Pot Heads Have Abnormally Low Blood-Flow in Their Brains

Marijuana users 'have abnormally low blood flow in every part of the brain - including Alzheimer's danger zones'

Researchers studied brain scans of 1,000 US marijuana users
They found cannabis users all had low blood flow in the hippocampus
The users also had significant restricted blood flow all over the brain
Hippocampus is key for memories, and is a ground zero for Alzheimer's

By Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com

Marijuana users have abnormally low blood flow in virtually every part of the brain, new scans reveal.

Sophisticated imaging of 1,000 cannabis users' brains found all of them had widespread restrictions or build-ups of blood flow.

Many had abnormal blood levels in areas affected by Alzheimer's disease, such as the hippocampus.

The findings, published in the latest Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, are an ominous warning as the United States rapidly embraces recreational and medical marijuana legalization.

It comes just weeks after the White House's surgeon general, Dr Vivek Gupta, warned legalization is moving faster than research.

    Health dangers? Sophisticated imaging of 1,000 cannabis users' brains found 1,000 marijuana
    users had widespread restrictions or build-ups of blood flow (file image)

The researchers at Amen Clinics analyzed data from a broad database including 26,268 patients across the US between 1995 and 2015.

The patients - from California, Washington, Virginia, Georgia and New York - all had complex treatment-resistant issues, and all underwent single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) - a sophisticated imaging study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns while undergoing concentration tests.

One thousand of the patients were marijuana users. 

Comparing those patients' brain scans with 100 healthy controls, the researchers saw a stark difference in blood flow levels. 

Every marijuana user had significantly lower blood flow in the right hippocampus compared to the controls. 

Marijuana use is thought to interfere with memory formation by inhibiting activity in this part of the brain.

Shocked by findings

Co-author Dr Elisabeth Jorandby said even she was shocked by the findings, despite dealing with marijuana patients on a routine basis. 

'As a physician who routinely sees marijuana users, what struck me was not only the global reduction in blood flow in the marijuana users brains , but that the hippocampus was the most affected region due to its role in memory and Alzheimer's disease,' she said.

'Our research has proven that marijuana users have lower cerebral blood flow than non-users. 

In other words, they're stupider, but is that because they are marijuana users, or are they marijuana users because they are stupider?

'Second, the most predictive region separating these two groups is low blood flow in the hippocampus on concentration brain SPECT imaging. 

'This work suggests that marijuana use has damaging influences in the brain – particularly regions important in memory and learning and known to be affected by Alzheimer's.'

Dr George Perry, editor in chief of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease said: 'Open use of marijuana, through legalization, will reveal the wide range of marijuana's benefits and threats to human health.

'This study indicates troubling effects on the hippocampus that may be the harbingers of brain damage.'

Dr Daniel Amen, founder of Amen Clinics, said: 'Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. 

'The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. 

'In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order.'

And, as mentioned before, my own observations are that pot virtually stops the maturing process in regular users, such that if you start smoking pot regularly when you are 15, when you are 35 or 45 or 55, you will still act, talk, dress, think and behave like a 15 year old. I believe it is the reason why Michael Jackson never grew beyond being a little boy.

More Scary Research into the Effects of Marijuana on Teenagers
28% of 11-15 Year Olds Using Pot in Canada - Highest Rate in the World

New Alzheimer’s Treatment Fully Restores Memory Function

Of the mice that received the treatment, 

75 percent got their memory function back.

Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

If a person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.

Neurofibrillary tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they’re caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.

As we don’t have any kind of vaccine or preventative measure for Alzheimer’s - a disease that affects 343,000 people in Australia, and 50 million worldwide - it’s been a race to figure out how best to treat it, starting with how to clear the build-up of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient’s brain. Now a team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland have come up with a pretty promising solution for removing the former.

Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

The team reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.

"We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics," one of the team, Jürgen Götz, said in a press release. "The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach."

The team says they’re planning on starting trials with higher animal models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway in 2017.