Science Suggests Smoking Pot Raises Risk of Testicular Cancer, Schizophenia and Infertility - and Lo
381 replies, posted
[quote]
(CBS/AP) Teens who smoke marijuana frequently are more likely to experience a long-term drop in their IQ, according to a new study.
That could be a potential pitfall for millions of teens, given recent estimates show about one in 10 teens in grades nine through 12 smoke marijuana at least 20 times per month. The researchers however didn't find the same IQ dip for people who became frequent users of pot after 18, suggesting pot use is especially dangerous for the developing brain.
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"Parents should understand that their adolescents are particularly vulnerable,'" said lead researcher Madeline Meier, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy.
More than 1,000 study participants from New Zealand were tested for IQ at age 13 - likely before any significant marijuana use - and again at age 38. All were born in the town of Dunedin during a year-long span ending in 1973.
In addition to IQ tests, participants were given five interviews between ages 18 and 38, including questions related to their marijuana use. At age 18, 52 participants said they had become dependent on marijuana, meaning that they continued to use it despite its causing significant health, social or legal problems. Ninety-two others reported dependence starting at a later age.
Researchers compared their IQ scores at age 13 to the score at age 38 and found a drop only in those who had started regularly smoking pot by 18. Those deemed marijuana-dependent in three or more surveys had a drop averaging 8 points. If a person had average intelligence and was smarter than 50 percent of the population, dropping 8 points would give them a score only higher than 29 percent of the population, the researchers said.
Among participants who'd been dependent at 18 and in at least one later survey, quitting didn't remove the problem. IQ declines showed up even if they'd largely or entirely quit using pot at age 38, analysis showed.
The researchers got similar overall results for IQ decline when they compared participants who reported having used marijuana at least once a week on average for the past year. The researchers had no data on how much was used on each occasion or how potent it was.
The study was published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was funded with governmental grants from the United States and Britain, and a foundation in Zurich.
The researchers also surveyed people who knew the study participants well at age 38 and found that the more often participants were rated as marijuana-dependent in the surveys over their lifetimes, the more memory and attention problems were noticed by their acquaintances over the previous year.
Dr. Richie Poulton, a study co-author and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, said the message of the research is to stay away from marijuana until adulthood if possible. "For some it's a legal issue, but for me it's a health issue," he said.
Marijuana use is fairly common in American teens, as evidenced in a June government study that showed 23 percent of high school students said they'd recently smoked pot, surpassing cigarettes in popularity.
Young people "don't think it's risky," said Dr. Staci Gruber, director of the cognitive and clinical neuroimaging core at the Harvard-affiliated MacLean Hospital's Brain Imaging Center in Belmont, Mass. Gruber, who didn't participate in the new work, said the idea that marijuana harms the adolescent brain is "something we believe is very likely," and the new finding of IQ declines warrants further investigation.
Experts said the new research is an advance because its methods avoid criticisms of some earlier work, which generally did not measure mental performance before marijuana use began.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse which helped fund the research, said the research was "the cleanest study I've ever read" that looked long-term harm from marijuana use.
Ken Winters, a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota and senior scientist at the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia who wasn't involved in the study, said the new findings aren't definitive, but they underscore the importance of studying how marijuana may harm young people.
"Marijuana is very dangerous drug to the brain, particularly in adolescence, and it's also a carcinogen, so it's not healthy for adults either," Dr. Harris Stratyner, vice president of Caron Treatment Centers' New York Clinical Regional Services, told HealthDay. "It's much more dangerous than we've ever given it credit for."[/quote]
[url]http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57501243-10391704/smoking-marijuana-regularly-as-a-teen-may-lower-iq-scores-as-an-adult/[/url]
[quote]
Here in California, marijuana is now treated as a minimal vice, with legalization inevitable and decriminalization for possession amounting to a tap on the hand. Medical marijuana cards are so easy to obtain, they’re the butts of endless popular jokes.
On the famed Venice Beach boardwalk, booths tout on-the-spot “evaluations” and customers walk out the door with newly minted photo ID cards in under an hour. High schools across the country celebrate April 20th as “420 Day”, a fact I know because my daughter’s high school, San Rafael High, is nationally famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) as the birthplace of the term 420. (Coined, supposedly, because 4:20 pm was the time at which kids would meet after school to light up.)
So, as we move towards viewing pot with the same tolerance with which we view alcohol (in other words, it’s bad for your health if you become addicted, but casual use is harmless), let’s look at the evidence. Is it really relatively harmless for young men — and women — to get high?
Pot Smoking May Double Risk of Testicular Cancer
Today’s headline was pretty bold: Smoking pot leads to double the risk of developing testicular cancer. Testicular cancer is on the rise, and experts have been trying for awhile to figure out why. Now, after comparing groups of young men who smoked and those who didn’t, there’s a possible answer. Those who smoked pot recreationally were twice as likely to develop testicular germ cell tumors, or nonseminomas, the most common kind in men under 35, says a study in Cancer. Nonseminomas are faster growing and harder to treat – a deadly combination – say researchers at the University of Southern California.
This study, though small, is actually the third study to link nonseminomas to pot use; the first two were also published in Cancer. The first word of the connection came out in 2009 from research out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. The pot use researchers studied was described as “once a week or more”, and it’s important to note that many smokers toke up every day. No studies have contradicted the link, experts point out. It’s important to note that the risk of testicular cancer is relatively low, slightly more than 1 percent, so even when the risk is doubled, it’s still extremely small.
Pot Smoking May Lower IQ
Last week’s headline was at least as alarming as this week’s. Researchers followed a group of youngsters from age 13 to age 38, and found that the IQs of regular pot smokers fell up to 8 points during the 25-year period, compared with the IQs of those who didn’t smoke pot, which stayed the same. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found an increase in memory and attention problems among those deemed marijuana-dependent.
Pot Smoking May Trigger Schizophrenia
There should have been headlines, “Marijuana May Make You Psychotic” at least a couple times over the past few years, but somehow the studies documenting this issue haven’t gotten as much attention as you might expect. Maybe it’s because this link is much harder to prove, which it is. That’s because the association could work backward: Those who smoke pot could be self-medicating for symptoms of schizophrenia that hasn’t become full-blown yet.
However, there have been several studies, and they’ve controlled for a backwards causation pretty well. In a German study that followed a group of teenagers for ten years, those who smoked pot at least 5 times were more than twice as likely to develop schizophrenia. The biggest and probably best known study followed 45,000 young men in Sweden starting when they enlisted in the military. As I reported in a previous article, synthetic marijuana, also known as “Spice”, has also been linked to psychosis as well as to paranoia and violence.
Fifteen years later, those who smoked pot at least once were more than twice as likely to develop schizophrenia. A third study followed young men whose family genetic history predisposed them to develop schizophrenia. In these kids, who are considered to have a one in ten chance of developing schizophrenia, pot use doubled that risk to one in five.
Pot Smoking Lowers Fertility and Causes Genetic Damage
The health risks of marijuana for women are much less well known, as of yet. But what is known is that pot smoking decreases fertility for both men and women, and appears to have the potential for genetic damage to future children. Though a complex mechanism, cannabinoids — the chemicals in cannabis — affect the production of sperm and the ability of the sperm and egg to join together. The research on pot and testicular cancer has implicated the endocannabinoid system, which is the cellular network that reacts to cannabis, the active ingredient in pot. The endocannabinoid system also plays a central role in sperm production.
There’s also been considerable research on the issue of marijuana use causing genetic mutations that are then passed on to children. Of course most folks under 20 aren’t looking ahead to to the health of their future offspring — or to the possibility of not being able to have said offspring — so this health issue is less influential with teens and young adults. But it’s something everyone should be paying more attention to.
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[url]http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2012/09/10/science-shows-smoking-pot-raises-risk-of-testicular-cancer-schizophenia-and/[/url]
Uhh, no shit?
I'm developing psychosis. I've smoked weed. Coincidence? According to this, probably not.
Inbefore all the potheads swarms over this thread saying "BLAZE IT FAGGOT 420" and say that Weed does nothing bad.
Don't smoke drugs kids, not even Spider-Man got away with it!
[video=youtube;khK288b-o-c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khK288b-o-c[/video]
I don't doubt it
So people who use drugs damage their brain over time, that's kinda obvious.
That and I still don't get why IQ is the scale they use.
Oh boy here we go
Woah, smoking drugs is bad for you? Stop the fucking presses.
[QUOTE=Heigou;37684091]Inbefore all the potheads swarms over this thread saying "BLAZE IT FAGGOT 420" and say that Weed does nothing bad.[/QUOTE]
even before people starting researching it it was always obvious that smoke + lungs = broken lungs
[editline]16th September 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Strongbad;37684154]Woah, smoking drugs is bad for you? Who'd have thunk it? [/QUOTE]
most of facepunch wouldn't have
Déjà vu.
"its harmless"
i thought the schizo thing was already known?
someone correct me if i'm wrong
eh, you win some you lose some
Alcohol, pot, every other kind of drug and even caffeine is bad for people under 18 because their brains are still being developed. Any chemical imbalance will throw the process off so yeah its not just pot.
I thought using drugs before being of age is bad for you was common knowledge?
I don't understand how some studies show that it kills cancerous cells, yet there are other studies that suggest it may cause testicular cancer.
[editline]16th September 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Eluveitie;37684284]I thought using drugs before being of age is bad for you was common knowledge?[/QUOTE]
That's definitely not common knowledge. If it were, do you think things would be the way they are right now with all these 12 year olds smoking weed? (an exaggeration -some of you are too dumb to realize this-)
here comes the swarm of people from facepunch's drugs discussion sub-forum
This will become a legalization debate in 3... 2... 1...
A lot of this has been known for a while, potfags usually dismiss it as bias. I'm glad its got some more backing now, I still smoke weed occasionally though but stoner culture fucks me off to no end.
[QUOTE=Tophat;37684286]I don't understand how some studies show that it kills cancerous cells, yet there are other studies that suggest it may cause testicular cancer.[/QUOTE]
I believe that it's the THC itself that may kill or impede the cancer cells.
Smoke is smoke and will do what smoke does to lung tissue.
Before anyone yells at me yes there are plenty of other ways to use marijuana that do not involve inhaling smoke.
[QUOTE=Tophat;37684286]That's definitely not common knowledge. If it were, do you think things would be the way they are right now with all these 12 year olds smoking weed?[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure it [i]is[/i] common knowledge, those are just dumb 12 year olds.
-snip
[quote][B]Teens [/B]who smoke marijuana [B]frequently[/B][/quote]
No shit
Sensationalist title
edit;
How is this dumb, it's in the article.
It should definitely stay illegal then!
who cares the about the negative effects of weed when it can cure cancer and revolutionize our economy by bringing in booming paper and rope-making business
[QUOTE=Bumrang;37684349]I'm pretty sure it [i]is[/i] common knowledge, those are just dumb 12 year olds.[/QUOTE]
I was exaggerating in case you couldn't tell. I know people 20+ who didn't know that. It is not common knowledge, or at least definitely not where I live (Ontario, Canada).
[QUOTE=Heigou;37684091]Inbefore all the potheads swarms over this thread saying "BLAZE IT FAGGOT 420" and say that Weed does nothing bad.[/QUOTE]blaze it faggot 420 [sp]smoke[/sp]
wow what
a couple weeks ago this thread would've been swarming with people saying "fuckin study is flawed didn't use enough test subjects/ everyone knows it's bad if you smoke it/ there isn't a definite time when the brain stops developing"
[QUOTE=Tophat;37684436]I was exaggerating in case you couldn't tell. I know people 20+ who didn't know that. It is not common knowledge, or at least definitely not where I live (Ontario, Canada).[/QUOTE]
I don't think they bother to look into it. Not that in the end we would care about the negative effects.
That and I'm pretty sure my 4 energy drinks a day is much much worse for my health.
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