But before I start, I do want you to know that I am aware of the benefits of cannabis. In no way do I deny that it helps cancer patients' copious pain, nausea, and other symptoms. THC and CBD, two active ingredients in cannabis, help with stress and anxiety. Salves can be made with them and used for topical acute trauma applications. It clearly is a medicine and I stand by that.
And as with most medicines, Marijuana too, comes with side effects.
In this post I want to address smoking weed everyday / long-term use of cannabis as well as how it affects the development of children and fertility in men and women.
Since we all love our dopamine hit, we seek what satisfies that part of the brain. Cannabis is one of the most used substances, and the newest trend is CBD and high potency extracts. Smoking weed everyday is considered cool. Ouch, not for me.
CBD (cannabidiol) has been advertised for its anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety and pain-relieving attributes. CBD is not psychoactive, unlike THC, which can make you trip, so watch out. It is good to note here that a lot of CBD products are not pure, and tend to contain quite a bit of THC and thus can be psychoactive. So please do your research on third party testing and transparency for each company's products.
The truth about marijuana and its side effects.
When you consume marijuana, it circulates in your blood for 3 hours to 2 days. Using it daily can mean that you have THC or CBD circulating in your body or sitting in your fat cells nonstop. After use, cannabinoids persist in your body for differing amounts of time:
Urine: three to seven days
Blood: three hours to two days
Saliva: one to three days
Hair: 30 to 90 days
Here is what happens when you smoke weed everyday.
It is important to educate yourself about the medications you use on a regular basis. Cannabis, like any medication, should be used in an appropriate manner, for acute situations and not long-term chronic pain. Chronic pain is not normal and should be investigated for root cause and true healing. Long term habitual cannabis use can bring about many side effects in the body:
1. Cannabis can raise estrogen in the body because the plant itself contains phytoestrogens. Estrogen dominance is a serious health issue. The problems it causes are endless. Mood swings, water retention, nervousness, irritability, anxiousness, low libido etc. I have a post on this topic where you can read more. Excess estrogen is a burden on your liver and detox pathways, and we do not want to add any more burden to our poor hardworking liver.
2. The oils in the cannabis plants are high in PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids). Again PUFAs are highly estrogenic, and if the liver isn’t happy, estrogen accumulates, and your health takes a hit down the road.
3. Cannabis stimulates stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, serotonin, and potentially prolactin. We do not want these stress hormones elevated over a long period of time as it will interfere with your heart and hormone health.
4. Cannabis has been found in the semen. This can interfere with sperm quality such as sperm morphology, reducing motility, sperm mitochondrial oxygen consumption, and even decrease sperm fertilizing capacity. Guys, this is no bueno if our goal is creating healthy robust offspring, which starts with supercharged eggs and semen quality.
5. Testosterone. Cannabis has been shown to decrease testosterone production in males. This is NOT a good thing. You need testosterone to carry out tasks for the day and also to keep your heart and bones healthy. You can see from these few points that cannabis affects your endocrine system quite a bit, and mainly in a bad way.
6. Heavy Metals. Unfortunately, cannabis tends to accumulate and concentrate cadmium from the soil. Small amounts of cadmium are naturally found in all soils. This has nothing to do with what the plant has been fed, that is a whole other topic. Cadmium is a heavy metal that depletes certain minerals in your body. But cadmium is not the only metal. Cannabis has affinities for mercury, lead, and chromium as well.
Those are just some general side effects of long-term cannabis use. Long term habitual use affects everybody differently. Also, different potencies and methods of consumption will affect us in different ways. Principally, a society with low testosterone, high estrogen, and low minerals is not going to be a vigorous society in the long run, whether we care to acknowledge it or not.
Physical and mental harm from unregulated, high potency cannabis use in children.
It has been observed that physicians in psychiatry and emergency medicine have noticed an increase of high potency cannabis poisoning in children. Psychosis and schizophrenia have also been detected in regular underage users. This trend has increased since the legalization of cannabis in a large number of states of the USA.
Adults are affected by psychotic episodes caused by long-term cannabis use as well. Those who smoke weed everyday were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used drugs. Yikes.
Smoking while trying to conceive or during pregnancy.
There are many studies to be found on cannabis use by pregnant mothers. The outcome does not look promising. It is hard to causally determine negative effects during pregnancy because many variables can have a negative effect on a developing fetus. Things such as herbicides, vaccines, lack of nutrients, EMF’s, and many other systemic health issues all can play a negative role in fetal development, but the studies I will link below suggest low birthweight and length, mental disorders and unusual or maladaptive behaviors during childhood and faulty neurodevelopment.
There's no evidence that cannabis is safe for pregnant women.
In my opinion the short-lived benefits of cannabis are not worth it. There are many other remedial tools you can use to reduce pain, nausea, and stimulate healing.
Resources:
Hilliard CJ, et al. Endocannabinoid signaling and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Compr Physiol. 2018;7: 1-15.
Ranganathan M, et al. The effects of cannabinoids on serum cortisol and prolactin in humans. Psychopharmacology. 2009;203:737-44.
Cservenka A, et al. Cannabis use and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning in humans. Front. Psychiatry 2018;9:472.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311607/#:~:text=In%20this%20proof%2Dof%2Dconcept,heavy%20users%20of%20inhaled%20marijuana.
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