Cannabinoid that spurs brain cell growth

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Puff-a-Day Marijuana Dose Helped Older Rats Remember

A daily puff of a compound like marijuana, the plant blamed for ruining potheads' recall, might help maintain memory in old age, researchers who tried it on rats reported today at a neuroscience meeting.

Elderly rats remembered their way around a swimming pool and could find hidden resting spots after Yannick Marchalant and his colleagues at Ohio State University gave them a compound that mimics the effect of marijuana on the brain's cannabis receptors. The marijuana-like drug, known as WIN-55212-2, spurred new brain cell growth and reduced inflammation, the researchers said.

Inflammation in the brain may be linked to the development or progression of Alzheimer's, a progressive disease that destroys brain cells, disrupting the memory and cognitive capacity of some 4.5 million Americans, some scientists believe. Marchalant and his colleagues have been hunting for drugs to reduce inflammation.

"We used a low dose because we didn't want to give them a drug that tried to save their memory while we're also causing psychoactive effects,'' Marchalant said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The dosage of WIN would be like giving one puff a day and not a whole joint.''

Marchalant and his team reported their results today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C. In the study, they first caused inflammation in the brains of young rats, which they could measure by looking at the activity of anti-inflammatory cells. Then they injected rats with WIN and saw that it reduced the activity of the inflammation-fighting cells.

Old Rats Quicker

With the older rats, they didn't need to induce inflammation because it was already present. They injected some of the old rats with WIN and had them spend time in a swimming tank.

It turned out that the rats who got hits of WIN found the hidden resting places much quicker than those who didn't. Later, the researchers dissected the rats' brains and found a reduction in inflammation and evidence that new brain cells had sprouted.

While marijuana might also promote the growth of new brain cells, it doesn't have WIN's ability to block another brain receptor that appears to cause inflammation, a key difference between the two compounds, Marchalant said. Too much pot also would overstimulate the cannabis receptors, he said.

``That's what everyone is trying to avoid,'' Marchalant said. ``If you overstimulate, you'll have a detrimental effect on memory.''

Heavy Marijuana Use Hurts

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says heavy marijuana smoking damages short-term recall and hastens age- related destruction of neurons in the brain's hippocampus responsible for memory, according to the agency's Web site.

WIN isn't a perfect compound, Marchalant said. Now that researchers know the effects on the brain they're trying to produce, and the receptors they're trying to influence, they can search for a better compound, he said.

Smoking pot, or taking WIN, once the memory loss of Alzheimer's had already begun, wouldn't help, Marchalant said.

``It's too late,'' he said. ``Patients who have been diagnosed have already lost neurons.''

A preventive strategy would need to start years earlier, he said.

LINK : www.bloomberg.com
First seen on: http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?smlid=5394

Note: the image below has nothing to do with the above research. But I found it just now, and thought it was pretty cool.

 

[restin]

The marijuana-like drug

To make it clear: If I smoke/eat/vaporize ganja, this alzheimer-healing cannabinoid is not included?
I already heard though that cannabis can be a healing for alzheimer but I am not sure if it is really the one we use that is meant.

 

[Psychoid]

Am I the only who have thought about the possibility that cannabis used to be part of our alimentation and since it is banned we don't take it anymore and that created some diseases like cancer, alzheimer and maybe others?

 

[ararat]

Am I the only who have thought about the possibility that cannabis used to be part of our alimentation and since it is banned we don't take it anymore and that created some diseases like cancer, alzheimer and maybe others?

you are probably not the only one, but if you look at how our lifestyles have changed in the past ~200 years, it will be hard to blame cancer on the lack of cannabis consumption.

 

[restin]

If you read about the use of cannabis in Europe, Psychoid, you realize that cannabis became broadly popular only recently. It was only imported to Europe ~300 years ago and was only popular amongst french Poets. It was already there quite a taboo in Britain. In Europe, cannabis has naturally a very low THC-level so the use of it was unknown here. In the US it was still unknown when the Mexicans immigrated there with their cannabis-culture. Only after its illegality and connected advertisement became it so popular and only then was the joint invented. Before, one would only eat the Hash.

Most of these illnesses are connected to the rising life expectency, I guess.

 

[Psychoid]

Thanks for the info Restin :)

 

[restin]

I hope it is right, but I read it in a book. It is called Cannabis by Martin Booth, it is really interesting, it is about the whole history of this magical plant.

And of course all those illnesses you mentioned I think, you are right, are very modern, no only because the life expectance, but on a rather interpretative/psychological level a part of a dangerous shift of human consciosness. I do not know how people lived earlier, but I read somewhere that the rules of manners are getting always stricter, what means that people suppress a lot of their inner desires. Sexual desire is e.g. a large part of it I believe. Sexuality on a sensible level is not only a taboo topic (it was already 200 years ago) but also a taboo thought. If you read Roman literature or even later, you get the feeling that those people were all bisexual, paedophile and wild and uncontrolled sex beasts :lol: Nowadays this is very subtile I think. But there are other things that are suppressed and then cause a lot of problems - there also the topic of drugs comes into play, the desire of drugs. Look at all those psychological problems that happen in the west - the psychiatrist is more needed than a doctor - and compare it to the hindu, where most people are profoundly happy. I do not know if this is the reason for cancer etc. but I assume that this change of the value system has a lot of consequences on us all.

 

[restin]

Short addition:

Look at Singapore. Hardcore capitalist country. Seems to work perfect, they are rich. BUT. They have huge troubles to talk with each other, men cannot talk to women and need to organize single parties to bring them together. They are becoming purely asocial, introverted. They have HUGE problems. Or Japan - highest suicide rate.

 

[FluidDruid]

The marijuana-like drug

To make it clear: If I smoke/eat/vaporize ganja, this alzheimer-healing cannabinoid is not included?
I already heard though that cannabis can be a healing for alzheimer but I am not sure if it is really the one we use that is meant.

Yes if you smoke/eat/vaporize the cannabis the alzheimer-healing cannabinoid is included. We believe cannabis contains compounds that protect the myelin of neurons. Myelin is a sheath that the axon of the nerve cell is protected by, and allegedly THC and other compounds found in no matter what cannabis you are consuming seems to bolster its effect. Currently Alzheimer's is thought to be due to the lack and degradation of the myelin in the brain causing "short circuiting".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 120141.htm

 

[????????]

Heavy Marijuana Use Hurts

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says heavy marijuana smoking damages short-term recall and hastens age- related destruction of neurons in the brain's hippocampus responsible for memory, according to the agency's Web site.

don't you notice how this paragraph doesn't fit with the article at all? not only it's unnecessary, it's almost as if someone had ordered to include something nasty about cannabis to "balance" the article or something. it's like they can't just publish a nice thing about cannabis without slipping some of their damn propaganda in. "hey kids even if you read all of this stuff you've got to remember! weed is still bad!" pffff please, spare me. it even contradicts the frigging study the article is about...

edit: I took a peek at NIDA's homepage:

they might as well could just put CRACK COCAINE in bold letters.

 

[restin]

Well, what do you expect from it? 1. Government 2. Drug ABUSE

@ Fluid: Thank you very much. You say "we". Are you also in this research? I remember you said you were in neurology.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

I hope it is right, but I read it in a book. It is called Cannabis by Martin Booth, it is really interesting, it is about the whole history of this magical plant.

It may be true about recent history ("The Dark Ages"), but further back in time cannabis was used by various tribes throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, even in Norway:

The richest archeological material from Viking times in Norway is the Oseberg find. Two women were buried in a mound in the county of Vestfold around the year 850 in a splendid ship with ample equipment. The find includes a small piece of hempen material, the use of which has not been determined, but even more interesting is the fact that four seeds of Cannabis sativa were also found. One of these seeds was discovered in a small leather pouch.

The well respected archeologist, Anne Stine Ingstad, who was responsible for excavating the medieval Norse settlements in Newfoundland, is prominent among many historians who believe the younger of the two buried women -usually called the Oseberg Queen - was a priestess of the great Norse goddess Freya, and not only a secular queen as the first excavators thought. Ingstad sees the presence of the Cannabis seed in the (talismanic) pouch as an indication of possible ritual use of cannabis as an intoxicant in pre-christian Scandinavia.

And:

In ancient Germany, marijuana was used in association with Freya, the slightly tamer Kali-like goddess of Love and Death.

Marijuana and the Goddess