Health

Who Needs Pot? Human Brains Make Marijuana-like Opiate Protien

by Tina Kells | April 21, 2009 at 03:35 pm

600 views | 44 Recommendations | 5 comments

Who needs pot? Not you, anymore, if research by a team of US and Brazilian scientists turns out to be on track. The multinational team of researchers has determined that human brains can make their own marijuana like opiate protein that mimics the effects of the THC in real pot.

Touted by some as a victory in the War in Drugs, the newly discovered naturally produced protein could be synthesized into a chemical trigger that could be prescribed through legal means. Critics however point out that prescriptions are not routinely written for the recreational use of legal medications and that this will open a new black market in the drug trade.

These intriguing brain chemistry findings come a year after a different group of scientists discovered that human skin also naturally produces a marijuana like substance when exposed to specific stimuli.

"Ideally, this development will lead to drugs that bind to and activate the THC receptor, but are devoid of the side effects that limit the usefulness of marijuana," said Lakshmi A. Devi of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one of the senior researchers involved in the study. "It would be helpful to have a drug that activated or blocked the THC receptor, and our findings raise the possibility that this will lead to effective drugs with fewer side effects."

Scientists made their discovery by first extracting several small proteins, called peptides, from the brains of mice and determining their amino acid sequence. The extracted proteins were then compared with another peptide previously known to bind to, but not activate, the receptor (THC) affected by marijuana. Out of the extracted proteins, several not only bound to the brain's THC receptors, but activated them as well.

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | Digg | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Roy C

at 15:57 on April 21st, 2009

We make our own pot and our own heroin, which is why they work. The drugs have places to attach to and strong effects because we have been set up to react strongly to these substances.

Roy C

at 18:08 on April 21st, 2009

So, Esta, do you think it helps make the case for a goddess-centered intelligent design? No problem with that here.

They forgot to include here that Aphrodite means foam-born, a reference to the Creatrix coming ashore from the sea on her famous half-shell.

Eurynome was easily the most important Goddess of Pelasgian myth. She was the Great Goddess, Mother, Creatrix, Ruler, called the Goddess of All Things.

Eurynome was born from Chaos, and her first work was to separate the water from the sky. When she had accomplished this, she began to dance across the water. It was a beautiful, sensual dance of creation. As she danced, she danced South, and faster and faster she danced until a wind grew behind her. Eurynome caught this new thing, this wind, between her hands and rubbed it into a snake. The snake, called Ophion, watched as the Goddess danced and danced to keep herself warm. He saw Eurynome dancing across the waves and was filled with lust. He coiled his body around the Goddess seven times and made love to her as she danced.

Swan

at 12:20 on April 22nd, 2009

Hello Tina,

There are so many people who are prescribed marijuana for medical reasons, yet there is no legal way to purchase it. It's a null and void prescription.

If you have a marijuana card from the government, a person is permitted to grow up to 4 plants at the state level. However, if people grow marijuana at home and have children in the house, it's classified as 'child endangerment/abuse.'

While it's permitted at the state level, it is not at the federal level.

I feel badly for people who need it, since it does aid people with all kinds of ailments, including vomiting, trigeminal neuralgia, migraines etc.

Crazy laws.

Thank you for the story Tina, well written too.
~ Swan

-->

Brinna

at 11:24 on April 26th, 2009

It continues to amuse me that scientists are so busy trying to duplicate the wondrous medicinal qualities of cannabis, but they are hell-bent on eliminating the special feel-good side effect (as if that was truly something bad).

Could that be because they want to make sure we all have to pay through the nose for pharmaceuticals that supply the high, artificially (or what is prozac, zoloft, etc. all about)?

Brinna

at 17:31 on April 27th, 2009

Wow, Roy, what a great story. First the Eurynome (life power) separates the sky (space) from the stream of consciousness (water), with the concomitant development of thought (air) which lustily (fire) coils around the Goddess seven time (chakras) and presumably out of that, comes everything else (life, the universe, and the restaurant at the end of it).

I like the way you think.