Upwards of 14 million Americans are estimated to be living with some form of dementia by the year 2050 which could cost $1.1 trillion. Pharmaceutical treatments continue to fail at providing a cure, as such many are turning towards more natural and alternative methods such as turmeric and cannabis to look for possible relief.
University of Bonn and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem joined efforts to investigate the potential benefits of cannabis in mice, and believe they have built a strong body of evidence on the brain benefits of THC.
Small amounts of THC derived from cannabis or placebo was administered to mice aged 2, 12, and 18 months old for one month; afterwards the animals were subjected to various testing to gauge learning capacity and memory. Older mice treated with THC were found to display cognitive function as good as the youngest, in contrast to those on placebo displaying natural age dependent learning and memory losses; according to Professor Andreas Zimmer the treatment completely reversed loss of performance in the old animals.
Brain aging has previously been shown to accelerate when THC receptors are absent, prompting the team to further investigate. THC acts very similar to cannabinoids naturally produced by the body in the brain, however the quantity of cannabinoids naturally formed in the brain reduces with increasing age. Treating the animals with THC yielded significant epigenetic changes and links between neurons increased as well, looking as if THC treatment turned back the molecular clock, explains Zimmer.
Growing bodies of scientific evidence supports an array of health benefits and medicinal uses for cannabis. Cannabis has many beneficial compounds, THC is one of them though it is most often viewed as nothing more than a psychoactive component. CBDs/cannabidiol is another compound that is under spotlight being shown to have an array of uses including relief from seizure disorders and chronic pain.
It is becoming increasingly more clear that there is not just one specific compound that makes cannabis a medicinal plant, rather all of them as the quickly building evidence is showing.
