Anyone who has ever smoked or eaten marijuana knows the feeling: that extremely intense munchies and the urge to devour anything edible. For years, scientists have tried to understand how THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, stimulates appetite—but now some have finally figured it out.
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That delicious smell...
Although there are several studies on how cannabis causes hunger and increases appetite, most of them are rather inconclusive. One of the most recent studies was conducted by a team led by neurologist Giovanni Marsicano of the University of Bordeaux in France. They used mice to demonstrate that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) interacts with so-called olfactory lobe receptors in the brain, significantly increasing the ability to smell food and thereby boosting appetite. The scientists claim that a similar process occurs in humans.
During an experiment, they genetically engineered a group of mice to be born without cannabinoid receptors in the olfactory lobe of their brains. When administered marijuana, they noticed that it simply did not have the same effect. Therefore, they conclude that THC and the natural cannabinoids that trigger hunger operate within the same neural circuit, making it possible to smell and taste food with greater sensitivity. In other words, THC stimulates the appetite by tricking the brain into believing the body is hungry.
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POMC
So that’s an interesting theory, but another team of scientists from Australia, Germany, and the United States came to a slightly different conclusion... They also studied mice (imagine how many mice have been stoned!) and found that appetite stimulation is driven by the same neurons normally responsible for producing satiety, known as proopiomelanocortins (POMC). “We observed that in response to the activation of the cannabinoid receptor, POMC neurons were activated, both anorexigenic and orexigenic,” explains Tamas L. Horvath. This means that the neurons had effects on both appetite suppression and appetite stimulation.
“We didn’t expect it. We were conducting control experiments when we discovered this surprising result,” he says. It was always assumed that POMC neurons were responsible for suppressing the feeling of hunger. Therefore, it was thought that the urge to eat occurred when the activity level of this group of nerve cells decreased. Paradoxically, new experiments have shown that these neurons increase their activity when they come into contact with cannabinoids. “We discovered that cells that reduce appetite are activated in a different way when they come into contact with the CB1R cannabinoid receptor,” says the researcher.
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The Evolution of THC
Are you curious about how this mechanism actually developed in these beloved green plants? Well, so are we! It’s believed that the marijuana plant developed THC as a defense mechanism against animals to disorient them. At the same time, the hunger it causes by mimicking the natural endocannabinoid system diverts the animals’ attention to other plants. So if we had to thank anyone for these wonderful highs, it would be our plant-eating animal friends!
