Can Cannabis Cure Dementia?
Weed could provide a new cure against sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and epilepsy. Scientists have discovered how cannabis works, allowing them to design efficient drugs without severe side effects.
The personal care worker opens the medicine cabinet and produces a cake, which she places on a plate in front of her exhausted patient. He sighs, pulling the plate closer. His arm hurts, as he lifts the fork, struggling to swallow the cake, but he still finishes it down to the very last crumb, because the cannabis in the cake might delay the next time his disease – multiple sclerosis – causes a new, painful fit, leaving him with weaker joints, muscle cramps, and a pricking sensation in his skin. The personal care worker moves on to her next patient, who suffers from arthritis. He smiles, as the smoke from his prescribed joint enters his lungs, relieving some of his joint pain. During the day, the personal care worker visits patients with anything from nausea to Alzheimer’s, who need help to take their medication: pills, cake, mouth spray, and cigarettes, which all have one thing in common – they include cannabis. The scenario is a real one, which is taking place in the Netherlands and the US as we speak. Every year, Dutch pharmacies sell thousands of pill bottles with cannabis, and more countries are following suit, reconsidering their legislation. The most recent example is Germany, which introduced a new act in 2017 to become the ninth European nation to allow doctors to prescribe medical cannabis. Many more
have allowed cannabis ingredients to be tested in medical trials, and according to the most recent scientific studies, the forbidden plant involves a huge potential. Not only could cannabis cure some of the worst diseases of our time such as dementia and epilepsy – scientists will also soon be able to customize cannabis drugs, which could cure severe diseases in the brain and the body without the patients getting "stoned".
CANNABIS HALTS DEMENTIA
Cannabis, which is also known as hashish, pot, skunk, and marijuana – is best-known as an intoxicating agent. According to the UN, about 200 million people worldwide use cannabis on a regular basis. They smoke, eat, or otherwise absorb leaves, seeds, flowers, or resin from two species of hemp: Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. The plant parts include the THC molecule, cannabidiol, and at least 100 other chemical ingredients, which cause a powerful feeling of wellbeing in the users.
However, the ingredients of the cannabis plant also cause short and long-term side effects such as palpitation, concentration problems, addiction, and psychoses, and so, cannabis is categorized as an illegal intoxicant drug in major parts of the world. Nevertheless, scientists in labs throughout the world have been working unremittingly to find out how cannabis alters body chemistry – amazingly recreating a healthy balance in the case of a series of severe diseases.
A major breakthrough was made last year, when scientists placed the psycho-active cannabis molecule THC in culture dishes with brain cells with dementia. Biologist Dave Schubert from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California was taking a closer look at how the beta-amyloid protein lumps to produce fatal infection, when brain cells are attacked by Alzheimer’s, but when he added THC molecules, he made a very surprising discovery. After only two days, the brain cell protein lumps began to dissolve, and the infection in the cells disappeared – the cannabis molecule did what scientists had been trying to accomplish for many years: It prevented sick brain cells from dying of Alzheimer’s.
Another desperate group of patients found new hope in 2016, when a neurologist from New York documented how another active cannabis ingredient can work miracles. Orrin Devinsky from the New York University in the US tested the active ingredient of cannabidiol on 214 young people with severe epilepsy. They all suffered from severe convulsive fits, which doctors were unable to stop. When the young patients consumed a drink including pure cannabidiol daily for three months, they managed to halve the number of seizures, from averagely one seizure a day to one every other day. 4 % experienced no seizures during the three months of the experiment. Once again, cannabis helped a group of patients, who had otherwise been given up by their doctors.
However, the studies did involve some problems. Even in small doses, cannabis causes side effects, and no less than 79 % of the epilepsy patients felt tired, groggy, or had diarrhoea. 30 % suffered so much that the scientists talked about severe side effects. Consequently, scientists have long dreamt of mapping out the ingredients of the cannabis plant so accurately that they can use their medical potential without causing any side effects.
PLANT INGREDIENTS WORK DIFFERENTLY
Scientists are particularly interested in two cannabis plant ingredients: THC and cannabidiol. THC causes people to be "high", whereas cannabidiol reduces the effect. The implications of THC are well-known, whereas the effect of cannabidiol remains uncertain – scientists only know that the ingredient adjusts the signals of brain cells, affecting all of the brain. So, doctors also differ between the two ingredients, when they use them for medical purposes. Studies show that cannabidiol is more efficient against multiple sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder, whereas THC eases the nausea of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Patients, who need pain relief, seem to get the best results, if they consume the entire cannabis plant, getting both ingredients at the same time.
ALTERED BRAIN SIGNALS
For the past 14 years, Dutch pharmacies have sold the Savitex mouth spray, which includes both THC and cannabidiol, whereas the synthetic version of THC is sold as pills by the name of Nabilone.
When the THC of the drugs is absorbed by the body, the ingredient binds to cannabis receptors. Scientists know of two such receptors: CB1 and CB2. The first type is primarily located on the surface of brain neurons, whereas the second one is more common in the body.
The receptors function as a type of antennas, which detect THC in blood, lymph, etc. When THC binds to a cannabis receptor, a signal is triggered off in the cell, which could have highly different consequences.
In the brain, CB1 receptors control the signalling of brain cells, and when they are activated by THC, they either send more or less signals than they usually do. The patient's perception of time and place is changed, his attention becomes sharper, sensory impressions improve, and he feels relaxed – in other words all the well-known effects of cannabis.
Normally, CB1 receptors are activated by two natural ingredients, anandamide and 2-AG. Their binding could theoretically make a brain cell in the frontal lobe more sensitive to the serotonin neurotransmitter and less sensitive to dopamine, causing the cell to send more signals to the centre of fear, amygdala, and fewer to the centre of memory, hippocampus.
The brain is constantly regulating its own function by adjusting the quantity of CB1 receptors or the two ingredients which bind to them. And the flow of nerve signals in the brain’s fine-meshed neural network is key to the way in which our brain learns, remembers, and processes the body’s sensory impressions.
Inside the body, THC binds to the CB2 receptors, which are located on the specialised white blood cells of the immune system. There, the CB2 receptors control the
level of infection in the body and the way in which the immune system reacts to a long series of diseases.
RECEPTOR APPEARANCE REVEALED
However, the cannabis receptors also exist in other body tissue, regulating the way in which the intestines work and how fast the heart beats. Consequently, it is like firing at random, when patients try to dampen chronic pain in their backs by means of cannabis.
This is also the reason why it caused a stir among scientists throughout the world last year, when two groups revealed the exact make-up of the CB1 receptor. They can now very accurately see how both the body’s natural substances and THC bind to the receptor.
The discovery marks a new era in cannabis-based drugs, because scientists will now be better at customising highly focused drugs, which have the same beneficial medical effect as THC, but do not cause unpleasant side effects, be it a drug with ingredients which only bind to the CB2 receptors of the body without activating the CB1 receptors of the brain, or similar. With the detailed image of the receptor, scientists hope to be able to find out why – in spite of its similarity with THC – cannabidiol does not bind to the cannabis receptors of the body, but rather affects body cells via very different, still unknown mechanisms.
47 MILLION COULD BE CURED
The list of severe diseases which can be treated with cannabis is getting ever longer, and if THC proves to have the same curative effect on human brain cells affected by dementia as the ingredient has in the lab, the cannabis plant may include the cure against one of the major plagues of our time. More than forty-seven million people live with dementia today, and the number is expected to quadruple before 2050.
The new research results have already changed the sceptical attitude towards the cannabis plant otherwise taken up by the authorities of many countries.
In the near future, it looks as if cannabis must no longer be traded secretly, so pills, mixtures, and food including THC and cannabidiol could fill the shelves of pharmacies, nursery homes, and the homes of sick and elderly people throughout the world. It's a heck of a drug!