A joint a day really might keep the doctor away

And it's a lot more fun that eating celery all day and sweating away on a treadmill.

Experts: Marijuana ingredient slows heart disease in mice
Wednesday, April 6, 2005 Posted: 2:27 PM EDT (1827 GMT)


(AP) -- Low doses of the main active ingredient in marijuana slowed the progression of hardening of the arteries in mice, according to a new study.

Experts stressed that the finding does not mean people should smoke marijuana in hopes of getting the same benefit.

"To extrapolate this to, 'A joint a day will keep the doctor away,' I think is premature," said Dr. Peter Libby, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The mouse work is presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by Dr. Francois Mach of Geneva University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues. He said in an e-mail that he believed future work will focus on finding drugs that mimic the benefit without producing marijuana's effects on the brain.

Hardening of the arteries sets the stage for heart attacks. Inflammation plays a key role in the condition, characterized by a progressive buildup on the inside walls of blood vessels. So Mach and colleagues explored the anti-inflammatory effects of marijuana's main active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.

They fed mice a high-cholesterol diet for 11 weeks. About halfway through that period, they started giving some of the mice very low, daily oral doses of THC -- too low to produce any marijuana-like changes in behavior. At the end of the experiment, mice that had gotten the THC showed less blood vessel clogging than did mice that got no THC.

Related work showed no additional benefit from higher THC doses, such as a person would get from smoking marijuana, Mach noted.

Researchers found that the benefit came from THC's effect on immune-system cells. It reduced their secretion of an inflammation-promoting substance and their migration to the vessel wall, researchers found.

It apparently did that by binding to proteins called CB2 receptors, which are found mostly on immune-system cells. THC also targets CB1 receptors, found mostly in the brain. So the work suggests scientists should try to develop a drug that works on CB2 receptors while ignoring the brain receptors, Mach said.

Libby, who did not participate in the study, said the work was valuable for identifying the CB2 receptor as a potential target for treatment in hardening of the arteries, and showing that a natural substance could help.

But he noted that controlling one's weight, exercising and eating right have already been proven to reduce a person's risk of heart attacks and strokes from clogged arteries.

Dr. Edward A. Fisher of the New York University School of Medicine said THC's impact on artery-clogging in the experiment was relatively modest, and that it's not clear that results would apply to people.

Interesting. Thank you Rose.

*Lights up*

*mouse to another mouse... puff puff give!*


....Marijuana IS a gateway drug...it led to my addiction to Doritos

It may be great for the arteries, but Marijuana is really bad for my hips! I specifically lay off the bong whenever I'm on a diet (for obvious reasons).

***/gazes at orange fingers for awhile, passes Rebeccah the bag of cheetos


.

*Gazes at green fingers, passes joint to ZsuZsanna*

WoooHooo!

<.< >.> ..Maybe it;s just me, but I always thought lit marijuana smelled like moist rotten a-..nus. Yes, anus.

You must buy really cheap, skunky stuff if that's the case

LMAO

Somewhere between a skunk and a Sour Power candy shoved in someone's butt.

Not really. I don't smoke it myself, just have friends that do. That said, they very well could've.. But you'd still be hard-pressed to present me with good-smelling pot smoke(even if you disregard the whole distance thing).

Eh..to each their own then. I will admit that when I first started smoking a few years ago, I thought it smelled pretty skunky. But I smoked pretty cheap crap back then. Different varieties have different subtleties of scents. I've had some that smell wonderfully of sort of musky tea, for instance. And yeah, I've smelled pretty bad stuff too. By now, I actually enjoy the scent on the rare occasions I smoke now, but maybe thats just the particular stuff. If you went to some place like Amsterdam, where they can actually grow it halfway decently, you might find something you liked.

Again, to each their own. I find most beer tastes like vomit to me, and most wine tastes like vinegar, and I know a lot of people disagree with me on that. I think people are just wired differently in the head. Nothing wrong with that though.

If it was not for the whole distance thing, you would be smelling some sweet ass mota smoke right about now! Your friends are smoking schwag.



VIVA MOTA!
Cholos por Vida!

Right On! At least a joint a day. You dig?