Cannabis Does Something To Your Heart That Nobody Expected

A rigorous clinical trial led by researchers at the University of California San Francisco has produced a finding that contradicts what many scientists expected to see: habitual cannabis users experienced approximately 9 percent fewer premature heartbeats, a condition called cardiac ectopy, on days they inhaled cannabis compared to days they abstained. The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, enrolled 108 adults who regularly smoked or vaped cannabis but had no history of diagnosed cardiac arrhythmias. Over 14 days, participants were randomly assigned each day to either inhale cannabis or abstain, while wearing a continuously recording electrocardiographic monitor, an activity tracker, a sleep monitor, and a continuous glucose monitor throughout. Because each participant served as their own control, the researchers could directly compare physiological changes during cannabis-use days and abstinence days within the same individual, a much cleaner comparison than most studies in this area. The reduction in premature heartbeats on cannabis days was statistically significant and consistent across the group.

Senior author Dr. Gregory Marcus, a professor specializing in atrial fibrillation research and associate chief of cardiology for research at UCSF, told Newsweek that healthy regular cannabis users experienced significantly fewer abnormal early heart beats when they used cannabis in the trial, describing the result as counterintuitive and adding to what he called the complex and evolving understanding of how cannabis affects the heart. He was careful and direct about what the finding does not mean: the study alone is not sufficient to change current clinical recommendations or practice, and the researchers specifically cautioned that these results should not influence medical or behavioral decisions around cannabis use. What the finding does do is open new areas of investigation, particularly into whether certain compounds in cannabis might eventually point toward novel therapeutic approaches for suppressing premature heartbeats, which are extremely common and can affect quality of life in people who experience them frequently. Marcus said he hopes the research will motivate future randomized trials designed to answer those questions more definitively. The result adds genuine complexity to a scientific conversation that tends to run in one direction, and that complexity, the researchers argue, is exactly worth paying attention to.

Source:https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-tracked-cannabis-users-hearts-finding-stood-out-12312462