mamagaea: (Surrounded by Idiots)
OMG. Strawberry Cough actually exists. I thought they just made it up for the movie "Children of Men"!

Strawberry Cough
Average price: $25 per gram
According to the Dutch Passion Seed Co., which purports to sell marijuana seeds online, Strawberry Cough is highly valued as a medicinal herb. It is bred for its euphoric, anti-anxiety high, and users report a pleasant yet powerful experience.

Remaining list of most exotic strands can be found here from Forbes.com
mamagaea: (Default)
Pot Triggers Psychotic Symptoms
By Maria Cheng
Associated Press
posted: 01 May 2007
06:06 pm ET


LONDON (AP)—New findings on marijuana's damaging effect on the brain show the drug triggers temporary psychotic symptoms in some people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors say. British doctors took brain scans of 15 healthy volunteers given small doses of two of the active ingredients of cannabis, as well as a placebo.

One compound, cannabidiol, or CBD, made people more relaxed. But even small doses of another component, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, produced temporary psychotic symptoms in people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors said.

The results, to be presented at an international mental health conference in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, provides physical evidence of the drug's damaging influence on the human brain.

"We've long suspected that cannabis is linked to psychoses, but we have never before had scans to show how the mechanism works,'' said Dr. Philip McGuire, a professor of psychiatry at King's College, London.

In analyzing MRI scans of the study's subjects, McGuire and his colleagues found that THC interfered with activity in the inferior frontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with paranoia.

"THC is switching off that regulator,'' McGuire said, effectively unleashing the paranoia usually kept under control by the frontal cortex.

In another study being presented at the conference, a two-day gathering of mental health experts discussing the connections between cannabis and mental health, scientists found that marijuana worsens psychotic symptoms of schizophrenics.

Doctors at Yale University in the U.S. tested the impact of THC on 150 healthy volunteers and 13 people with stable schizophrenia. Nearly half of the healthy subjects experienced psychotic symptoms when given the drug.

While the doctors expected to see marijuana improve the conditions of their schizophrenic subjects—since their patients reported that the drug calmed them—they found that the reverse was true.

"I was surprised by the results,'' said Dr. Deepak Cyril D'Souza, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University's School of Medicine. "In practice, we found that cannabis is very bad for people with schizophrenia,'' he said.

While D'Souza had intended to study marijuana's impact on schizophrenics in more patients, the study was stopped prematurely because the impact was so pronounced that it would have been unethical to test it on more people with schizophrenia.

"One of the great puzzles is why people with schizophrenia keep taking the stuff when it makes the paranoia worse,'' said Dr. Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatry at King's College.

Experts theorized that schizophrenics may mistakenly judge the drug's pleasurable effects to outweigh any negatives.

Understanding how marijuana affects the brain may ultimately lead experts to a better understanding of mental health in general.

"We don't know the basis of paranoia or anxiety,'' said McGuire.

"It is possible that we could use cannabis in controlled studies to understand psychoses better,'' he said. McGuire theorized that could one day lead to specific drugs targeting the responsible regions of the brain.
mamagaea: (Calvin and Hobbes Funny Faces)
Marijuana's Key Ingredient Might Fight Alzheimer's

By Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
posted: 05 October 2006
10:04 am ET

The active ingredient of marijuana could be considerably better at suppressing the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins that is a hallmark of Alzheimer's than any currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of the disease.

Scientists report the finding in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

About 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease, which gradually destroys memory. As more people survive into old age, cases of Alzheimer’s disease are expected to triple over the next 50 years. There is no known cure.

The researchers looked at THC, the compound inside marijuana responsible for its action on the brain. Computer models suggested THC might inhibit an enzyme with the tongue-twisting name of acetylcholinesterase (also called AChE) that is linked with Alzheimer's.

AChE is known to help accelerate the formation of abnormal protein clumps in the brain known as amyloid plaques during Alzheimer's. This enzyme also helps break down the brain chemical acetylcholine, which is linked to memory and learning. Acetylcholine levels are reduced during Alzheimer's.

In lab experiments, the scientists found THC was significantly better at disrupting the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins. THC could completely prevent AChE from forming amyloid plaques, while two drugs approved for use against Alzheimer's, donepezil and tacrine, reduced clumping by only 22 and 7 percent, respectively, at twice the concentration of THC used in the tests.

"We're not advocating smoking dope, but if we can make analogues of THC, it could play a role in treating Alzheimer's," researcher Kim Janda, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., told LiveScience. "It would be nice to do more animal studies along these lines."

Past research on human brain tissues and experiments with rats have suggested that synthetic analogues of THC can reduce the inflammation and prevent the mental decline associated with Alzheimer's disease.

However, marijuana is not necessarily good for the mind. Prior investigations have shown that years of heavy marijuana use, consisting of four or more joints a week, can impair memory, decision making, and the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.
mamagaea: (storm cloud)
Mystery of the munchies solved

Why does LSD make you hallucinate?

US victory for cannabis-based cancer drug

Focus: Cannabis psychosis
ooooo, this one will help me in Health class. kewl.

Where there's smoke...
High potency cannabis, "skunk", causes many more psychological problems than cannabis from a generation ago.

August 2008

S M T W T F S
      12
345 6789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 03:25 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios