Pubdate: Thu, 10 Mar 2011
Source: Gateway, The (U of Alberta, CN AB Edu)
Copyright: 2011 Gateway Student Journalism Society
Contact:  http://www.thegatewayonline.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3149
Author: Andrew Jeffrey
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

APPETITES OF CANCER PATIENTS CAN BE BOOSTED BY SYNTHETIC THC: STUDY

A University of Alberta professor is using the age-old marijuana 
munchies trick to get cancer patients to build up their appetites.

Wendy Wismer, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, 
and Nutritional Science, was the lead researcher in a group that 
studied the effects of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main 
psychoactive found in marijuana plants. The group used a 
pharmaceutical known as marinol, the synthetic form of THC, on 
patients with advanced forms of cancer. As the appetites of these 
patients improved and they indicated that their food also tasted 
better, results corresponded with the known belief about the 
marijuana munchies.

"I expected food to taste and smell better and I didn't know if it 
would improve appetite as a result. Just because this group of 
patients, they really suffer from this lack of appetite, and they 
have to really exert a lot of conscious thought about eating -- it's 
a lot of willpower," Wismer said. "So the fact that appetite was 
stimulated with the THC is certainly a benefit, but I didn't know 
that that was how it was going to play out."

Throughout the study, participants regularly filled out 
questionnaires about their perceptions of taste and appetite levels. 
They recorded what they ate at the beginning and the end of the study 
and the results were very positive, as more than half of the patients 
who took the THC recorded that their appetites improved.

"They didn't actually increase their caloric consumption relative to 
those on a placebo. So they certainly felt like eating more, although 
they weren't able to take in more calories," Wismer said. "Just the 
fact that they had an appetite and felt like eating more, I think, 
would increase the enjoyment of the food consumption experience."

Lack of appetite has been a major problem for cancer patients in the 
past. After patients are released from therapy, they experience 
enhanced metabolism and require a lot of calories, but they don't 
have any appetite. This causes many of these patients to die of 
weight loss, rather than their actual disease.

"It's just terrible. They have this great need for calories and they 
just don't feel like eating. And so when you interview them, they 
talk about having to exert what we call conscious control. You know: 
'Today I will eat because I need to survive,' " Wismer explains. "And 
as their appetite decreases, then they adjust their expectations 
about the amount that they can eat, so they try and be satisfied with 
the consumption of smaller and smaller amounts of food."

In fact, the problem that Wismer described actually held back the 
beginning of this study, as some patients were hesitant to take part.

"There were a lot of people who didn't want to participate because 
there was a chance that they would be assigned the placebo. And if 
people are going to spend time on a trial they really want the drug. 
Whether it's an attempt to cure cancer or improve appetite, they 
would really rather be on the drug," Wismer said.

Wismer called the research a "proof of principle," but noted that 
there are more studies to be done before these findings can be 
applied in real-life.

"I think the next step would be to have a trial to see that if longer 
use of THC would really be a benefit and perhaps increase caloric 
intake. People said that they felt hungrier and they wanted to eat 
more and that foods tasted better and they also reported greater 
relaxation and quality of sleep," Wismer explained. "I think that 
there are a lot of things there that could potentially lead to an 
increase in calories, but a study would need to be longer than two 
weeks in order to find that out."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom