<\/span><\/h2>\nThe munchies are a side effect of consuming cannabis, and often present themselves as an increase in appetite and an intense craving for junk food<\/strong>. After quite a thorough study, the students at Yale analyzed and investigated how cannabinoids, mainly THC, affect the part of the brain that controls hunger. As well as affecting that specific part of the brain, THC also increases the senses, specifically speaking smell and taste. So, how does THC manage to cause such hunger?<\/p>\n<\/span>Brain trickery<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nEvery person has a set of neurons in their brain called pro-opiomelanocortins (POMC)<\/strong> which are in charge of telling you when you\u2019ve eaten enough to be full, and they\u2019re also closely related to sexual stimulation. Without cannabinoids in your system, these neurons work perfectly fine, but once our cannabinoid receptors (CB1) have been stimulated, POMC neurons are altered.<\/p>\nScientists at Yale gave cannabinoids to a series of mice and found that their POMC neurons were actually stimulated, although instead acting as they usually would, they did a 180 \u2013 instead of telling the rats to stop eating, the POMC neurons were telling them that they were still hungry<\/strong>. This is what happens in your brain when you consume cannabis, and it\u2019s believed that the cannabinoid that stimulates this process the most is THC.<\/p>\n<\/span>Heightened senses<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nAs well as increasing and altering POMC activity, it turns out the our CB1 receptors<\/strong> also interact with neurons in charge of our sense of smell, which increases quite a lot when we consume cannabis. It had already been proven that an increase in sense of smell can also increase appetite <\/strong>and make food taste much better. This means that you\u2019ll definitely be more likely to feel like chowing down after smoking a bowl.<\/p>\nAs you\u2019ve probably gathered at this stage, our CB1 receptors interact with a whole host of neurons<\/strong> in our brain, and they are part of our brain\u2019s very own endo-cannabinoid system. This system interacts with others such as hunger, memory, mood, metabolism and an incredibly long list of other process<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAnother sense that\u2019s affected by cannabinoids is our sense of taste<\/strong>, which is also involved in CB1 receptor stimulation. When under the effects of cannabinoids, our sense of taste is incredibly increased, making every flavor much more intense. Cannabinoids also increase the amount of dopamine<\/strong> in our brains, and so does eating something that tastes good. This is why consuming cannabis before eating delicious food can cause quite a spike in dopamine levels, increasing happiness however temporarily.<\/p>\n<\/span>Munchies: other effects<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nObviously, eating too much can give you a tummy ache, especially if you\u2019re eating junk food. If you\u2019re a regular cannabis consumer you might be worried about gaining weight \u2013 you definitely enjoy food more after consuming cannabis, although you need to have a varied diet and do some exercise now and then to make up for the difference. A great alternative to sweets and junk food is fruit; it has a plenty of natural sugar<\/strong> and tastes delicious when stoned.<\/p>\nRecent studies have shown that regular cannabis consumers actually tend to have less body fat<\/strong> than those that don\u2019t consume marihuana \u2013 it is believed that some cannabinoids are capable of regulating insulin and weight loss, although much more investigation is needed as this is just a theory for now.<\/p>\nAnother interesting study done in February of this year (2019) courtesy of Michele Baggio at the University of Connecticut states that, due to cannabis legalization in the States, junk food sales and have increased quite a bit<\/strong>. She compiled information from stores over a 10 year period, and proved that the legalization of cannabis increased the amount of profit obtained from junk food and fast food sales considerably.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What are the munchies? We\u2019ve all gotten incredibly hungry after consuming cannabis, and these cravings are usually for fast food, sweet food, pizza\u2026 essentially, food that isn\u2019t that good for us. Some people are more likely to feel the \u201cmunchies\u201d than others, although any regular cannabis consumers have definitely experienced it more than once. The\u2026 Continue reading<\/span ><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[256],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-marijuana-news"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":1,"sum_votes":5},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87248"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119220,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87248\/revisions\/119220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbthegreenbrand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"What](\"https:\/\/www.growbarato.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/munchies.jpg\" "\\"What")
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