Caffeine and Cannabis Effects on Vital Neurotransmitters in Rats

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5448447/

by caublestone • 8 years ago

57 70 8 years ago

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I am a total layman, so could somebody explain the significance of this study? Obviously those substances alter the brain chemistry, that is not surprising, I think. How are those changes significant? Is there cause for concern?

snarfy• 8 years ago

Caffeine and cannabis work together.

However, the combination of cannabis and caffeine mostly caused synergetic response in the level of the neurotransmitters; this implies that both substances produced their individual effects and did not cancel out the effects of one another. This is also expected since they bind primarily to various receptors. Thus, the resultant relative hyper increase is the cumulative effect of their individual influences.

zeofig• 8 years ago

Two quite different drugs don't entirely cancel out? An extraordinary finding indeed. We need to do more research.

matwood• 8 years ago

Caffeine and cannabis work together.

I wonder if it is a more extreme version of drinking tea? Tea has a calming chemical (Theanine), and caffeine so you end up with more of a mellow energy instead of the hyper energy from coffee.

EVdotIO• 8 years ago

Colloquially known as a hippie speedball.

erokar• 8 years ago

Is there cause for concern?

There is really nothing surprising about the findings. Also note that the animals' brain tissues were analyzed 24 hours after last administration, so it says little to nothing about permanent effects (which have never been found in other studies, afaik). I really don't get why trivial/unsurprising findings like this raise so high on HN.

golergka• 8 years ago

Software engineers (myself included) love thinking that they so smart that they follow other fields up to the latest research.

(It doesn't mean that we're necessarily wrong though).

pweissbrod• 8 years ago

Is there cause for concern?

Accidentally smoking your coffee and brewing your cannabis will make for a rough day I imagine

TomMarius• 8 years ago

Brewing your cannabis will lead to a disgusting liquid, but nothing else. You'll feel bad but it will have no effects of cannabis because there will be zero THC. THC binds to fat so you have to add butter or oil to the water.

rambossa• 8 years ago

same here... good? bad? surprisingly good? etc.?

lamename3• 8 years ago

No. After a quick look, 1) the main point seems to be toward juveniles 2) this isn't a particularly in-depth study. As you said, substances alter chemistry, no surprise.

To be clear, there's evidence elsewhere that caffeine and cannabis can have a negative impact on the developing brain, but the data here don't really go in depth on that.

kevinSuttle• 8 years ago

These reports really need TL;DRs.

DanBC4• 8 years ago

Caffiene affects the brain.

Cannabis affects the brain.

Using both together affects the brain more than we'd expect.

Probably don't let children[1] use cannabis or caffiene, but certainly protect them from heavy long term use of either.

[1] child is hard to define, but maybe anyone under 21.

tyu1002• 8 years ago

There is none. Rat/mice studies are used as very early steps to point directions for actually significant studies in human populations.

leemailll• 8 years ago

If both can't significantly change neurotransmitters, that would be a splash

zeckalpha• 8 years ago

100 mg/kg

I don’t know about mice, but for a human, that would be a lot of caffeine.

dnate• 8 years ago

yes, that's about half the LD50 for humans. Definitely more than you would consume as a non-addict on a regular day.

taneq3• 8 years ago

A cup of drip coffee is what, 90mg? (Source: https://www.coffeechemistry.com/chemistry/alkaloids/caffeine...) So 100 mg/kg would be 70-90 cups of coffee. I'm wired after 4-6 cups.

scottmf2• 8 years ago

It probably isn’t for mice. They always have a much higher mg/kg value.

100mg/kg is ~4–5mg for a mouse.

naasking• 8 years ago

100mg/kg is ~4–5mg for a mouse.

A small absolute amount, but a very large amount relative to body weight, which is what matters. For a human, that's the equivalent of 70 x 8 oz cups of coffee.

ccozan• 8 years ago

I suspect is µg/kg

scottmf2• 8 years ago

Anyone else in the UK unable to access ncbi.nlm.nih.gov? I couldn’t access it yesterday either.

wjh_• 8 years ago

My subnet is blocked, but I'm going through my VPS...

Apparently the subnet I'm on has been blocked for bulk downloading.

viperscape• 8 years ago

The article mentions "cannabis abuse" a few times, what metric is there to put use into the abuse column?

drjesusphd• 8 years ago

Using when illegal seems to be the common definition.

DanBC4• 8 years ago

Use turns into abuse when the person is aware of harmful effects but continues to use. Or when the person wishes to discontinue use but is unable to.

Some definitions include very high rates of use.

taneq3• 8 years ago

It has to be more than just "is aware of harmful effects but continues to use", otherwise anyone who is aware of the existence of hangovers (or other negative effects) but continues to drink alcohol is "abusing" it.

It would have to be something like "the person using the substance doesn't feel that the positive effects are worth the negative effects but they still cannot stop using it."

dimovich• 8 years ago

Coffee, weed and plenty of water.

nonbel• 8 years ago

What is a vital vs non-vital neurotransmitter? They don't define this in the paper so that term seems totally superfluous.

lamename3• 8 years ago

paper affiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babcock_University

lamename3• 8 years ago

Maybe more informative is https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-nutr-...

Maybe paywalled so I'll emphasize the last sentence of the abstract: "Given the spectrum of conditions studied and the robustness of many of the results, these findings indicate that coffee can be part of a healthful diet."

__x0x__• 8 years ago

Looks like a crap article in a crap journal. In the abstract they refer to cannabis as a stimulant, which seems quite incorrect. Also the results are unsurprising and not very exciting.

DanBC4• 8 years ago

The word "stimulant" refers to this:

The levels of G-6-PDH were increased in the brain tissues of all the treated animals (Fig. (Fig.5).5). Caffeine produced quite more significant effects relative to cannabis and the combination of both increased the level of G-6-PDH greatly.

cptn_brittish2• 8 years ago

Cannabis seems to bridge the gap between all major drug types with it simultaneously acting as a stimulate, depressant and psychedelic with the depressant being the most obvious to a user.

Mo37• 8 years ago

Nothing has ever done me more good than this combination. My biggest success in work at my current company, a big API-first platform for insurance comparison was built from scratch in 2 weeks time, spent locked inside my apartment, coffee machine running 24/7, a 100mg cookie in the morning and a joint every 2 hours. No one knows.

meuk4• 8 years ago

I am convinced that cannabis improves concentration and eliminates feelings of boredom. I always was average at best at football. I smoked cannabis before a match once. It was by far the best match I ever played and I scored thrice.

Of course, this is anecdotal evidence and could be a coincidence, but I am firmly convinced of the effect.

2_listerine_pls• 8 years ago

I am convinced that cannabis improves concentration
I am firmly convinced of the effect

It actually impairs attention and affects short-term memory.

linkmotif2• 8 years ago

It’s a great combination. Kind of easy to get out of hand but also not the worst to scale back, at least for me.

Mo37• 8 years ago

Yeah you have to mind the tolerance, if it gets too high you're going to experience some serious side effects from the grams of caffeine every day, and the guaranteed "withdrawal" when you have to cut down is not very nice either.

The THC isn't the problem. All in all I completely agree. Microdosing LSD is also a great thing to do but does get incredibly exhausting after a while.

Spooky23• 8 years ago

I hope we start studying this more. I was never a regular user, but I tried it a few times and spent a lot of time in smoky rooms.

One of the reasons I didn’t use it was that it really impacted my ability to do things like mental arthmetric. I worked in sales in school and I remember being freaked out as it felt like a part of my brain was powered down.

I can normally do most addition/multiplication/approximate averages faster than I can type. The time I ran into this I couldn’t spit out an answer for sales tax or add a few numbers together! :)

I’m curious as to why the effect on me was so different than what you experience!

millzlane2• 8 years ago

Really depends on the strain you smoked and how much THC vs. CBD it contained.

Mo37• 8 years ago

Definitely depends on yourself and the strain. I will mostly be able to think extremely abstract and with a very high level of creativity and detail, multi-layered even. Meditation has changed the effects considerably, as long as you're lost in the content of thought, interpreting it as new thoughts, the high is just too overpowering. When you're present you can direct your paradigm and steer the direction of thought waaay better. I guess it all comes down to how self aware you are. I've noticed a general trend to calmer, more tranquil highs as 1) I got older, 2) smoked longer, 3) meditated more and 4) with rising tolerance. Also after psychedelics for some weird reason.

frankhorrigan• 8 years ago

For anyone looking to recreate this apparently successful combination: 100mg of THC is enough to reduce most people to a state of fearful catatonia or induce an acute nervous breakdown. Combine that with loads of caffeine and you'll likely feel very bad for a very long time.

Mo37• 8 years ago

For anyone really looking to recreate this and not already consuming THC: I already smoke every day! Obviously! Even a joint every 2 hours would put your lights out after a while. Go slow and use a vaporizer. I already have tolerance.

tyu1002• 8 years ago

Please stop posting these pre-clinical studies on rats and mice! No one should ever be taking anything away from these sorts of studies for human health.

dekhn2• 8 years ago

This paper is useless garbage in terms of telling us anything about humans who consume either or both of these drugs.

iancmceachern• 8 years ago

Mac Lethal made a song about it:

https://youtu.be/DTY3GQPXU7A

Caffeine and Cannabis Effects on Vital Neurotransmitters in Rats

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