ClassX Video Lessons Youtube Channel The Infographics Show What Happens To Your Body When Smoking Weed
Imagine you’re trying to light up a joint. After a few tries, you finally manage to get the lighter going, and a familiar aroma fills the room. As you inhale deeply, you might wonder: what exactly is happening inside your body and mind? What is it about this green plant that captivates millions worldwide? Let’s explore the science behind cannabis, its history, and its effects on the human body.
The cannabis plant, native to Central and South Asia, has become a global phenomenon. With over 700 different strains available, its popularity continues to grow. Identifying the strain you’re using is straightforward if you’re buying from a legal dispensary. However, in places where cannabis is still illegal, knowing what you’re consuming can be challenging.
Two primary compounds in cannabis are cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). CBD has gained attention for its potential therapeutic benefits, such as reducing anxiety, though research is ongoing. It’s important to note that CBD doesn’t produce a high but can alter your mental state, making you feel calm.
THC, on the other hand, is the main psychoactive component responsible for the high. It has a more pronounced effect on the brain and body, which we’ll explore further.
When you smoke cannabis, THC quickly enters your lungs and is absorbed into your bloodstream. The lungs, with their millions of tiny air sacs called alveoli, efficiently transfer THC into the blood, allowing it to reach your brain within seconds.
Once in the brain, THC and CBD interact with various receptors. For instance, the amygdala, which regulates emotions and anxiety, can be affected differently by these compounds. While CBD may calm this area, THC can sometimes heighten anxiety, especially as its effects wear off.
Other brain regions, such as the basal ganglia, neocortex, and cerebellum, are also influenced by cannabis. These areas control motor skills, sensory processing, and coordination, which is why cannabis can slow reflexes and impair speech.
Driving under the influence of cannabis is dangerous due to its impact on motor skills and reaction times. Many countries enforce strict laws against it, as cannabis can remain detectable in the bloodstream for over 48 hours.
However, cannabis isn’t just about dulling the senses. THC can enhance sensory experiences, making colors more vivid, sounds more intense, and food more enjoyable. It can also stimulate creativity and new ideas.
While smoking provides quick effects, they typically last around three hours. Edibles, absorbed through the digestive system, take longer to kick in but can last much longer, sometimes up to a day.
Studying cannabis is challenging due to the brain’s complexity. A tiny sample of the brain contains thousands of neurons and billions of synapses. Individual reactions to cannabis can vary widely, with some feeling anxious and others relaxed.
Is cannabis dangerous? Generally, occasional use is considered relatively safe, provided you’re not engaging in activities like driving. However, the debate over legalization is influenced by political and cultural factors. Historically, cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes, but its perception has shifted over time.
Concerns about cannabis causing psychosis are complex. While heavy use has been linked to psychosis, it’s not proven to be the cause. The brain’s complexity means that underlying conditions can be exacerbated by substances like cannabis.
Is cannabis a gateway drug? While some may seek stronger substances after using cannabis, trauma is often a more significant factor in substance dependence. Cannabis can be addictive, with up to 30% of users experiencing some level of dependence, but this can be managed by taking breaks.
Cannabis is a complex substance with both potential benefits and risks. It’s not a miracle cure, nor is it inherently harmful. Understanding its effects requires looking at the broader picture and considering individual experiences. As with many things in life, the answers aren’t always straightforward, but informed choices can lead to safer and more beneficial outcomes.
Research the chemical structure and effects of CBD and THC. Create a presentation comparing their molecular structures, how they interact with the brain, and their potential therapeutic benefits. Share your findings with the class to deepen your understanding of these compounds.
Engage in a role-playing debate where you represent different stakeholders in the cannabis legalization discussion, such as policymakers, medical professionals, and recreational users. Prepare arguments based on scientific evidence and present your case to the class, considering both the risks and benefits of cannabis use.
Conduct a sensory experience experiment by documenting your sensory perceptions in different environments. Reflect on how cannabis might alter these perceptions based on the article’s discussion. Share your journal entries with peers to explore the subjective nature of sensory experiences.
Create a detailed map of the brain regions affected by cannabis, such as the amygdala, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Illustrate how THC and CBD interact with these areas and the resulting effects on emotions, motor skills, and sensory processing. Present your map to the class to visualize the complexity of cannabis interactions.
Research the historical use of cannabis across different cultures and time periods. Develop a timeline that highlights key events, shifts in perception, and the evolution of cannabis use from medicinal to recreational. Share your timeline with classmates to provide context for the current debates surrounding cannabis.
Here’s a sanitized version of the provided transcript, with sensitive content and explicit references removed or modified:
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It takes a couple of attempts, but you manage to spark a lighter and hold it up steadily in front of your face to light up a product. A familiar smell fills the room and drifts out of your window on the afternoon breeze. You blink, steady yourself, inhale deeply, and feel your lungs fill up with warmth. But what happens next? Chemically speaking, biologically speaking, what is it about this little green plant that gets millions of people around the world to flock to it? How long has humanity been consuming it? And what exactly is it doing inside your body? Inside your mind?
To start, let’s have a look at the chemical composition of the cannabis plant itself. Native to Central and South Asia, the cannabis plant today is so popular it has grown to be a global economy of its own. From small-scale rural farming operations to larger commercial enterprises, experts believe that there are well over 700 different strains of cannabis currently on the market, and this number seems only set to increase.
Being able to identify which strain you have can be very easy when buying from a legal dispensary, but if you live in a country or a state where it is still criminalized, verifying exactly what it is you’re consuming becomes much more difficult. Looking down at the product in your hand, do you know where in the world it’s come from and what’s inside it?
Let’s break it down a bit. You have likely heard of the two most well-known active ingredients in cannabis. These are cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol, or as you probably know them, CBD and THC. Over the last ten years, particularly in the West, CBD has been championed as a potential medical breakthrough. It has been shown to have a calming effect on those with anxious dispositions and is currently being tested as a treatment for various conditions. You may have seen ads for CBD oil products claiming that it can solve a number of ailments. Research is ongoing; however, results do vary. In the case of curing certain diseases, for example, there is currently no evidence to support that CBD has any kind of effect, despite what some may claim.
So you consume CBD and feel relaxed, right? No. CBD is usually extracted as an oil and, on its own, will not produce a high. But it is still psychoactive, meaning it alters your mental state, typically leaving you feeling more calm and mellow. The feeling of being high comes from the main active component in cannabis: THC. Typically found in much greater quantities than CBD, THC can have a powerful psychoactive effect.
To see what that means in practice, let’s follow it as it enters the human body. Take a deep breath and let the smoke fill your lungs. In this example, you’re going to be our test subject. Smoking is one of the most direct and quickest ways to feel the effects. This is because the smoke from the burning cannabis contains high levels of THC. The smoke is then inhaled, filling your lungs. At this point, you may experience some irritation from introducing a foreign substance into your lungs. This, however, is not unique to smoking cannabis, as you’re likely to see the same from people smoking conventional tobacco.
The lungs are designed to quickly and efficiently transfer oxygen into the bloodstream when we breathe. Therefore, they have the capacity to take in large quantities of gas in one breath and get various elements or compounds from that gas into our bloodstream, and fast. The lungs aren’t just empty chambers; they are full of tiny air pockets called alveoli. The average human adult has roughly 480 million alveoli in their lungs, constituting about 1500 miles of airways.
In each alveolus, the THC from the smoke is transferred directly into your bloodstream, which then carries it all over the body, including to the critical area: your brain. As a result, it often only takes a matter of seconds for the user to start to feel the psychoactive effects of what they’re consuming.
THC and CBD bind themselves to receptors throughout your brain. The amygdala, for example, is responsible for anxiety, emotional responses, and fear. CBD dulls the activity in this part of the brain, but the THC component can stimulate it. While many users feel calmer having consumed cannabis, others can feel a heightened sense of worry, particularly on the ‘comedown’ as the calming effects of the CBD wear off.
Looking at other parts of the brain impacted by CBD, we have the basal ganglia, which is involved with motor control and planning, the neocortex which processes sensory information, and the cerebellum which is the center of motor control. All three of these areas are impacted by consuming cannabis, resulting in feelings of being ‘slower’ in general. Reflexes may be delayed, information takes more time to be processed, and motor functions and speech slow down.
Driving under the influence of cannabis can be very dangerous as a result. Studies have shown that fatal accidents are more likely to occur when the subject is under the influence. Most countries have strict laws for driving under the influence, with zero tolerance policies, made stricter by the fact that it can take over 48 hours for cannabis to stop showing up on a blood test.
However, it would be reductive to think that all cannabis does is dull the brain. THC is a very active component that stimulates a lot of neural activity. Colors may look brighter, sounds are louder, and food often tastes better under the influence of THC, giving the subject the illusion that they’re really hungry. Many people report having heightened imagination and being able to think outside of the box or come up with fresh and exciting ideas.
In short, you, our human test subject, have experienced the effects. But what do these effects actually look like? Here’s where it gets really interesting. So far, we have only focused on THC and CBD, but there are hundreds of active components within cannabis, which vary in quantity and intensity depending on the strain being consumed.
While smoking or vaping gets the chemicals into the bloodstream quickly, the effects only last around 3 hours or so. Many users instead take edibles. When cannabis is absorbed through the digestive system, it takes a significantly longer time to kick in, but when it does, the user can experience effects that last for hours, even up to a day.
All of this makes studying the effects of cannabis very difficult. The human brain is incredibly complex. If you took a sample of the human brain that was the size of just one grain of sand, that sample would contain 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses. Now, multiply that by 860,000, and you’ve got a human brain, just like the one that’s sitting in your head, watching this video.
While one individual might take one puff and feel anxious, another might consume a larger amount and feel relaxed. So, is it dangerous? Well, on the whole, consuming cannabis is relatively harmless. As long as you aren’t driving or operating heavy machinery, the risks of occasional use are low.
So why hasn’t it been legalized worldwide already? A lot of the conflict comes from political and cultural differences. The first recorded use of cannabis in history dates back to around 2800 BC in China, where it was used for medicinal purposes. Over the years, various healing properties have been ascribed to it.
However, the perception of cannabis has changed significantly over time. In the West, medical cannabis was first introduced in 1841, but the real origins of the USA’s issues with cannabis began much earlier. The crop was a massive success and became key to early American colonial settlements.
As laws and prohibitions were established, cannabis was often grouped with more harmful substances. The government’s approach became one of zero tolerance, leading to the criminalization of cannabis.
A large amount of the campaign against drugs has involved a level of fear-mongering. There is a lot of misinformation about the negative effects of cannabis.
So, does cannabis cause psychosis? It’s complicated. THC is highly psychoactive; while CBD can decrease levels of panic and paranoia, it’s often present in much smaller quantities than THC. Studies have shown a link between heavy use of cannabis and psychosis, but it has not been proven that cannabis is the cause.
The brain is a very complex and delicate thing. If someone has an underlying condition, the consumption of substances that alter their state of mind can lead to exacerbation of those symptoms.
Next, is it a gateway drug? The experience of a chemical buzz is something many of us chase. Studies have shown that in a minority of cases, the same can happen with cannabis. However, trauma is a much more powerful ‘gateway’ to substance dependence.
Is it addictive? If you consume cannabis regularly, your brain may become accustomed to it, leading to dependence. Up to 30% of cannabis users may experience some level of dependence, but it can be overcome by taking a break.
If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s that cannabis, much like life, is complicated. There may not always be a straight answer to every question. What is important is looking at the big picture.
Is cannabis a harmful substance? No, but neither is it a miracle cure-all that everyone should take daily.
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This version maintains the informative nature of the original transcript while removing explicit references and sensitive content.
Cannabis – A genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae, known for its psychoactive properties and use in medicine and recreation. – Recent studies have explored the potential medical benefits of cannabis in treating chronic pain.
THC – Tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis, responsible for the sensation of being “high.” – The concentration of THC in cannabis strains can significantly affect their psychoactive potency.
CBD – Cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis, often studied for its potential therapeutic effects. – Unlike THC, CBD does not produce a high, making it a popular choice for medical applications.
Neurons – Specialized cells in the nervous system that transmit information through electrical and chemical signals. – Neurons communicate with each other via synapses, forming complex networks in the brain.
Receptors – Protein molecules that receive and respond to chemical signals, playing a crucial role in cellular communication. – Cannabinoid receptors in the brain interact with THC and CBD, influencing various physiological processes.
Anxiety – A mental health condition characterized by feelings of worry or fear that can affect daily functioning, often studied in relation to neurotransmitter activity. – Research is ongoing to determine how CBD might alleviate symptoms of anxiety by modulating serotonin receptors.
Brain – The central organ of the nervous system, responsible for processing sensory information and controlling behavior. – The effects of cannabis on the brain are complex and can vary depending on the individual’s biology and the strain used.
Effects – The changes or outcomes resulting from a particular action or substance, often studied in pharmacology and toxicology. – The effects of THC on cognitive function are a major area of research in neuroscience.
Strains – Genetic variants or subtypes of organisms, often used to describe different varieties of cannabis with distinct chemical profiles. – Different cannabis strains are bred to enhance specific traits, such as higher CBD content for medical use.
Risks – The potential for adverse outcomes or harm, often assessed in the context of drug use and public health. – Understanding the risks associated with long-term cannabis use is crucial for developing effective health policies.
