Your Skin Produces Marijuana-Like Substance

[DeSwiss]

Your Skin Produces Marijuana-Like Substance

Robin Nixon
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
1 hour, 53 minutes ago


Marijuana-like substances made by the skin are necessary for a healthy complexion, a new study concludes. Back up. We've got pot growing out of our skin? Essentially, yes. The skin has joined the growing club of organs that is known to produce "endocannabinoids" - the body's own reefer. The biggest producer of endogenous pot is the brain. Significantly, the new study pins down long-suspected connections between brain and skin and between stress and zits.

Your thinking skin

In the skin, explained lead researcher Tamás B'ró of the University of Debrecen, Hungary, these compounds help the sebaceous glands protect us from harsh outer elements, such as the drying effects of wind and sun. Cannabinoids are thought to have a similar role in the leaves of the marijuana plant.

Among its protective functions, "endo-pot" stimulates oil production and tells hair follicles to stop producing hair. Whether this explains the plethora of pimples and receding hairlines at Grateful Dead concerts (or those of former band members) has not yet been determined. The research, funded mostly by the Hungarian and German governments, will be detailed in the October 2008 issue of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal.

Why is a psycho-stimulant working outside the brain?

Dermatologists have long suggested that mental states affect the skin, having observed flare-ups of acne, psoriasis, hair loss and other conditions that coincide with stress. Now, they are finding that the skin responds to, and produces, compounds called neuropeptides previously thought to exist exclusively in the brain. This is said to prove the brain-skin connection by nailing down the mechanism. "It is working in both directions," said Andrzej Slominski, a researcher at the University of Tennessee who was not involved with the endocannabinoids study but does research on the skin's neuroendocrine system.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080711/sc_livescience/yourskinproducesmarijuanalikesubstance">MORE

- So all this time, I could've just been sucking my thumb???? Geeze......
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DeSwiss


http://www.atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox

[Mojambo]

1. Burn wards are going to be packed with not so bright stoners. n/t

[Kolesar]

2. "It will make your acne clear up, honey"

"Besides, I need it" :evilgrin:

[KansDem]

3. Yeah, but have you ever tried putting it in a bong? (nt)

[Clark2008]

4. Hey!! I'm a graduate of the University of Tennessee!

Right on, Andrzej.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Da Skin Smokers

Coming soon. Probably today in some far-flung corner of the Homeland.

[newmajority]

6. Well, I could have told them about the "stress zits" thing

I've had some ugly painful zits as a direct result of stress. But I have yet to get stoned from my own skin. How exactly would that work??

[awoke_in_2003]

7. So that is why

Goldmember saves bits of his skin. Damn evil Dutch :)

[charlie]

8. Now Dick Morris will claim he isn't a perv

He was just getting baked.

[TomInTib]

9. I can't wait to tell my girlfriend.

"If you don't want the house to smell like smoke, take a few hits of this, Baby"

[undergroundpanther]

10. reminds me of that drawn together

episode The Other Cousin
Much to her chagrin, Clara's cousin, Bleh, comes to visit the roommates. Meanwhile, Xandir, Toot and Wooldoor take to licking poor Ling-Ling for the high his fur gives them.
http://tv.yahoo.com/drawn-together/show/the-other-cousin/episode/15233

[tridim]

11. This fits my theory that cannabinoid levels vary from person to person.

And that's why some people enjoy smoking supplemental Cannabis, and why some sick people NEED it.

Too bad the feds say Cannabis has "No known medical benefits". Case closed.

[DeSwiss]

12. And now the bad news.....

Further in the article:

What about the endo-pot already on our skin? Can it get us high?
"Theoretically, yes," said B'ró. But, while our skin is constantly pumping out its own type of hash, even if you chewed your arm to bits, he continued, there isn't enough to have a psychological effect.

- Of course this could partly explain Hannibal Lector's fetish.....

[SalmonChantedEvening]

13. Everybody must get skinned. n/t

[carlyhippy]

14. haha

Carly