Stay high, stay thin: Marijuana consumption helps you stay slim, apparently

Let’s start you off with a fun fact: the rate of obesity and diabetes among weed smokers is dramatically reduced, compared to non-marijuana users.

(Article by IndiaToday.In)

Now, for cannabis’ effect on human body’s metabolism:

Anyone who’s ever tried weed–or knows anyone who’s smoked weed–knows about the concept of ‘munchies’. For the uninitiated, it’s the overwhelming, all surpassing feeling of hunger one experiences after consuming marijuana.

So, if weed smokers eat regularly after smoking, they’d technically be consuming more calories, and thus be fat, right? Well, no. Because marijuana revs up the human body’s metabolism like nothing else.

In a survey conducted on 786 adults in an Inuit community–where more than half the indigenous population reported frequent cannabis use–researchers at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, determined that smoking pot statistically correlated with lower body mass index (BMI), lower fat percentages, and lower fasting insulin levels, reports Attn.com.

Published in the journal, Obesity, earlier this year, the study’s findings hint at exactly what was being speculated about the effects of marijuana on metabolism. According to Attn.com, in 2013, the American Journal of Science released a report that also noted the low prevalence of obesity in cannabis users despite an abundance of empirical and anecdotal evidence linking stoners to high caloric diets.

“The most important finding is that current users of marijuana appeared to have better carbohydrate metabolism than nonusers,” Murray Mittleman, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study, told Time. “Their fasting insulin levels were lower, and they appeared to be less resistant to the insulin produced by their body to maintain a normal blood-sugar level.”

Another study conducted by The University of Miami of nearly 8,500 individuals–between the age of 20 and 59 years–via the National Health and Nutrition Surveys showed that cannabis users on average had lower blood-sugar levels, had less risk of developing type 2 Diabetes, less abdominal fat, reduced risk of heart disease and lower levels of bad cholesterol, reports herb.co.

Now, please note that this is by no means promotes the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, but the correlation between marijuana-use and metabolism, based on all these recent studies, cannot be ignored.

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