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Buzzby

Marijuana Has Long Lasting Effects On Growing Brain
Boca Raton News | 06/30/2006

Going through puberty at a young age might foretell problems to come, report researchers who found early puberty is associated with abnormal eating behaviors and anxiety in young adults.

Researchers who study puberty say it is more than just an awkward phase when boys and girls are primed for their sexual reproductive years as men and women. Puberty also is a delicate and dynamic time in the development of the brain, when important neural pathways essential for behavioral and cognitive functions are formed. Indeed, brains of children going through puberty are especially vulnerable to the effects of marijuana suggest results of animal research.

Summaries of the studies' findings and other research looking at what triggers puberty follow:

A study involving 1,500 college students suggests that those who experience early puberty are more likely to engage in abnormal eating behaviors and have feelings of anxiety in young adulthood. Interestingly, the researchers found the association not limited to girls.

In fact, the study conducted by Julia Zehr, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at Michigan State University, and colleagues, found that both female and male students who reported they'd entered puberty earlier than their friends and peers scored significantly higher for measures related to binge eating, dieting and concerns about food intake, weight or body shape, as well as anxiety.

The findings are consistent with the idea that such behaviors result from long-lasting changes in brain circuitry that occur during early puberty, when a still-developing brain must adapt to the presence of surging hormones. Eating and anxiety disorders often begin during adolescence and are associated with early puberty, so some have held the view that the psychosocial pressures of standing out from one's peers make young kids more vulnerable. Another possibility is that the hormones themselves are to blame.

Dr. Zehr points out that if either theory were true, adolescents would eventually grow out of such behaviors, because, eventually, the awkwardness of early puberty goes away and the hormones settle to adult levels. Based on the study's finding that early puberty is associated with increased symptoms in both young men and women, Dr. Zehr believes the influences of puberty are more biological than solely psychosocial.

Marijuana may indeed be the storied "gateway drug" to other more serious drug addictions, according to researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Adolescence is a delicate and dynamic time in the development of the brain when important neural pathways essential for behavioral and cognitive functions are formed. It also is a time when teenagers and even pre-teens are likely to first experiment with marijuana.

Researchers have debated whether or not marijuana use during adolescence can affect brain development or cause the user to be more vulnerable to neuropsychiatric disorders and drug abuse later in life. Yasmin Hurd, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and biochemistry and psychiatry at Mount Sinai, and colleagues, sought to determine exactly what, if any, impact tetrahydrocannabinal (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana, has on the developing brain and later behaviors.

According to those studies, rats exposed to THC during the early developmental stages, had, as adults, higher self-administered heroin intake under mild stressful conditions than rats not exposed to THC during developmental stages. Those exposed showed neural impairments in brain areas linked to reward, stress and anxiety. These impairments can cause dysregulation of the enkephalin system - the brain's natural morphine system - and are implicated in addiction and affective disorders. Dr. Hurd suggests that while these findings are preliminary, they provide evidence that marijuana can have negative and long-lasting effects on the brain.

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casketfour

this is heresay first of all

of course if you teach a rat to like the feeling it's getting it's going to go back for more

my real question though is what does the develemental stages of a rat have to do with a child going through puberty - something tells me they are nothing alike

"A study involving 1,500 college students suggests that those who experience early puberty are more likely to engage in abnormal eating behaviors and have feelings of anxiety in young adulthood. Interestingly, the researchers found the association not limited to girls."

This is behavior that is already something common and often comes from peer discrimination which usually leads to drug use in the first place

I wonder where these "doctors" got their PHD's they don't seem very open minded - try thinking outside of the box instead of always trying to persecute something

There is a such thing as LEARNED BEHAVIOR and if YOU TEACH IT to someone it can become ADDICTIVE but if you teach them RESPONSIBILITY they will DISCERN between the two; this does not necessitate that Cannabis is what cause it or is even to blame - I really feel bad for all those saps that dismiss Freud like he had no clue what he was talking about.

I have no DEGREE but I'm smart enough to recognize that

oneluv4boognish

Here's my two cents worth....i started smoking at a "young age"...i really thought i was "burnt out"...but in my efforts to better myself i'm going back to college...well not really going back but going. I had to take this test, and i thought i was going to bomb it because i smoked damn near daily (minus preggers quitting) for over ten years now (oh my god i'm getting old) and i did perfectly fine. NO REMEDIAL CLASSES! If it had long lasting effects on my growing brain if anything it did some good.

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"Swirling with visions on man's confusion All of the work, done just to appease him The Argus cries, though love has its place in the sun It's only man's fear that carries him on..." Ween

Buzzby

I'm curious as to how you came to that conclusion. How can you know if it had a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect? As there is no experimental control (i.e. an identical twin who stayed straight), how can there be any evidence one way or the other of the effect of your early marijuana consumption?

For example: Say your original IQ was 160. Say chronic marijuana consumption lowered it by 20%. Your "damaged" IQ would still be 128, still well above average and certainly high enough to score well on a college entrance exam.

I'm not suggesting that this is the case, just that you have no way of knowing who you'd be if you had conducted your life differently.

Mamabudz

The only part of the article having to do with Marijuana was:

....old rat research

Conclusion -- Rats can be taught to self medicate under stress -- and they can be taught early and young

I suggest that Dr. Hurd should take better care of his rats. I shudder to imagine how his children are!

Some day let's all live in RAT PARK...we should all be so lucky

 

casketfour

nevermind
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