Israeli company grows medical marijuana which doesn't get you high. Situated in an undisclosed location near Tzfat, northern Israel, is a government-approved medical marijuana plantation which was founded in 2004 by a retired biology teacher. Named Tikun Olam, the plantation has created a new cannabis strain which contains very low traces of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main constituent in cannabis responsible for making people feel "stoned". By virtually eliminating THC in the new strain, Tikun Olam can now offer the drug's medicinal benefits to those patients who wish to keep a clear head. Marijuana contains over 60 constituents named cannabinoids and though THC is the most famous due to its psychoactive effects, another important constituent is cannabidiol (CBD).
CBD is believed by some researchers to offer anti-inflammatory benefits, thus offering the potential to relieve pain without making patients intoxicated, if the THC-to-CBD concentrations can be correctly balanced. The new strain of marijuana created at Tikun Olam does just that. Weed sequenced. No really — weed. (Credit: stock image) DNA sequencing hit a new high with the release of the Cannabis sativa genome, says Nature News. The raw sequence, done in Amsterdam (where else?) , was posted on Amazon’s EC2 public cloud computing service by a young company called Medicinal Genomics, which aims to explore the genomes of therapeutic plants. Medicinal Genomics founder Kevin McKernan says he estimates the size of the C. sativa genome to be about 400 million bases. “Ongoing scientific research suggests that the Cannabis plant harbors beneficial compounds as it pertains to cancer apoptosis, antiemesis for HIV and chemotherapy patients, reduction of muscle spasms for multiple sclerosis patients, as well as the treatment of glaucoma, inflammatory diseases, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other health conditions,” according to a statement by the company.
“Of the 85 identified Cannabinoids in the plant, only one is independently psychoactive. What cannabis actually does to your brain - io9. Chances are they would've ended up brainless morons with or without the pot. It's quite frankly not strong enough of a narcotic to destroy one's life such as you describe. It's very dependent on the user's persona. @Tadashii: Are you also for alcohol and tobacco prohibition? Those ruin more lives every year then marijuana has ever. Wow- Tadashii, pot is not meth or cocaine. Marijuana is not a drug that people become addicted to and end up in the gutter from. Yes, its a chemical that can intoxicate and has been embraced by, and been the cause of some lazy folks, underachievers, and Grateful Dead fans not amounting to much.
Pot is like anything else- tobacco, alcohol, vicodin, valium, caffeine, etc. Cannabis has great promise for any treatment that requires appetite stimulant (such as cancer, HIV, etc), and has also been found to act as an anti-inflammatory or nausea reliever, Don't just stamp marijuana "evil". Yes I am against alcohol too and I agree that it's worse than pot.
THC Gives Cancer Cells the Munchies Too : The Scientific Activist. Through the results of widespread experimentation of the… well… let’s say “non-scientific” variety, it’s pretty well known that marijuana has the side effect of making the user very hungry. This is one of the many physiological effects of the active ingredient THC (? 9-tetrahydrocannabinol). More relevantly, however, THC and other cannabinoids are actively being investigated for various useful clinical purposes, including the treatment of cancer through the inhibition of tumor growth. A new study by Salazar et al. in The Journal of Clinical Investigation demonstrates that THC causes tumor cells to begin to degrade themselves from the inside (a process called autophagy, i.e. Despite the imagery that the title of this post (and maybe even casual experience) may imply, it’s not that THC causes cancer cells to ravenously and indiscriminately destroy themselves. Mostly, this is interesting (to me) more for the big picture aspect and the implications for clinical medicine.
Cannabis. Nugshots - Professional Medical Marijuana Photography and Design. Marijuana Testing | Cannabis Testing. Molecular mechanism found that controls marijuana-like substance in body | KurzweilAI - (Build 20100722150226) A newly discovered molecular mechanism helps control the amount and effectiveness of a substance that mimics an active ingredient in marijuana, but that is produced by the body’s own nerve cells. The results were reported in the latest Nature Neuroscience. The lead author on the study is William R. Marrs of the Neurobiology and Behavior program at the University of Washington (UW). The senior author is Dr. Nephi Stella, UW professor of pharmacology and psychiatry. In previous papers, Stella and other scientists have noted that the body manufactures several cell signals called endocannabinoids that mimic the actions of marijuana-derived chemicals.
Because cannabinoid signaling systems are common throughout the body and affect a variety of functions, therapies aimed at these systems might be more wide-ranging than simply a better substitute for medicinal marijuana. Controlling cannabinoid receptors to control pain, anxiety, and brain inflammation More info: University of Washington news.