The subject of legalizing marijuana has been quite controversial as of late due to policymakers fighting for it as a medical replacement for prescription pain pills. There has long been a need for change in order to reduce injury and death from a prescription opioid overdose, and now according to researchers, we may have found one. The Department of Veteran Affairs found that in states where medical marijuana was legal, death from opioid overdose was up to 24.8% lower than in states where it was criminalized. It was also said that in states where medicinal marijuana had been legal for longer periods, the difference was even more substantial. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The authors of the study acknowledge that there are many factors in the study that were hard to measure such as race, socio-economic status, health behaviors and more. Dr. Marcus A. Bachhuber, the lead author in the study, states that he would not recommend the wide adoption of medicinal marijuana based on this study, but notes that there may be unexpected benefits to its legalization.
High-Fat Diets Could Reduce the Brain’s Ability to Regulate Food Intake
Thursday, January 26, 2023
When high-fat and high-calorie foods are consumed regularly, our brain’s ability to regulate hunger cues, and calorie intake gets reduced. A new study has shown evidence of how continuously eating a fatty diet seems to disrupt the neurological pathway between the brain and the gut.
The cells in charge of signaling the brain when we’ve had enough food are called astrocytes. According to new research published in The Journal of Physiology, calorie intake is regulated in the short term by astrocytes (large star-shaped cells in the brain that regulate many different functions of neurons in the brain). Astrocytes also control the signaling pathway between the brain and the gut, a path that can get interrupted by high calorie diets.
