The “munchies” are well known to cause consumers to crave high-calorie, tasty foods. A new study, published in Current Biology, has revealed that cannabinoids are also able to give worms (especially nematodes, C. elegans).
Shawn Lockery, co-author of the study and release said that cannabinoids made nematodes more hungry for foods they liked. The effects of cannabinoids on nematodes are similar to the effects marijuana has on humans’ appetites.
Lockery said that the lineage that led to mammal evolved more than 500,000,000 years ago. He called it “truly amazing” that the effects of cannabinoids on appetite were preserved over such a long evolutionary period.
Oregon legalized cannabis in 2015, which was the original inspiration for this study. Lockery explained that their lab had been examining the food preferences of nematodes, as part of research into neuronal bases for economic decisions, when they chose to examine whether cannabinoids could alter these preferences.
Researchers note that nematodes look more human-like at the molecular scale than other species. This raises the question of whether the cannabinoids’ feeding effect would be the same across species.
Researchers explain that cannabinoid-binding receptors are found in brain tissue, the nervous system, and many other body parts. The receptors are activated by endocannabinoids. These molecules exist in our bodies. The system of endocannabinoids plays a vital role in many bodily functions like learning, memory and reproduction.
The researchers found that anandamide is an endocannabinoid which causes worms to eat more food. This effect was dependent on whether the cannabinoid-receptors were present.
Researchers carried out further studies in which they genetically replaced the cannabinoid-receptor of the nematode with that of the human, and found animals responding normally to cannabinoids. This discovery, researchers said, highlighted the similarity of cannabinoid actions in humans and nematodes. They added that anandamide’s effects depended on neurons involved in the detection of food.
In conclusion, the study found that “administration of THC and endocannabinoids in mammals induces hedonic eating,” citing specifically anandamide as a substance which altered food intake, and also “differently alters appetitive behaviors.”
Lockery explained that cannabinoids “dramatically alter” the sensitivity level of one of the main food detecting neurons of nematodes. He said that the cannabinoids made the worm more sensitive to food smells, and less sensitive for other odors.
Lockery explained that “this effect helps to explain the changes in worms’ consumption of food and is similar to how THC can make tasty food taste even better in humans.”
Lockery explained that these findings could have practical and meaningful applications.
He said that cannabinoid signals are present in most tissues of our bodies. It could therefore be involved in the treatment and cause of many diseases. C. elegans is a functional cannabinoid gene. The food choice experiments in C. elegans set the stage for rapid, inexpensive drug screening that targets a variety of proteins implicated in cannabinoid metabolism and signaling. This has profound implications for health.”
This issue still has a few unanswered questions, including how cannabinoids affect the sensitivity and olfactory neurones of nematodes, who do not have cannabinoid-receptors. In the future, researchers were interested in studying how psychedelics would interact with nematodes.
The article A study shows that even worms can get the munchies after smoking cannabis first appeared on High Times.
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