Exploring cannabis use among the Aka foragers, a "pygmy" people of the Congo basin, US researchers have found that the more the hunter-gatherers smoke cannabis, the less they are infected by intestinal worms.
"While the Aka deliberately consume a tea of a local plant, motunga, to fight parasitic infections, they do not think of cannabis or tobacco as medicine," said Ed Hagen, anthropologist from Washington State University.
Therapeutic Role of Medical Cannabis to be Explored
Cannabis is a dried preparation of the cannabis plant used as a psychotropic drug, mainly in cigarettes.
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The findings suggest that they may unconsciously be, in effect, smoking medical marijuana.
"In the same way, we have a taste for salt, we might have a taste for psychoactive plant toxins, because these things kill parasites," Hagen added.
![New Cannabis Users in Spain Outnumber New Tobacco Users]( "New Cannabis Users in Spain Outnumber New Tobacco Users")
The number of people in Spain who said they started using cannabis in 2013 outnumbered those who said they took up smoking cigarettes.
Hagen surveyed almost all of the nearly 400 adult Aka along the Lobaye River in the Central African Republic and found roughly 70 percent of the men and six percent of the women used cannabis.
Stool samples collected from the men to gauge their worm burden found some 95 percent of them were infected with helminths. But those who consumed cannabis had a significantly lower rate of infection.
Researchers are unsure when the Aka might have first smoked cannabis or when it arrived on the continent.
It may have come with traders from the Indian subcontinent around the first century AD, but Hagen and his colleagues said it might not have been smoked until European colonization in the 17th century.
The study appeared in the American Journal of Human Biology.
Source: IANS
New Cannabis Users in Spain Outnumber New Tobacco Users
The number of people in Spain who said they started using cannabis in 2013 outnumbered those who said they took up smoking cigarettes.
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Hagen surveyed almost all of the nearly 400 adult Aka along the Lobaye River in the Central African Republic and found roughly 70 percent of the men and six percent of the women used cannabis.
Stool samples collected from the men to gauge their worm burden found some 95 percent of them were infected with helminths. But those who consumed cannabis had a significantly lower rate of infection.
Researchers are unsure when the Aka might have first smoked cannabis or when it arrived on the continent.
It may have come with traders from the Indian subcontinent around the first century AD, but Hagen and his colleagues said it might not have been smoked until European colonization in the 17th century.
The study appeared in the American Journal of Human Biology.
Source: IANS
New Uruguay Government in 'No Rush' to Sell Cannabis at Pharmacies
The newly sworn-in Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez's government is in no hurry to implement his predecessor's controversial world-first law allowing marijuana sales at pharmacies.
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Cognitive Behavioral Training can Help Prevent Cannabis Use Among TeenagersPeople who are sensitive to anxiety or negative thinking, or who are impulsive or sensation-seeking are known to be at greater risk of substance abuse. | Advertisement
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