Marijuana now proven to alleviate symptoms of psychosis
40Recreational marijuana consumption to relieve stress is a common practice. However, the recent research shows that marijuana may be much more than that – supposedly, it also helps alleviate symptoms of psychosis.
The research from King’s College London shows that even a single dose of CBD can affect people with psychosis symptoms on a significant level, reducing their abnormal brain function.
The researchers published the results of their research in the JAMA Psychiatry scientific journal.
A previous research published by KCL in 2017 found that CBD lowered the psychotic symptoms and improved the patients’ cognitive function. Moreover, there were hardly any side effects at all. Their research, however, did not explain why exactly this is the case.
Fast-forward to 2018, the new research involved 52 volunteers, with 33 of them known to experience psychotic symptoms (however, they had no official diagnosis). The rest 19 of them served as the control group. 16 of the participants received a pill containing a single dose of CBD, while all the others received a placebo.
The researchers used MRI to scan the participants’ brain activity (particularly, the regions previously linked to psychosis) while they were performing a memory-intensive task. They indeed detected abnormal brain activity in psychosis sufferers; however, it was much less pronounced than what is considered the norm. In other words, those who received the CBD pill were showing lowered symptoms of psychosis.
The research team concluded that CBD could, in fact, normalize the brain activity of psychosis sufferers.
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