Posted on 12/27/2005 7:26:46 AM PST by billorites
Marijuana--or more specifically its active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol--has a well-documented tendency to stimulate hunger. And while scientists have traced this property to cannabinoid receptors in the brain, they have had little understanding of the neural circuitry underlying this effect.
Understanding this circuitry has important practical implications because blocking the cannabinoid receptor, CB1, offers a promising approach to treating obesity. One such compound, rimonabant (trade name AcompliaTM) is already undergoing clinical testing.
In an article in the December 22, 2005, issue of Neuron, Young-Hwan Jo and colleagues report how the circuitry of CB1 is integrated with signaling by the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin. The CB1 receptor is normally triggered by natural regulatory molecules, called endocannabinoids.
In their studies, the researchers concentrated on the lateral hypothalamus (LH) of the brain, known to be a center of control of food intake. Their studies involved detailed electrophysiological measurements of the effects of specific neurons that they had identified in previous studies as being important in endocannabinoid signaling.
Their studies revealed that activation of CB1 receptors, as by endocannabinoid molecules, induced these neurons to be rendered more excitable by a mechanism called "depolarization-induced suppression of inhibition" (DSI).
What's more, they found that leptin inhibits DSI. However, they found that leptin did not interfere with the CB1 receptors themselves. Rather, leptin "short-circuits" the endocannabinoid effects by inhibiting pore-like channels in the neurons that regulate the flow of calcium into the neurons. Such calcium is necessary for the synthesis of endocannabinoids.
In further studies of mice genetically altered to be leptin deficient, the researchers found the DSI to be more prolonged than in normal mice. Thus, they said, the findings "implicate this mechanism for leptin receptor/endocannabinoid signaling in contributing to the maintenance of weight balance...." The researchers also included that "upregulation of endocannabinoid signaling in the LH may explain, at least in part, the increased body weight consistent with a prior report of elevated endocannabinoids" in such leptin-deficient mice.
The researchers concluded that their findings "are consistent with the hypothesis that the integration of endocannabinoid and leptin signaling regulates the excitability of neurons on appetite-related circuits."
They also wrote that "the cellular mechanisms of recently developed antiobesity drugs, such as rimonabant, may include decreased endocannabinoid signaling and hence decreased excitability of LH circuits related to appetite, even in the context of leptin insufficiency or resistance."
I'm surprised but pleased to hear it. Now if you could just rid yourself of the factually unsupported notion that ending the WOD must wait until after reinstitutionalization, we'd be 100% in agreement.
Possibly and probably, but to be honest, I don't know for sure. Pot is your issue, the mentally ill on the street is mine. Once the mental and homeless are institutionalized, I really don't care what you smoke.
No more so than 'shine, bathtub gin, and so forth. If it were legal to grown, sell and buy, most users wouldn't bother growing it, any more than most drinkers run their own stills. After all, all that takes is some sugar and some tubing, a bit more if you are trying to make beer or drinkable wine.
More like a simple tune for a simpleton.
Then post to (or start) a mental-illness thread; discussion of non-drug-using criminals is irrelevant to WOD threads.
What in the world do the "homeless and mentally ill" have to do with legalizing reefer?
Absolutely nothing.
Regardless of what is legal or illegal, the homeless still won't give a crap about themselves and the mentally ill will still be crazy. A significant portion of both groups should be in jail for vagrancy, non payment of child support or violent acts, but we don't have the room because the jails are full of pot growers and smokers.
The war on drugs IS a personal attack on every individual American's liberty. The gummint is just honing its skill and developing its resources for when they come for your guns and Bibles. If you can't see that, you either haven't looked at the big picture or a blinded by self righteousness.
If anything, it appears to be considerably more difficult to grow high-potency marijuana than to distill alcohol.
No, absolutely not! If the former is done without the latter, it will only result in increased drug abuse and its attendant street and international violence. As long as you pot heads have an interest in seeing the mentally ill hospitalized, you'll be on the side of a return to sanity in the nations mental health policies. But once it's legalized, you will care less.
One could say the same about your own opinion.
I'll bet you can think of many other names to call people.
What seems to be lacking is you understanding that name calling in general is the problem, not the names.
What name would you call someone who couldn't make that connection?
You must like it. You are paying a lot of attention to it.
It's drug criminalization that results in increased violence, as it did during Prohibition.
You want to institutionalize the non mentally ill homeless?
Why?
Now it's true that many of the homeless are mentally ill, but far from all. Many are addicts, addicted to the legal drug ethanol, others are addicted to other illegal drugs. Very few of them exclusively to MJ. Most people can function sufficiently well to hold a job and provide for themselves, even though addicted to ethanol or MJ. As much as anyone can be said to be addicted to MJ, the medical jury is still out on that one, but even if the addiction is not direct, there does seem to be an addiction to the "buzz" one gets from MJ.. I wouldn't know though, I've only even smelled the stuff once, over 30 years ago, and it smelled like an alfalfa drying plant to me.
This is a WOD thread? I thought it was about some medical resource into appetite regulation, either increasing or decreasing.
I believe it was hijacked into a WOD/Pot Legalization thread.
No, the subject of this thread was about the chemicals in pot that stimulated the appetite, then the pro-pot crowd jumped in with medicinal pot anecdotes, then I jumped in with the opinion that legalizing pot would be premature before the mentally ill were institutionalized, then someone jumped in accusing me of wanting to "infringe" on pot the way the 2nd. Amendment is infringed now. Anyone who would accuse me of being an enemy of the 2nd. Amendment, is, well, a moron because I believe that the beginning of drug abuse and gun violence, in this country, began with Kennedy signing the CMHC Act of 1963.
Now if you want to go back to your irrelevant tangents, be my guest.
Quite probably, but I suspect growing "good stuff" is no more difficult than growing good tomatoes, or good wine grapes for that matter. Or making good drinkable beer. (Wouldn't know about that either, almost all beer tastes like something that should be put back into the horse or bull it came from, but that's just me, others have differing opinions, and are welcome to them)
Also, I'll go back and look, but it seems that early on you used the childish phrase, "put down the bong". I'll check it out.
No! Only the mentally ill homeless.
How to explain the likes of "Machine Gun Kelly", "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and of course "Bonnie and Clyde". Big "gun violence" types, who lived and died before 1963.
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