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WSU Study Finds Cannabis May Diminish Stress Response

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A new study from Washington State University (WSU) has found that cannabis may diminish a user’s physiological response to stress.

Researchers found female rats that self-administered daily puffs of cannabis vapor for a month had lower blood levels of a hormone that causes stress when presented with a stressful situation than they did at the beginning of the experiment and compared to a control group. The rats were trained to trigger an infrared sensor that would activate a puff of cannabis vapor anytime they felt the urge. Previous studies have shown cannabis could have an effect on stress response.

After 30 days, only female rats that had access to the cannabis had a significantly muted response to stress. The rats that were given access to cannabis also tended to respond more for the substance and had higher concentrations in their blood after the experiment. Male rats did not experience the same results, but they also self-administered a lot less.  

“We don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing and there’s reason to argue for either of them at this point—a blunted stress response might actually predispose some people to certain mental health conditions is our concern,” said co-author of the study and WSU assistant professor of psychology, Carrie Cuttler. “So yeah, it sounds great on the surface that maybe they’re less prone to stress…but the stress response is an important system that exists for a reason—any alterations in that or perturbations in that system may or may not be a good thing.”

WSU assistant professor and another co-author of the study, Ryan McClain, mentioned there are ethical and legal concerns with testing stress responses on humans, as well as administering cannabis to some of the human participants, so these kinds of studies are limited to animal models.

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