream signaling mechanism start to adjust themselves. And IT requires more and more drug. So either higher dosages or more frequent use.

And a lot of the positive effects, the so called decreed anxious, increase focus, increase creativity. Some of that starts to win. IT start to do. And people wonder why they so much kind of is just to achieve a fraction of the effect that they used to be able to achieve with even a lower dose. So anxiety is getting worse over time, and that's anxiety during the drug use.

And outside of the drug use, some people work around that or try to work around that by using varying strings of cannabis or changing the pattern of delivery from smoking to raping or from vapor to edible. Informative to transdermal. Anyway, they go through a lot of gymnastics and rising and um seeking, but none there's xiety increases over time.

Also, it's very clear that depression in increases over time, and especially this is surprising to me, but especially for individuals that were not depressed at the outset of their use in other ways, they didn't start using kinda because they were depressed. But rather, the depression starts to emerge as a consequence of the cannabis N T H C S. So that serious.

In fact, we now know, based on really solid epidemiologic evidence, that depression is not a strong predictor of seeking out cannabis. IT doesn't drive terribly many people to seek out canvas use, but cannabis use itself makes people four times likely to develop a chronic major depression. So anxiety is increasing.

Depression is increasing, and this turns out to beat especially relevant, important to Young people. Why do I say that? Well, if you look at the data, and again, I think some of the strongest data or data to come out of the canadian system, we've done some really beautiful control studies.

I really hope to invite some of the people who range and ran those studies as guessed onto the huberman la podcast. But if you look at the data out of canada or you look at some of the data of northern europe in the U. S, what you find is that the probability that somebody will use cannabis and then go on to use IT chronically great, very strongly with age.

So for instance, some of the highest degree of cannabis use is among individuals sixteen to twenty four years old, in fact, in individuals were sixteen to twenty four years old, and in particular in students and people who are working surprising more than in unemployed population being Young, sixteen to twenty four, at least to me, that Young and being a student or working doubles the likelihood that somebody is going to use cannabis on a regular basis twice or more per week. The typical age of initiating kind of issues nowadays, about nineteen years old, so eighteen point seven, and about twenty percent of people in that age bracket of sixteen to twenty four years old are using cannabis daily either by by smoking or by edible. That's an enormous number, at least by my read.

It's enormous number. And here's why it's a really serious concern. During the ages of sixteen to twenty four, the cabinet recept tors are still available. They're not being as strongly driven by indulgences, canabal ots, but by injection of T, H C and or C B D. There are downstream effects on the signaling within those cells that all the data point to creating a much, much higher likelihood of developing major depression, severe anxiety or psychosis at later ages.

So to be very clear, canna used between the ages of sixteen to twenty four in both males and females, is increasing anxiety, increasing depression in the immediate years and within the one years time or so, so much so that people are using the cannabis ongoing in an attempt to reduce that anxiety and reduce that depression. But in addition to that, the cannabis, and because of the signal mechanisms involved, are pretty disposing those individuals to psychosis later in life. If you look at individuals who start using kind of us, even Younger, age fourteen, or even as Youngest twelve, the probability of psychosis later in life, in particular schizo ophth ic, or schizophrenic like episodes, more than doubles.

So this is a really serious concern, and this is completely aside from any so called positive effects or beneficial effects of cannabis, is that people might derive from occasional use as adult, meaning people older than twenty five. So for the person who is older than twenty five, who, you know eats an edible every once in a while, or who smokes cannabis every once in a while, and you know people love to make the argument, you know it's not as bad as alcohol, which I Frankly is a terrible argument because if you saw our epo de and alcohol, alcohol is pretty bad um but even so, it's just not a good argument you know saying that something is good because it's not as bad as something else is simply just not a good or valid argument, least not biological speaking. The use of canada and Young population is very strongly predisposing people to psychotic c episodes.

And we know the mechanism by which this occurs. This is occurs by a thinning of the so called gray matter. And it's called gray matter, because with neurons, nerve cells, they have a so called cell body that the party contains the D, N, A and manufacturer and are transmittals at a, and those are shipped out to the other parts of the neuron that include the x on the wires between axons and those x on under the microscope, because theyve a lot of fatty tissue around them.

And this is healthy fatti e tissue that allows electrical transmission to be fast. That fatty tissue, though those portions of the cells are called the White matter, to have gray matter and White matter, gray matter are the so called cell bodies where the DNA and all the stuff captured. Why matter is the sort of the actions of the wires through which all the key components are shipped out to the synapse? S at eta, wonderful data.

And I do say wonderful, because this is part of a large scale consortium, and we will provide a link to the paper. This was polishing translational psychiatry just this year, point to the fact that adolescent cannabis use accelerates the thinning of the prefrontal cortex and the gray matter in particular. So what this means is, well, during Normal development, the grain matter, the prefrontal cortex and all of the cells there are indeed intended.

It's a Normal process for IT to thicken and then thin a little bit as connections are adJusting and people learn and mature and grow up. This is part of the Normal healthy materia process. Independent cannabis use when kids, because these really are kids, use cannabis and IT doesn't matter the mode of cannabis delivery, whether not it's raping or smoking or edible, that gray matter things at a much, much greater rate.

And the reason I like this publishing translational psychiatry this year so much is that they link the amount of cannabis use, heavy, moderate light or no canadas use. To the rate of prefrontal cortical thinning. And it's absolutely clear from these data that the more often Young people, meaning individuals between age of fourteen and twenty five, the more often they consume or smoke or rape cannabis, the faster and the more extreme that critical thinking is.

And the cortical thinning is occurring in exactly the area, the brain that's involved in planning, in control, over one's emotions, in reflexes, in organizing one's life in a number of different ways, anywhere from cleaning one's room, literally, you know, knowing what goes, where to making plans that extend out through the day, through the week, through a year. Essentially, becoming a functional human being involves using your prefrontal cortex in a variety of different context and different sort of time domains, the time domain of an hour, the time domain of a day, making plans and being able to execute plans is fundamental to being a healthy human being. And it's absolutely clear from these data that the more cannabis one uses, the more impair those neural circuits are are simply no other way to to view these data.

In fact, so much so that even small amount of cannabis are associated with rates of critical thinking and degrees of critical thinking that are really detrimental and concerning for Normal cognitive processes. If you were somebody who smoke marijuana or consume cannabis in any former another during adolescence, does that mean that your prefrontal cortex can never be rescued, that IT can't come back? Well, the short answer is IT probably can be rescued to some degree.

IT will depend on how much cannabis you are using and how often and what strings of cannabis ta, there's really no travelling back in time, as my graduate advisor used to say, you know, time machines are broken, at least for now, we don't have time machine. So all you can really do is trying to emphasize first about quitting cannabis in any form and focusing on behaviors that emphasize ended the a leo cell blood flow health to the brain. So that would be cardiovascular exercise, adequate nutrition, not smoking, nicotine.

And there are a number of other things that one can do. We will do an entire episode all about trying to reverse the effects of cannabis and drug use during adolescence. We don't have time to do a deep dive on that right now, but all the things that standardize and kind of promote health, adequate sleep, good social connection, regular cardio, ashlar and wait training, exercise, healthy nutrition, when that represents you healthy medallic function and weight, and said those are all going to facilitate some recovery of brain function in particularly preference to critical function by way of all the positive effects that those behaviors and choices have.

But with that said, if you are in the age bracket that i've been referring to, this fourteen to twenty five in the age bracket, and you are a occasional even or chronic cannabis user, you should be very, very careful. And concern about the long term effects that could potentially have that state is bolstered by another statistic, which is that, unlike a lot of other drugs, the rate of cannabis use is strongly related to how dangerous people perceive cannabis to be. That might seem obvious.

On the one hand. You know, if you think something is very, very dangerous, you would expect that the probability that somebody would use IT would be very, very low. If they think something is safe, the probability would be high. But that isn't necessarily the case. If you think about IT, cannabis is a unique instance in which nowaday we are hearing.

Yes, it's becoming legal in a number of areas, and we talked earlier about why that's probably a good thing in most circumstances, but that we aren't just hearing that cannabis is safe or it's not just being implied that cannabis is safer. But many more people are talking about the positive effects of cannabis without a lot of discussion about the negative effects of cannabis. And I realized that saying this is going to upset some people out there, because I know that there are a number of people who fought very hard for the legalization process.

And I want to acknowledge that I also want to acknowledge the many known positive effects of cannabis in adults with very occasional use, provided IT is delivered safely and in the safe context and setting, and with legality that is entirely distinct from the issue of whether not cannabis safe for the developing brain and body. Again, i'm not demonizing anybody for using cannabis, but I want to make the point very simply and very directly. IT is far and away a different circumstance for the brain, for an individual to be twenty five years or older, and using cannabis in whatever form, occasionally, or maybe even frequently, then IT is for a Young person age fourteen to twenty five, to be using cannabis, either by smoking or raping, or by edible or any other form on the brain and body.

It's absolutely clear that the brain continues to develop, at least until age twenty five, and that a huge number of systems related to mood regulation, so called executive functions, ability to organize my thoughts, plan and execute plans, SHE, to become a functional human being, right? That's one portion of becoming a functional human being, but certainly an essential one. All of that relies on the fine tuning of this neural circuitry that we've been talking about about up until now.

And it's abundantly clear that cannabis intention, in particular, dramatically disrupt those processes. So if this is clear, and not just from my statement, i'd like to point to a particular paper. This is one of the more impactful papers in this area in recent years.

So the paper published in Lancet psychiatry in twenty two title is association of kenna is potency with mental ill health and addiction a systematic review? A number of very important points in this very fine paper. Lens psychiatry is one of the premier medical journals out there.

And they evaluated a huge number of studies. They actually looked at more than four thousand studies. They selected the ones that were only the most rigorous in terms of study design and analysis and rigor of conclusions. And they looked at how early use of cannabis impacted later probability of development of psychosis and other psychiatric conditions. And the takeaway from the study are very clear.

First of all, chronic cannabis use, so more than twice per week has consistently you ve been associated with mental health disorders, and pulling some phrases directly from the paper, heavy cannas use, meaning kenna is use more frequent than twice per week, has been associated with four times the risk of psychosis later in life, in particular schizophrenia a and bipolar like episodes. Now we've done an episode on bipolar disorder, so called by polar depression. We've not yet done one on schizophrenia, but both by polar disorder and schizophrenia.

Nia have a very, very strong genetic component. There is a thirty three, zero, thirty times greater likelihood that you have bipolar disorder if you have a first relative to as bipolar disorder. And then it's also the case that using cannabis, especially during adolescence, in the teen years and up until age twenty five, create a four times greater risk of psychosis for those that have a previous position to bipolar disorder and or schizophrenia.

A now I don't hear very much about this in the media. This paper got some attention and then it's sort of, uh, got swept away. I don't think there was an intentional sleeping way. There's just a lot of events in the world, as you well know.

But I think it's a particularly important set of findings because obviously, in looking at so many studies IT distils out the strongest findings that are out there and really pulls the the, the consistent messages that arriving from all these different studies. And as they point out, and again, i'm parthians ing here, this is the first systematic review of the association of cannabis potency. And all of the data point to a very clear conclusion, which is the more content, the T H C concentration, the higher probability of developing psychosis or a major depressive episode, or a major ananzi ety disorder later in life.

That should be of particular concern, because we know we are absolutely clear about the fact that with the advent of all these new strains of cannabis and with the engineering and availability of cannabis at much higher potency, meaning T H. C potency, the risk of psychosis is going up and up and is likely to continue going up unless something is done to reduce the frequency of cannabis use to zero, ideally, or to very low frequency, very low potency in adolescence and teens and people age twenty five or Younger. I know a lot of people don't want to hear this message because, first of all, it's alarming.

And second of all, as I mentioned earlier, the statistics tell us that the greatest number of people that are starting to use cannabis are in the age age of sixteen to twenty four. Many of them are functional in other areas of life. They are students. They are employed at sea. But when you couple that with the fact that the most frequent adopters of cannabis user in this age bracket of sixteen to twenty four, there twice is likely to use as other individuals or to start using kenna is as our other individuals, plus the general perception out there because of the way that cannabis is discussed in the media, by sports figures and by celebrities and by politicians.

That said, a that is not as bad as alcohol, and maybe not that bad, and maybe even has health benefits, then you are essentially setting up a system where Young people are far more likely to adopt and continue cannas use without realizing these serious health consequences that await them later. With all of that said, I, of course, again want to acknowledge that there have been well demonstrated effects of cannabis for reducing pain, in particular in chemotherapy and in the context of reducing nokia and people suffering from cancer chemotherapy, there is a well known effect that one can generally point to us positive using cannabis, four things like louima for lowering interactive lar pressure and offsetting the loss of neurons that would lead to blind us. Although there are other tools, of course, that don't involve canada used that can accomplish that as well, so called interactive lar pressure lowering drugs or drops their is a list of probably a dozen or more psychological and bodily elements that can be aided by cannabis use, in particular edible cannabis use of particular strains.

I of course, i'm going to address each and every one of those in episodes where i'm talking, for instance, about eye disease or about chronic pain. I'm no way, shape or form trying to rob the incredible efforts of the laboratories and people that have worked very hard to study and establish the valid uses of cannabis for treating various elements, and that continue to study cannabis in order to try and eliminate the symptoms of different elements. But today, I really wanted to emphasize the biology of cannabis.

Some of the often discussed effects, I guess one could call them positive effects, things like enhances creativity and really point to the new aunt, and actually divergence of people who take cannabis, and some experiences hiding levels of creativity. And some do not. Some people experience heightened levels of sexual rosel, and some people experience exact opposite.

And so on and so forth rather than focus on all the potential positive and sort of emerging positive data about cannabis in different medical context. And at the same time, I strongly feel that is important to acknowledge the shocking because there's really no other way to describe IT the shocking effects of cannabis use on the developing fears in the fact that so many pregnant and acting mothers are using kenna. I think that number fifteen percent still has me.

You die with kind of disbelief. And yet we need to acknowledge this and address this immediately. And I think it's vital to understand that cannabis use through any delivery mechanism, smoking or raping or edible or otherwise, is very, very concerning, in fact, dangerous to the developing brain, certainly for the feeder brain in for the baby brain, but also for the adolescent brain in for the teen and Young adult brain.

Not just because of the effects that can have in the immediate term, those slow, creeping increases and anxiety, depression brought on by kind of use, but also the time release, if you will, on the development of psychosis and other types of major psychiatric disorders later in life. Acknowledge we've covered a lot of ground today, and yet there's still far more ground that we could have covered and that we will indeed cover in future episodes. Nevertheless, if you are learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribed our youtube channel.

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