Have you seen the articles that discuss the pioneering research of Professor Gary Wenk out of Ohio State University that says smoking marijuana before the onset of degenerative brain conditions can prevent and slow down dementia and Alzheimer's? He even suggests that people who smoked marijuana regularly in their 20's and 30's and less likely to get dementia or Alzheimer's in their 60s and 70's
Sigh.
I do wish I believed him but his research appears to be based on a single premise: that chronic brain inflammation is the underlying cause of age-related dementia and that cannaboids in marijuana have the ability to halt the brain's inflammatory response.
Problem: dementia and Alzheimer's disease are not one-size-fits all.
The current prevailing medical opinion is that Alzheimer's is caused by a protein called amyloid-beta which forms a plaque in the brain that kills neurons and causes memory loss and cognitive problems Dr. Wenk's research also does not appear to take into account other types of dementia not related solely to inflammation like vascular dementia which can coexist with changes in the brain like Alzheimers. Vascular dementia is caused by mini-strokes that block the blood vessels. Then there's dementia with Lewy bodies where a protein called alpha-synuclein develops in the cortex of the brain. This is the same protein that also is present in Parkinson's. Okay, so we've got Alzheimers, vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia and then there's the trifecta of dementia where all three conditions co-exist and that's known as mixed dementia.
And, according to Dr. Wenk's research, the mutant proteins that cause Alzheimer's appear shortly after birth to which he says, "My research suggests that it is never too early, or too late, in life to begin using very low daily doses, i.e., one puff per day.”
Based on what we know about the vast differences in dementia and its causes, until we know more this statement is, in my non-medical opinion, false hope. The puff only affects the mutant proteins. How will it prevent mini-strokes? How will it prevent the formation of alpha-synuclein?
Maybe some day, science will isolate the offending factors in Alzheimer's, AIDS, Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis, and ALS and be able to use medical marijuana to prevent or retard the effects of these crippling conditions. If so, I'll stock up and even grow my own if I have to because with the extreme dementia my mother has and the Alzheimer's her mother had, I've got a humongous scarlet A on my forehead already and it is not the Nathaniel Hawthorne kind.
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