Take a deep breath!

Back in 2012, a study at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) calculated that smoking just one joint every day for two decades may be benign, even though most participants merely smoked two or three joints every month. “I was amazed we didn’t see effects [of marijuana use],” reported UCSF epidemiologist Mark Pletcher, who led the research.

One assessment of numerous epidemiological studies points to small sample size and poor study design as grounds for scientists’ inability to nail down a link between cannabis and cancer hazard. But some suspect that this kind of link doesn’t exist, and then that bud might have even cancer-preventive effects. Even a 2008 study, as an instance, suggested that smoking marijuana can decrease the danger of tobacco-associated lung cancer, calculating that those who smoke both marijuana and tobacco have a lower probability of cancer than those who smoke just tobacco (though still a higher hazard than non-smokers).where to buy cbd oil near me

But even Pletcher isn’t sanguine about marijuana’s effects on the lungs, and suspects that there may nonetheless be longterm lung damage which may be difficult to detect. “We really can’t guarantee ourselves about heavy usage,” he clarified.

Your mind on drugs

There’s some evidence to indicate that benign subjects show increased risktaking and diminished decision making, and score on memory tasks-and residual impairments have been discovered days or even weeks after usage. Some studies also join years of regular marijuana use to deficits in learning, memory, and concentration.

In this study, led by investigators at Duke University, “that you could definitely see as a consequence of cannabis use, IQ goes down,” said Derik Hermann, a clinical neuroscientist at the Central Institute of Mental Health at Germany who was not involved from the research.

Ole Rogeberg contended that socioeconomic factors, not bud use, contributed to the lower IQs found in cannabis customers.

Rogeberg’s judgment counters a sizable literature, however, which affirms a link between pot use and neuro-physiological decline. Studies in both humans and animals indicate that those who acquiring a marijuana habit in adolescence face long-term negative effects in brain function, with some users finding it hard to concentrate and find new activities.

Notably, most studies on the subject claim that while there can be unwanted effects of smoking as a young adult, users that begin in adulthood are often unaffected. This could possibly be due to endocannabinoid-directed reorganization of the brain during puberty, Hermann explained. The intake of cannabinoids that includes pot use may result in irreversible “misleading of this neural growth,” he said.

Along with the consequences of intellect, many studies suggest that smoking bud increases the chance of schizophrenia, and might have similar impacts on mental performance. Hermann’s group used MRI to detect cannabis-associated neuron damage within the pre-frontal cortex and found it had been like brain changes found in schizophrenia patients. Different studies further suggest that weed-smoking schizophrenics have greater disease-associated brain affects and also perform worse on cognitive tests compared to their non-smoking counterparts.

But much of this research can not distinguish between brain fluctuations caused by marijuana usage and symptoms linked to the disease. It’s likely that cannabis-smoking schizophrenics “might have disagreeable symptoms [that precede full-blown schizophrenia] and so are self-medicating” with the psychotropic medication, said Roland Lamarine, also a professor of public health in California State University, Chico. “We haven’t seen a gain in schizophrenics, in spite of much more marijuana use.”

In addition to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a neurotoxic cannabinoid that’s accountable for marijuana’s anti inflammatory properties, the medication also includes an assortment of nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, for example cannabidiol (CBD), that may protect against neuron harm. Hermann discovered that the level of the hippocampus-a brain area essential for memory processing-is marginally smaller in cannabis users compared to in non-users, but more CBD-rich marijuana countered the result.

A deadly cocktail?

While data behind the damaging consequences of marijuana in its are weak, some researchers are more worried about the medication in conjunction with other substances, such as smoking, alcohol, or alcoholism. Some studies imply, for example, that marijuana might increase cravings for other medication, leading to its notorious label as a “gateway drug.” Research published earlier this month supported this theory once it discovered, at the least in rats, THC vulnerability increases tobacco’s addictive consequences. What’s more, marijuana might well not mix well with prescription medication, as cannabis causes the liver to metabolize drugs more slowly, increasing the chance of drug toxicity.

Despite all these concerns, nevertheless, Lamarine thinks it’s unlikely that the effects of cannabis use are dire, even given the amount of research that’s focused on the subject. “We’re not likely to wake up into the huge discovery that bud induces major brain damage,” he said. “We’d have found that by today.”