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 motaman
old hand
Registered: 12/18/02
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 Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety 
#11707955 - 12/23/09 06:34 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety
By Alan Mozes
healthday Reporter Wed Dec 23, 5:03 pm ET
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Marijuana use among teens may trigger neurological changes in the developing brain that lead to increased anxiety and stress levels that could persist into adulthood, new animal research suggests.
Although the finding stems solely from work conducted with adolescent and adult lab rats -- not yet replicated among humans -- the work suggests that certain troublesome changes in levels of the key brain chemicals serotonin and norepinephrine may linger long after marijuana use ceases.
"Here, the goal was simply to understand the neurological mechanism that could be underlying the specific phenomenon of depression and anxiety observed in previous studies among adolescents chronically exposed to cannabis," explained study author Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.
"And what we found with the animals we worked with is that when those that were exposed to cannabis as adolescents became adults they had low serotonin activity, which is related to depressive behavior, and high norepinephrine levels, which is related to an increase in anxiety and stress," Gobbi continued.
"This means," she cautioned, "that cannabis exposure when young seems to cause changes in the adult brain. And these changes could perhaps be irreversible, even if you stop consuming cannabis."
The study findings were released online Dec. 5 in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of Neurobiology of Disease.
The authors note that the main ingredient in marijuana -- delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) -- has previously been identified as having an impact on receptors in the brain that regulate cognition and emotion.
In addition, they point out that the adolescent brain is perhaps particularly sensitive to both drug use and related stress, given that this is the pre-adult period during which the brain and its neurochemical composition undergoes extensive reshaping and reorganizing.
To assess the role cannabis may play on adolescent brain development, for 20 days -- a period characterized as "prolonged exposure" -- adolescent rats were given daily injections of either a low-dose (0.2 milligrams/kilograms) or high-dose (1.0 milligrams/kilograms) of cannabis. For comparison, a group of adult rats underwent a similar regimen.
Following cannabis exposure, both the adolescent and adult groups went 20 days drug-free to allow the effects of drug withdrawal to dissipate, as well as to allow for a wide range of cognitive testing to gauge the long-term effects of cannabis exposure on task execution and mood.
The authors noted that by the conclusion of the 20-day waiting period, the previously adolescent rats were effectively adults.
The team found that chronic exposure to cannabis during adolescence does appear to provoke abnormal emotional activity into adulthood, typified by the onset of depression, poorer social interaction, heightened anxiety and increased stress.
What's more, Gobbi and her colleagues also found a drop in serotonin levels in the adult brain following either low- or high-dose adolescent ingestion and an increase in norepinephrine levels following high-dose exposure.
Rats who had already reached adulthood when chronically exposed to cannabis, however, appeared to experience far less of the detrimental emotional reactions found among adolescent rats. Indeed, adult rats, they observed, seemed to be able to readily cope with, and even overcome, most of the neurological impairments that arose as a result of cannabis exposure.
"We were a little bit surprised by our findings because we didn't expect to see such a strong effect on the adult brain from adolescent usage. It was a very significant effect," said Gobbi.
"So, in general, I think that what people should take away from this work," she advised, "is that just because it's a plant it doesn't mean that marijuana is harmless. It's a pharmacologically active drug, and it must be used with awareness."
For his part, however, Dr. Adam Bisaga, an addiction psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute, minimized the relevance of the findings.
"I think the translational value of this research is very limited insofar as what the clinical relevance to humans might be," Bisaga cautioned. "It's always very difficult to translate from animal models to humans. Yes, there is some indication that this may be of importance to humans. But most of the data with patients that I am familiar with suggests that most of these cannabis-exposure deficits are reversible. So, for the time being I'm not that impressed, although it's certainly something to further study in humans," he added.
"This is not new," he noted. "Clinicians know well that exposure to large amounts of cannabis in adolescence may produce enduring changes in emotional functioning and reactivity in vulnerable individuals, such as difficult-to-treat anxiety and depressive symptoms. What this paper does is to try to characterize more precisely the components of this syndrome using animal models of emotional reactivity."
More information
For more on marijuana use and its effect on the brain, visit the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20091223/hl_hsn/teenmarijuanausemighthavelastingeffectsonmoodanxiety
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 EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 3,926
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: motaman]
#11708085 - 12/23/09 07:00 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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---
Edited by EntheogenicPeace (01/01/22 08:33 PM)
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DropScience
Stranger
Registered: 03/22/09
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: EntheogenicPeace]
#11710398 - 12/24/09 05:16 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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does anyone remember the studies where they put masks on monkeys and forced them to breath massive amounts of smoke until they were brain damaged from oxygen deprivation but then released the results leaving the details of the study unpublished, proclaiming it was proof that marijuana caused permanent brain damage... only to be revealed as a scam years and years later by a freedom of information request?
The study itself admits the unclear nature of the results on rats vs human, but what should be more obvious is that the study itself is based around presuppositions around long invoked and often discredited theory that marijuana will "permanently derange America's youth!"
Science just isn't science when it's tasked and funded to promote and give a sense of authenticity to politically motivated police state propaganda.
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oh_you_know
lsd <3
Registered: 02/08/09
Posts: 2,282
Loc: Oh, USA
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: DropScience]
#11710512 - 12/24/09 06:44 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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just saws this report on fox 8 news! just not very detailed. i sure do love turning on the news and seeing nugs on my screen! gotta get those nugs in the public eye
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Baan
Stranger
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: oh_you_know]
#11710624 - 12/24/09 07:44 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Brainwashing
They are trying to get kids to think that their burn-out is permanent brain damage
They will hear of this study at school, and when they get burned out they will think "Oh the study is right and there is brain damage"
What bullshit
Just because a brain might need rest doesn't mean that there is permanent damage.
And I thoroughly dismiss this study as invalid. Their conclusion of brain damage on the grounds that brain chemistry was altered is bullshit, everything you put into your body alters brain chemistry. Want more seritonin? Eat a banana. You smoke some weed? You might get burned out for a couple hours the next day.
Social interaction is subjective. Pot heads seem to socialize with other pot heads just fine, it's the uptight assholes that seem to be the problem imo. And somebody should explain the method of determining depression in rats. I sure as hell don't know of one.
And given injections daily for 20 days, yea sure... That would be like being completely stoned for months at a time if you compare rats to humans. They mature in 20 days the study says, humans take years... So that is why this is also invalid for humans. You'd have to be completely stoned for months.
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Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist
Registered: 03/10/07
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: Baan]
#11710925 - 12/24/09 09:23 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
They will hear of this study at school, and when they get burned out they will think "Oh the study is right and there is brain damage"
Correct. And when they think they are brain damaged they will act brain damaged and go for jobs that other brain damaged people have, making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we told teens that marijuana will make you want to study your ass off and get a great job, it would probably do that too.
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morrowasted
Worldwide Stepper
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
#11711069 - 12/24/09 10:07 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Everything in moderation - including mary jane.
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ScavengerType
Registered: 01/24/08
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Loc: The North
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: morrowasted]
#11711289 - 12/24/09 11:02 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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I'm pretty sure that injecting it has to be astronomically more pure than smoking it.
Due to the duration of rats lives it's likely that this test confuses events that would be short-term (withdrawal symptoms) with events that it is claiming could be long-term in humans.
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"Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?"
"The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done—dare I say it—in the name of God. Montesquieu said, "There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of God." And I begin to feel that’s true. The shareholder is the excuse for everything."
- Author and former M6/M5 agent John le Carré on Democracy Now.
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DropScience
Stranger
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: DropScience]
#11713007 - 12/24/09 04:16 PM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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ok think of the scale of a human and a needle, and the scale of a rat and a needle. If you injected me every single day with something I'de be pretty pissed off about it, imagine the same with the needle that comprises a significant length of your body! You think that might make you fucking depressed?
"This means," she cautioned, "that cannabis exposure when young seems to cause changes in the adult brain. And these changes could perhaps be irreversible, even if you stop consuming cannabis."
PURE FUCKING SPECULATION
Edited by DropScience (12/24/09 04:24 PM)
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MyOwnReality
OrigionalPranksta
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Re: Teen Marijuana Use Might Have Lasting Effects on Mood, Anxiety [Re: DropScience]
#11730097 - 12/28/09 06:09 AM (14 years, 3 months ago) |
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Regardless what they're trying to get at is that MJ should be limited to adults. Thats responsible. I wish I had waited till later in life to start smoking herb sometimes. Drinking too. Luckily I was smart and waited on the hallucinogens though.
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