Monday, April 23, 2012

Searching for the god cannabinoid

Sources will follow... (notice the three dots over there? ;)
My memory is a bit hazy on this and a lot of the info was probably snatched from some verbose seeker at a forum titled with 420 or weed or gettin'high or maybe from a variety of other places were it is common to finds flavor of just wasted my last two seconds make me want to start my own internet kind of look at me I simply exist kind of garbage.  But here is what I took away.

Terpenes and flavanoids are basic building blocks from which a class of molecules known as cannabinoids can be created.  Our body's have two different known classes of cannabinoid receptors that are theorized to serve different functions.  You see, with the exception of a few more recent directed medicinal studies, research in this area has not actually been allowed to present medicinal benefits because there still is no legally excepted use.(edited to reflect new weak medical research)
(after the rant)
Rather than speculate on what exactly these receptors do is beyond the scope of the needs for this topic as I can assure you that there are in fact perceptible effects associated with cannabinoids attaching to these receptors.  What is most illustrative is that there are essential areas within our bodies that do seemingly nothing other than wait for stimulation by stray cannabinoids before releasing their magic to our bodies.

In labs it has been determined that the plant cannabis, commonly referred to as the mari-ju-ana or simply the buds in some more hip circles, can contain over 100 cannabinoids as well as many other flavanoids and terpenes.

Commonly asserted to be the active compound in marijuana is what I will refer to simply as THC.  That granted, how marijuana is ingested will actually determine which compounds are metabolized.  (No more on that later) There are a couple other heavy hitters on the scene right now, most notably CBN and CBD.  These are now recognized to interact with THC but the overall effect of these is still poorly understood.  That is about as far as I neeed with that, now for something more interesting.

Scientists have created an active cannabinoid that is reportedly 500x more psychoactive than THC.  So here is a little thought experiment.  Throw a little Bubba OG in the old upright and remember to dump the water out if there is any.  Destroy what is green and picture the 100s of cannabinoids bursting apart into thousands of flavanoids and terpenes.  Now imaging all the original flavanoids and terpenes.  They are hot!  Maybe they break down further, I don't know chemistry.

That being said, here is the simple idea that I can actually comprehend.  The terpenes and flavanoids might possibly combine into unknown or perhaps just understudied "superwowy" cannabinoids.  You might have guessed it.  God cannabinoids are "superwowy" cannabinoids.  Why might these be these be understudied?  A lot of the 100s of cannabinoids are in concentrations that are low compared to the amount of THC.  THC is known to be psychoactive and therefore has falsely carried all the responsibility for getting those hippies and sickly needy medicated all this time.  It is so grumblingly obvious there is a flaw in this assumption.  Take for instance the lab created cannabinoid that is 500x more psychoactive than THC.  If this existed in a concentration such that there were 500 times more THC, it could be neglected for its sheer lack of quantity and yet serve a comparable level of psychoactivity.

There are a lot of assumptions made here I know, but does anyone know where I can do some, um actual research (cough)?  It interests me that something as natural as to grow naturally (!) would stir up such a resistance.

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