“Many cultures throughout history have used cannabis to treat a variety of painful ailments. Neuropathic pain is a complicated condition that is challenging to treat with our current medications. Recent scientific discovery has elucidated the intricate role of the endocannabinoid system in the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain. As societal perceptions change, and legislation on medical cannabis relaxes, there is growing interest in the use of medical cannabis for neuropathic pain.
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Adolescent cannabis use and brain systems supporting adult working memory encoding, maintenance, and retrieval
“Given prior reports of adverse effects of cannabis use on working memory, an executive function with a protracted developmental course during adolescence, we examined associations between developmental patterns of cannabis use and adult working memory (WM) processes.
Within repeated cannabis users, greater levels of total cannabis use were associated with performance-related increases in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activation during maintenance. Surprisingly, however, at the group level, cannabis users generally performed better than participants who reported never using cannabis (faster RT, higher accuracy).” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29253654 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811917310637“Why Pot Smokers Scored Higher Than Nonsmokers on This Memory Test. Among a sample of 28-year-olds who took a working-memory test while undergoing an MRI brain scan, individuals who started smoking marijuana in adolescence performed just as well or even better than individuals who never smoked cannabis, the study found.” https://www.livescience.com/61574-adolescent-cannabis-use-memory-study.html
Novel insights into mitochondrial molecular targets of iron-induced neurodegeneration: reversal by cannabidiol.
“Evidence has demonstrated iron accumulation in specific brain regions of patients suffering from neurodegenerative disorders, and this metal has been recognized as a contributing factor for neurodegeneration.
Using an experimental model of brain iron accumulation, we have shown that iron induces severe memory deficits that are accompanied by oxidative stress, increased apoptotic markers, and decreased synaptophysin in the hippocampus of rats.
The present study aims to characterize iron loading effects as well as to determine the molecular targets of cannabidiol (CBD), the main non-psychomimetic compound of Cannabis sativa, on mitochondria.
Rats received iron in the neonatal period and CBD for 14 days in adulthood. Iron induced mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions, decreased epigenetic modulation of mtDNA, mitochondrial ferritin levels, and succinate dehydrogenase activity.
CBD rescued mitochondrial ferritin and epigenetic modulation of mtDNA, and restored succinate dehydrogenase activity in iron-treated rats.
These findings provide new insights into molecular targets of iron neurotoxicity and give support for the use of CBD as a disease modifying agent in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29374603
“Hypercholesterolemia indirectly increases the risk for myocardial infarction by enhancing the ability of platelets to aggregate.
Diets enriched with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been shown to reduce the detrimental effects of cholesterol on platelet aggregation.
This study investigated whether dietary hempseed, a rich source of PUFAs, inhibits platelet aggregation under normal and hypercholesterolemic conditions.
The results of this study demonstrate that when hempseed is added to a cholesterol-enriched diet, cholesterol-induced platelet aggregation returns to control levels.”
“The hippocampus is one of the most susceptible regions in the brain to be distraught with status epilepticus (SE) induced injury. SE can occur from numerous causes and is more frequent in children and the elderly population.
Administration of a combination of antiepileptic drugs can abolish acute seizures in most instances of SE but cannot prevent the morbidity typically seen in survivors of SE such as cognitive and mood impairments and spontaneous recurrent seizures. This is primarily due to the inefficiency of antiepileptic drugs to modify the evolution of SE-induced initial precipitating injury into a series of epileptogenic changes followed by a state of chronic epilepsy.
Chronic epilepsy is typified by spontaneous recurrent seizures, cognitive dysfunction, and depression, which are associated with persistent inflammation, significantly waned neurogenesis, and abnormal synaptic reorganization. Thus, alternative approaches that are efficient not only for curtailing SE-induced initial brain injury, neuroinflammation, aberrant neurogenesis, and abnormal synaptic reorganization but also for thwarting or restraining the progression of SE into a chronic epileptic state are needed.
In this review, we confer the promise of 
“A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry single-laboratory validation was performed for the detection and quantification of the 10 major 
“(±)-Sativamides A (1) and B (2), two pairs of nor-lignanamide enantiomers featuring a unique benzo-angular triquinane skeleton, were isolated from the fruits of