At first glance cannabis appears an unlikely candidate in the search for a weight-loss miracle drug, but the very same compound which switches off the same brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke cannabis, could may well be the first blockbuster anti-obesity drug ever.”
“Cannabis could be used in drugs to help people overcome obesity, according to new UK research.
Researchers at GW Pharmaceuticals have discovered two compounds in cannabis leaves that help our bodies burn more energy, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported.
The company is developing a drug to treat “metabolic syndrome”, which occurs when people suffer obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, which increases their risk of heart disease and stroke.
Tests in mice showed the cannabis compounds improved their metabolism, which resulted in lower cholesterol in the bloodstream, plus less fat in key organs, such as the liver.
Now a trial is underway with 200 people and researchers hope the drug can treat metabolic syndrome.
Dr Stephen Wright, director of research and development at GW Pharmaceuticals, said they expect results in late 2012.
“The results in animal models have been very encouraging. We are interested in how these drugs effect the fat distribution and utilisation in the body as a treatment for metabolic diseases,” Dr Wright said.
“Humans have been using these plants for thousands of years so we have quite a lot of experience of the chemicals in the plants.”
Cannabis is illegal in the UK but GW Pharmaceuticals has been granted permission to grow it in secret greenhouses in the country’s south.
They are growing a type of cannabis with different quantities of compounds called cannabinoids.
While cannabis is known for inciting the “munchies”, these compounds, called THCV and cannabidiol, appear to suppress the appetite, while helping control sugar levels in the blood and fat levels throughout the body.
It appears THCV also helps cells that produce insulin work more effectively.
Now researchers are hoping the drugs will help people suffering type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related diseases.”
http://health.msn.co.nz/healthnews/8496828/cannabis-could-be-used-to-treat-obesity
“(CBS) Move over, fad diets. Scientists have identified something else that might keep off excess weight.
Smoking pot.
That’s right, marijuana users are less likely to be obese than their non-toking counterparts, according to a new study.
Doesn’t pot-smoking cause the munchies?
Actually, the researchers behind the study had been expecting to find that marijuana smokers would weigh more than non-users.
“Cannabis is supposed to increase appetite,” study author Dr. Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at Louis-Mourier Hospital in Colombes, France, told MSNBC. “We found that cannabis users are less likely to be obese than non-users. We were so surprised, we thought we had [made] a mistake.”
For the study – published online in the August 24 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology – researchers analyzed data from two large population surveys of U.S. adults. The researchers found obesity rates in people who “just say no” were 22 percent and 25.3 percent in each survey, respectively. But study participants who puffed pot at least three times a week had obesity rates of 14.3 percent and 17.2. The study didn’t actually prove smoking pot causes weight-loss.
“There could be many other reasons why pot smokers have less obesity,” Andrea Giancoli, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, told MSNBC. “Maybe they’re inclined to exercise more, be outdoors more, eat more fruits and vegetables. There could be all kinds of confounding factors that could make the results null and void.”
Potheads might be more physically active? Seriously?
“I would be surprised that cannabis use is associated with a higher rate of physical activity, but this cannot be ruled out,” Le Strat told Fox News. Another possibility, he said, is that certain compounds in cannabis might help people lose weight, and could serve as an area of future research.
Should folks trying to lose weight consider picking up a bong instead of a barbell?”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20102773-10391704.html
“”Initially, we thought we made a mistake,” said Le Strat, adding that he and co-author Bernard Le Foll checked the results several times to make sure they were correct.
“This is only a preliminary result. It doesn’t mean that marijuana does actually help you lose weight, but perhaps there is a component that does.”
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, included two surveys of U.S. adults — one covering 43,000 people, the other about 9,300 respondents. Both had been conducted by branches of the U.S. National Institutes of Health between 2001 and 2009.
The larger of the surveys found that 14 percent of pot smokers were obese compared to 22 percent who didn’t smoke pot. Similarly, the smaller survey found 17 percent of pot smokers to be obese compared to 25 percent of non-smokers.”
“If cannabis causes the munchies, how is it possible that pot smokers are thinner than nonsmokers?
A new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology finds an intriguing connection between marijuana use and body weight, showing that rates of obesity are lower by roughly a third in people who smoke pot at least three times a week, compared with those who don’t use marijuana at all.
Researchers analyzed data from two large national surveys of the American population, which together included some 52,000 participants. In the first survey, they found that 22% of those who did not smoke marijuana were obese, compared with just 14% of the regular marijuana smokers. The second survey found that 25% of nonsmokers were obese, compared with 17% of regular cannabis users.”
Scientist professor Roger Pertwee, a neuropharmacologist at Aberdeen University, says it was already well known that cannabis stimulated the appetite, but not widely known that the plant also contained substances that produced the opposite effect.
That substance is apparently called THCV and is chemically similar to another cannabis chemical, or cannabinoid, called THC that stimulates the appetite.
As drugs based on THC are already being used to increase the appetite of AIDS patients, the focus is now on developing THCV for use as an anti-obesity drug, said Professor Pertwee.
Pertwee says that cannabis is rich in substances that can mimic the natural or endogenous cannabinoids in the brain, that act as chemical messengers in the nervous pathways, involved in such activities as appetite control or pain relief.
These endogenous cannabinoids seem to act on the reward pathways to the brain, to increase the reward you get when you take food, but can have harmful effects.
By increasing appetite they can increase fat, which can give rise to obesity or overweight.
Drugs are apparently now being developed that can increase the levels of these chemicals in our brains by slowing down the rate at which they disappear once they have been released,says Pertwee.
Professor Pertwee has also found a method of potentially boosting the signals in the brain that are generated by these endogenous cannabinoids.”
“Two cannabis compounds can raise the quantum of energy the body burns and keep obesity at bay. Called THCV and cannabidiol, they were found to have an appetite suppressing effect too for a short while.
Animal tests have shown these compounds can help treat type two diabetes while also lowering levels of cholesterol in the blood stream and fat in key organs like the liver.
Scientists also found the compounds also had an impact on the level of fat and its response to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar levels, the Telegraph reports.
THCV was also found to increase the animals’ sensitivity to insulin while also protecting the cells that produce insulin, allowing them to work better and for longer.
Steph Wright, director of research and development at GW Pharmaceuticals developing the drugs, said: “The results in animal models have been very encouraging. We are interested in how these drugs effect the fat distribution and utilisation in the body as a treatment for metabolic diseases”.”
http://in.news.yahoo.com/cannabis-help-treat-obesity-121931025.html
“Aberdeen scientists believe that the findings—published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry—might help our understanding of these conditions and also be a step towards the development of personalised therapies to help treat them.
The team from the University’s Kosterlitz Centre for Therapeutics studied genetic differences around the gene CNR1. This gene produces what are known as cannabinoid receptors, which are found in the brain, and which activate parts of the brain involved in memory, mood, appetite and pain.
Cannabinoid receptors activate these areas of the brain when they are triggered by chemicals produced naturally in our bodies called endocannabinoids.
Chemicals found in the drug cannabis mimic the action of these endocannabinoids and there is growing evidence that cannabis has pain relieving and anti-inflammatory properties which can help treat diseases such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis.
In order to understand more about these side effects and the genetic factors which determine how people respond, the scientists studied genetic differences around the CNR1 gene.
Dr Alasdair MacKenzie, who helped lead the team, said: “We chose to look at one specific genetic difference in CNR1 because we know it is linked to obesity and addiction. What we found was a mutation that caused a change in the genetic switch for the gene itself—a switch that is very ancient and has remained relatively unchanged in overthree hundred million years of evolution, since before the time of the dinosaurs.”
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-cannabis-receptor-discovery-obesity-pain.html
“What did the study find?
Dr. Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at France’s Louis-Mourier Hospital, looked at data from two studies of U.S. adults from the early 2000s and noted the weight differences between those who used cannabis and those who didn’t. In both studies, cannabis users had relatively low rates of obesity: 14.3 and 17.2 percent. American adults who didn’t use cannabis had obesity rates of 22 and 25.3 percent.
Is this what researchers expected?
Nope. “Cannabis is supposed to increase appetite,” says Le Strat. “So we hypothesized that cannabis users would be more likely to have higher weight than non-users and be more likely to be obese.” Marijuana activist Michelle Aldrich isn’t all that surprised. “It’s true,” she says. “I don’t know too many fat marijuana smokers.”
What’s causing this phenomenon?
“There could be many other reasons why pot smokers have less obesity,” says dietitian Andrea Giancoli. “Maybe they’re inclined to exercise more, be outdoors more, eat more fruits and vegetables.” Aldrich thinks it could be related to the body’s endocannabinoid system — a group of receptors, primarily in the brain, that respond to compounds in marijuana. But the bottom line is that the exact mechanism responsible for this correlation remains a mystery — for now.”
http://news.yahoo.com/fight-obesity-marijuana-114000508.html
“The endocannabinoids are endogenous lipids capable of binding to both cannabinoid receptors (CB) CB1 and CB2. These receptors belong to the G protein-coupled family receptors and they were discovered while investigating the mode of action of ?(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol, a component of Cannabis sativa, to which they bind with high affinity. Among many other brain sites, CB1 is present in the hypothalamic nuclei involved in the control of energy balance and body weight, as well as in neurons of the mesolimbic system which is believed to mediate the incentive value of food. At central nervous system level, CB1 activation is necessary to induce food intake after a short period of food deprivation, and when CB1 is activated by endocannabinoids produced in situ, a stimulation of the ingestion of palatable food has been described. CB1 stimulation leads to modulation of the release of some hypothalamic anorexigenic and orexigenic mediators, as well as of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens shell. Recent evidence has proved that CB1 is also present in the peripheral organs, such as the adipose tissue and gastrointestinal system, key organs in the regulation of energy metabolism. Animal models have provided solid evidence that genetically induced obesity leads to long-lasting overstimulation of endocannabinoid system synthesis resulting in permanent overactivation of CB1, which may then contribute to the maintenance of this disease. Importantly, at peripheral level, CB1 activation has been shown to stimulate lipogenesis in adipocytes. CB1 blockers increase adiponectin production in adipocytes, which leads to increased fatty acid oxidation and free fatty acid clearance. Moreover, CB1 has been shown to be up-regulated in adipocytes derived from obese rodents. These results support the role of endocannabinoids in the development and maintenance of obesity, paving the way for the development of a new class of drugs such as the CB1 blockers as a therapy for tackling obesity and the associated major cardiovascular risk factors.”