Study sheds new light on the health benefits of smoking or ingesting marijuana

May 15, 2013 06:35 GMT  ·  By

Individuals who either smoke or ingest marijuana on a fairly regular basis have a better blood sugar control than people who are non-users, a study recently published in The American Journal of Medicine suggests.

The findings of this study are based on data collected while looking into the medical records of 4,657 people who had completed a drug use questionnaire as part of a research carried out by the National Health and Nutrition Survey between 2005 and 2010.

Of these people, 579 admitted to being regular users of said drug and 1,975 said that they did take the drug at some point in the past, but that they no longer used it.

2,103 of the participants to this research said that they had never made use of this drug, be it by ingesting or smoking it.

According to EurekAlert, the people belonging to the first category (i.e. the regular users) had lower fasting insulin and also had less chances of being insulin resistant.

These associations between the drug and said diabetic control-related indices also held in the case of those belonging to the second category of people.

However, the researchers say that the associations were significantly weaker.

The same source informs us that, as far as the specialists who carried out this study could tell, marijuana users also displayed smaller waist circumferences than those who did not use this drug.

Given the fact that a slightly larger waist circumference and diabetes often go hand in hand, the researchers urge that further investigation into how said drug impacts on metabolic processes be carried out.

“Previous epidemiologic studies have found lower prevalence rates of obesity and diabetes mellitus in marijuana users compared to people who have never used marijuana, suggesting a relationship between cannabinoids and peripheral metabolic processes, but ours is the first study to investigate the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance,” lead researcher Murray A. Mittleman commented on the findings of this investigation.