neurogenesis

Chronic High Doses of Cannabinoids Promote Hippocampal Neurogenesis

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 4:41pm
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by Bryan Perkins

"The recent discovery that the hippocampus is able to generate new neurons throughout a human's lifespan has changed the way we think about the mechanisms of psychiatric disorders and drug addiction," says Wen Jian andcolleagues in a study published in the Journal

 of Clinical Investigation in 2005. It appears that cannabinoids are able to modulate pain, nausea, vomiting, epilepsy, ischemic stroke, cerebral trauma, multiple sclerosis, tumors, and many other disorders. Cannabinoids act on two types of receptors, the CB1 receptors (found mainly in the brain) and the CB2 receptors (found mainly in the immune system). The CB1 receptor is one of the most abundant G protein coupled receptors in the mammalian brain and it accounts for most, if not all, of the centrally mediated effects of cannabinoids. Cannabionoid receptors are evolutionarily conserved amoung various vertebrates and invertebrates which have been separate for 500 million years.
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The Miracle Of Marijuana

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 12:03pm
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By. Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

In Washington DC, there's considerable anticipation of the medical marijuana initiative finally being allowed to take effect. DC voters backed Initiative 59 with 69 percent support in 1998, but, of course, American citizens have less self-rule in Washington than Iraqis have in Baghdad, and so a bunch of congressmen from far far away decided that we needed their rule rather than democracy and voided the whole thing. But that ended last month with an appropriations bill and a Congressional majority that believes in democracy at home as well as abroad.

Good timing. New research suggests that marijuana acts in the opposite fashion to legal and taxed alcohol and nicotine, and fr from destroying brain cells, actually helps them re-grow:

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