Why Marijuana Harms The Brain And How To Prevent It

For too long has it been a mystery to the scientific community the reason why marijuana causes harm to the brain, but I believe I have not only figured out the reason, but also the cure. Working from known facts, such as the usual inhibition of dreams caused by the drug, I was able to find a very plausible theory to shed some light on the subject.

First, let’s discuss the effect of the drug on sleep. It has been proven time and time again that cannabis effectively prevents dreams. Some people even profit from this effect, using the drug for the prevention of nightmares. This happens because the drug strips away a considerable portion of a user’s REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is the stage linked to dreams. It should be noted that the scientific community also does not know the reason behind this phenomenon.

Now, let’s discuss the importance of sleep. It has been observed in many studies that REM sleep plays a crucial role in cognitive function and memory consolidation. It is too great of a coincidence that those are the precise qualities that are harmed by marijuana use in the long run.

The book Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker, PhD, highlights some of the essential reasons for sleep in general, and covers some important topics that will be crucial for the understanding of why cannabis affects the brain. In the book, Walker mentions the interesting hypothesis that dreams are a mechanism of the brain to strip away the sting of painful memories over time, thus preventing trauma. He has also observed that individuals who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) seem to have a deficiency that prevents them from having proper REM sleep. This deficiency is characterized by a failure to bring down norepinephrine levels during REM sleep. It has long been known that a defining characteristic of REM sleep is a sharp decrease in the levels of norepinephrine (usually referred to as the fight or flight neurotransmitter). To Walker’s surprise, another researcher had found a blood pressure drug that had an interesting side effect: it inhibited norepinephrine. Walker, now given a way of testing his hypothesis, soon began trials of the drug on PTSD patients. The results were promising, it seemed that the blood pressure drug was indeed capable of helping individuals with PTSD.

But how does this tie into the subject of marijuana-induced cognitive and memory impairment? The answer is simple, the drug is known to highly increase the levels of norepinephrine in the brain. With this information in mind, I have taken a further step from Walker’s theory and hypothesized that a lack norepinephrine plays a critical role in proper REM sleep. If marijuana increases the levels of norepinephrine, it inherently decreases the amount (or quality) of REM sleep. The pieces of the puzzle started coming together. Low norepinephrine levels are important for proper REM sleep. REM sleep is important for cognitive function and memory consolidation. Marijuana increases the levels of norepinephrine. The increase of norepinephrine caused by cannabis, therefore, must be the reason why marijuana inhibits REM sleep, and the lack of REM sleep must be the reason why a long term impairment in memory and cognitive function is observed in heavy users of the drug.

Eager to test my theory, I began researching for a readily available inhibitor of norepinephrine. It was unlikely that I would be able to get my hands on the same drug Matthew Walker used for his experiment with PTSD patients. Luckily, after a few days, I found a plant called Ginkgo Biloba, which a study found was an effective inhibitor of norepinephrine. With the ingredients ready, I contacted a friend in the Netherlands who was more than happy to be my test subject. While the evidence I am about to present is completely anecdotal, I am doing so in hopes that it will inspire scientists to further study my hypothesis.

The procedure was simple, we were to test my Dutch friend’s sleep cycles through a readily available app (called Sleep Cycle) during nights in which she was sober, then on marijuana, and then on both marijuana and Ginkgo Biloba. Here are the results:

The graph above shows a night in which she went to bed sober. Notice how the cycles are well defined, clearly alternating between deep sleep (which includes the REM stage) and shallower, light sleep.

Those two graphs show her sleep after using only cannabis. Notice how there is a great amount of deep sleep (which doesn’t necessarily mean REM sleep) earlier into the night, but then she goes into lighter sleep stages and does not go back into deep sleep.

Finally, the two graphs above show the nights in which she used cannabis, but also took a dose of a Ginkgo Biloba extract (4 and 5 pills respectively, each worth about 6000mg of dried plant). Notice how the defining factors of a night on cannabis (large amount of deep sleep right after sleep onset and shallower sleep throughout the rest of the night) are missing. While not exactly the same as a sober night, the sleep cycles are more easily distinguished, which indicates better sleep quality. On top of that, she also reported dreaming during the two nights in which she also took the Ginkgo extract, something she claims is highly unusual when sleeping after using marijuana.

Considering this, the use of Ginkgo Biloba an hour before an individual under the influence of cannabis goes to sleep may be an effective way to prevent the brain harm caused by the drug. By no means do I consider my experiment to be strong evidence, but I do believe many people stand to gain from this knowledge.

My main goal by publishing this is to encourage the scientific community to perform more reliable experiments to test this hypothesis.

If anyone wishes to contact me, I will be available at allplssanonymous@gmail.com

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