A #stablethread on what I've been learning about cannabis and how it affects the human body.

Did you know that they found a whole new system in the body by figuring out what cells in the body have an affinity (vibe) for cannabis?

It's called the endocannabinoid system and it is one of the oldest systems in the body. It goes way back. I will be speaking a lot more about this system on this thread, but I have to say this one fact I just found before going to sleep.

There are two types of endocannabinoid cells (CB1 and CB2) in the body.

I've always wondered whether these cells exist inside human fascia. It turns out they do. This puts how effective cannabis is at unwinding fascial adhesions into perspective:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933831/#:~:text=Both%20cannabinoid%20receptors%20are%20expressed,are%20concentrated%20into%20the%20fibroblasts.

Let's start with the basics of the Endocannabinoid System (ECS from here on out).

Like the immune system its a hard system to vizualize because the ECS doesn't have a large organ that is associated directly with it. The cells with CB1 and CB2 receptors are everywhere!

For more on exactly what a receptor is and why it matters, check out this thread: https://twitter.com/StewartalsopIII/status/1326174460618092547?s=20

Before going further into the Endocannabinoid system, let's talk about what a system is so we can understand what we are talking about.

Most systems we talk about are identified with primary organs, like the cardiac system (heart) or the digestive system (stomach).

But those obvious systems aren't the whole story. Consider the immune system (linked below). There is bone marrow, but most of the function of the immune system comes from its many types of cells that are placed all over the body. https://twitter.com/StewartalsopIII/status/1322150762802274309

It's similar with the Endocannabinoid system. The system is made up of cells that have a particular receptor on them (CB1 and CB2), although these cells also have other types of receptors that respond to different systems. The system also includes what are called endocannibinoids

These endocannabinoids are storage and signaling molecules that are created inside the human body.

These little buggers are what cannabis mimics whenever you smoke or eat it.

The two naturally occurring cannabinoids in the body are anandamide and 2-AG

A quick aside:

Anandamide is based on the Sanskrit term Ananda which means unconditioned bliss. Ananda is one of my favorite Sanskrit terms. I'll tell you why. Nanda is Sanskrit for conditioned joy or happiness. This is the type of happiness you experience with buying a new car.

This type of happiness ends, like with everything else.

Yet Sanskrit speakers thought that it was necessary to distinguish between two types of joy, one that ends and one that does not. This Anada is not based on conditions and therefore cannot end.

They say that this type of bliss arises when we identify fully with our true nature, Awareness. This is Sat-Chit-Anand or Essence-Consciousness-Bliss. These terms are equivalent meaning they all describe the same thing.

So the person who found Anandamide chose to call it that!

This isn't the only connection between Cannabis and Non-Dual Indian Philosophy.

If you have ever been to India you know that a lot of the Aghoris, the ascetic wanderers also use Cannabis as a religious sacrament that helps them deepen meditation.

Most people consider Cannabis to be one of the most inconsequential plant medicines or drugs out there.

It is not.

In Chinese medicine, cannabis is considered to be a poison, although a poison with medicinal benefit. This system (ECS) is so deep into our evolutionary past.

When you take cannabis you are injesting a chemical that mimics Anandamide. One woman, who had a rare genetic mutation that made her produce a lot more Anandamide than normal, was immune to anxiety, incapable of experiencing fear, and could not experience pain.

As we descend further and further into the rabbit hole of cannabis (it is one of the most fascinating ones I've descended into), let us not forget that legal cannabis is +$20 billion industry and we now have activist researches like anywhere where science and marketing meet.

Just because there is a system that is in the body which can be directly stimulated by a plant that exists in nature does not mean that all cannabis use is healthy, it is not!

The most worrying issue is schizophrenia and young people ingesting high THC content weed.

I was one of those kids!

I started smoking before we really knew what THC and CBD are. Most people don't know that the concentration of THC has grown exponentially since the early 90s usually at the cost of CBD. Let me explain those terms further.

There are 86 different active ingredients that have been identified in nature in cannabis. The most important are THC and CBD although I might go into some of the other ones in the future.

THC is highly prized by stoners and thus growers have grown their plants to have more.

Before this selective breeding took place, THC and CBD were likely in a similar ratio to each other. I can't find any info on what was the original ratio but have heard that this was the case (try fact-checking yourself).

CBD is an interesting compound. Lets go into it.

When you smoke or eat cannabis, THC is the stuff that gets you high (psychoactive), but CBD does not.

CBD is found in hemp, THC is only present in very small quantities.

When both CBD and THC are present it changes the psychoactive potential of THC (changes the high).

This is called the entourage effect.

Interesting side note, the pharmaceutical industry has been hard at work trying to isolate and synthesize these compounds, but on their own, they miss this entourage effect.

CBD can help to minimize the negative effects of THC including one of the most unwanted side effects:

Anxiety.

My use of cannabis changed significantly towards a medicine when I started to create a baseline of CBD and only add THC in very small quantities.

This has been highly effective for me for the treatment of chronic pain (which for most people is present along with anxiety and depression).

Another interesting use of CBD is to stop seizures. The doses of CBD are very high, in the hundreds of Milligrams.

I'm trying to find out more about the endocannabinoid system and its relationship to breathing and breathing exercises. There is very little known about this apparently, but I'm so curious.

The endocannabinoid system can be stimulated by various activities besides cannabis.

There seems to be a link between running, specifically the runner's high, and stimulation of the endocannabinoid system. This was previously thought to be the endogenous opiate system (natural pain killers in the body), buts more likely that the ECS plays the major role.

I've long ago lost the source for it, but I believe chocolate also stimulates the EndoCannabinoid System.

In my experience, massage and breathing exercises also produce similar effects as cannabis so my guess is that there is a connection between breathing and the ECS.

This video and these notes have a lot of signal if you are curious about the endocannabinoid system.

The biggest thing I learned was that dancing and singing boh naturally increase endocannabinoids in the body without the use of cannabis. https://twitter.com/kunaaaaaal/status/1332013808647213057?s=20

If you watch this video and you are concerned about the health effects of your usage of cannabis, remember that if you create a baseline of CBD it can help to mitigate the downsides of THC. Also taking a 30-day break from THC causes the endocannabinoid system to reset completely.

The interesting thing about the endocannibinoid system and cannabis is that it is responsible for key mechanisms in our salience network, what we find relevant in our current environment. This may partly explain the effect that cannabis can have on the onset of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a intense aberration in this network according to some theories. Auditory schizophrenia means people hear voices that other people can't. When you ingest cannabis you are playing with this salience network. In my experience this is why dose is so important

Dosage can be small for small salience problems for example needing to find a new answer to an engineering problem (I know very well that both engineers and founders in silicon valley are influenced by cannabis).

Less often big salience problems can be approached with big dose.

Frequency is also an important variable.

Most people get this wrong usually when they are young but very much also present in older people (often adult men with unintegrated peter pan fantasies).

Better to use with much less frequency if one is trying to learn from it.

But always remember that you are playing with a dragon that can make you see, feel or hear things in ways that others can't or wont.

Is the dragon in control of you or are you in control of the dragon?

Remember that in Chinese medicine, its considered a poison depending on dose

For me, I used to use it recreationally when I was younger but switched to pain management over the past few years.

It has been near miraculous in its ability to integrate chronic pain and reframe what is happening in ways that opioids just cover up.