Smoking ‘Skunk’ Cannabis May Cause Significant Damage To Brain
Smoking "skunk" cannabis could cause significant brain damage, revealed researchers in a recent study at King's College London (KCL).
Researchers observed in a recent study that high-strength cannabis products could damage the corpus callosum of the brain, responsible for transmitting signals between left and right side of the brain. Damage in corpus callosum could result in slowing down of brain activity, mental illnesses and other psychotic symptoms such as hallucination, according to Independent.
"We found that frequent use of high potency cannabis significantly affects the structure of white matter fibres in the brain, whether you have psychosis or not," said Dr Paola Dazzan, the lead author of the study from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at KCL.
Dazzan also noted that the risk of damage is proportionately high with more cannabis one smokes. The levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient present in cannabis is believed to be responsible for causing the brain damage. The high-potential cannabis varieties are found to contain 10 to 14% THC while the traditional ones contain only two to four percent of THC, reported The Guardian.
In order to examine the corpus callosum to investigate the effect of cannabis in brain, researchers used two different scanning techniques, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The investigators compared brain scans 56 patients that reported to have first episode of psychosis to 43 healthy volunteers.
The researchers observed two percent increased "mean diffusivity" in the white matter of the brain in the high-potency cannabis users. "It is possible that these people already have a different brain and they are more likely to use cannabis. But what we can say is if it's high potency, and if you smoke frequently, your brain is different from the brain of someone who smokes normal cannabis, and from someone who doesn't smoke cannabis at all," said Dazzan.
