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Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

bloomberg.com

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#11

Post by peterfirefly »

16bitvoid wrote: post #10
mikhmha wrote: post #5

I really recommend people interested in Schizophrenia to read the book “Hidden Valley Road”. I saw it recommended in a HN comment previously. The book follows an American family who gave birth to 12 children, 6 of whom were later diagnosed with schizophrenia in their teens. It’s interesting because the book gives lots of insight into the historical to modern research on the condition. In the past psychologists though…

I can't speak to its validity, but the way it was explained to me from a neuroscientist a few years ago is that the general hypothesis now is that some people have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and that predisposition sort of lies dormant until triggered. That would explain how both could be true: it could be genetic and triggered by environment/trauma.

There are enough cases of identical twins where one twin gets it and the other doesn't that we are certain it can't just be genetic. We are also certain that genes matter. We even know roughly which genes and that many of the variants that increase the risk are de novo mutations. We don't know much more than that, though.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#12

Post by mikhmha »

DaveExeter wrote: post #7
bjourne wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Can we say nicotine has nothing to do with mental illness? Because the mentally ill really like their cigs!

Strangely enough the research shows that nicotine has a positive affect on treating schizophrenia symptoms.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#14

Post by michaericalribo »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #4

Study is probably crap. An association between cannabis use and schizophrenia says nothing about which way the arrow of causation flows. It could very well be that cannabis use causes schizophrenia, or it could be that people feeling early signs of schizophrenia are more likely to use cannabis. There is no way to tell from this kind of study. Science is hard.

Science is hard, and that's why science rarely gives black-and-white answers. This study is not the one final word on the matter. But that doesn't mean it's not still useful.

Science is done based on the evidence that is found, and this counts as some evidence. Does it answer every question? Of course not. Does it help improve our understanding of the occurrence of it? Yes.

Correlation is not causation, but where there's smoke, there's often a fire—as these findings continue to be validated (and there have been other studies that find similar links), it becomes more and more relevant to understand why there is such a correlation—to find a causal mechanism, if it exists, or to confirm that it's just spurious correlation.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#16

Post by [deleted] »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #4

Study is probably crap. An association between cannabis use and schizophrenia says nothing about which way the arrow of causation flows. It could very well be that cannabis use causes schizophrenia, or it could be that people feeling early signs of schizophrenia are more likely to use cannabis. There is no way to tell from this kind of study. Science is hard.

[deleted]

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#17

Post by rdruxn »

yieldcrv wrote: post #3

I like the idea of capping THC potency (delta-9), what we have now isn't what we the general public aimed to legalize this is just competition keeping up with consumer demand the consequences should fall on the vendors and growers on a licensing perspective, just like alcohol or food vending

I would counter that by pointing out that if your aim is to achieve a certain degree of bioavailability of TCH, you'd have to smoke a larger quantity of a lower-potency product, thus exposing yourself to more of the combustion by-products than necessary.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#18

Post by Analemma_ »

yieldcrv wrote: post #3

I like the idea of capping THC potency (delta-9), what we have now isn't what we the general public aimed to legalize this is just competition keeping up with consumer demand the consequences should fall on the vendors and growers on a licensing perspective, just like alcohol or food vending

I think more important than that is capping the THC/CBD ratio. The first time I took an edible it was pure THC, and even at 15mg it almost gave me a panic attack. For a long time I was baffled that anyone could actually enjoy marijuana, until I tried something with three times as much CBD as THC, and then I got the same enjoyable experience as others seem to. Which makes sense: biologically, THC is the psychosis agonist and CBD is the modulating antipsychotic. I have high confidence that it's the widespread use of THC-without-CBD strains that's driving most of the psychosis risk.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#19

Post by vlovich123 »

michaericalribo wrote: post #14
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #4

Study is probably crap. An association between cannabis use and schizophrenia says nothing about which way the arrow of causation flows. It could very well be that cannabis use causes schizophrenia, or it could be that people feeling early signs of schizophrenia are more likely to use cannabis. There is no way to tell from this kind of study. Science is hard.

Science is hard, and that's why science rarely gives black-and-white answers. This study is not the one final word on the matter. But that doesn't mean it's not still useful. Science is done based on the evidence that is found, and this counts as some evidence. Does it answer every question? Of course not. Does it help improve our understanding of the occurrence of it? Yes. Correlation is not causation, but where the…

> where there's smoke, there's often a fire

Actually, as the replication crises shows, most smoke from papers either isn't real / doesn't point to a fire. So that maybe is a flawed line of reasoning. Correlation (if the research is done carefully to avoid intentional or unintentional p-hacking, and free of fraud) can point to maybe do a follow-up study (or do lots of different kinds of studies to do a good meta analysis that can try to establish causation) but the replication crisis indicates the good studies are swamped by the meaningless ones.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#20

Post by BlueTemplar »

nebulousthree wrote: post #8
bjourne wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Probably around the same time as "a little bit of wine is actually good for you".

You will note that this study is very specific with its claims : 21-30, male, (only?) addicted / high potency.

Which is a surprise to me, as I thought that it was already "known" (while they say it's a first specifically for schizophrenia(!?)), and without these 3 specifics.

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