Cannabis: a genuine enquiry

[3am]

First post, hello all.

I've been reading the forum a lot recently trying to discover what potions and pills I can take for my hair loss. I'm 41 (yes, I know I'm arriving somewhat late to the party!), started receding in my late 20s (27/28) and would guess I'm somewhere between a NS3/4 at the moment.

Now skipping through some old photos I noticed that I've not lost a huge amount of hair in the last 8/9 years. My hairline receded fairly quickly for 4/5 years, but in a 2001 photo my hairline isn't an awful lot different from what it is now .. although it's far less dense.

So this led me to think why this might be - and it occured to me that around 9/10 years ago I began to smoke cannabis on a fairly regular basis. Still do, pretty much every day in the evening (when the day's work is done). I've conducted a little bit of research which has left me none the wiser as there are so many diametrically-opposed views with regards to this.

So I was wondering whether anyone else had a similar tale to tell? Could it really be that smoking on a regular basis has actually helped me to keep hair that I'd have otherwise lost?

Hope this is okay to post on here. If not, apologies and I look forward to having my knuckles rapped.

ps. I realise that due to my own stupidity my lungs are probably fucked, before anyone feels the need to point out that it's no good having hair if you're six foot under...

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Cannabis actually inhibits lung cancer, so I wouldn't worry too much about your lungs if I were you.

As for why you think cannabis may have had a positive effect on your hair. Pot contains a number of different chemicals, only a few are psychoactive. One major component of it's essential oils is a compound called beta-carophyllene that is an anti-inflammatory. If your hair loss is a result of your immune system and not androgenic alopecia (which is the case for a lot more people than realize it), then any anti-inflammatory you can get your hands on will have a positive effect on your hair.

Keep on toking!

 

[3am]

Interesting post Brains and not something I'd considered. Thanks.

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Additionally, while cigarette smoking is certainly damaging to your life expectancy. It actually suppresses the immune system making it a fantastic treatment for many kinds of hair loss... you know, besides the whole cancer side effect (part of the immune suppression technically).

 

[karlg]

Ive lost a shitload of hair since the beginning of the year, and i quit smoking since xmas, would picking up that habit help regrow any hair if part of my loss is due to inflamation?

Or would it be easier to top up with other anti-inflamatory drugs / topicals?

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

I remember seeing on occasion people posting up on this board about how they always see so many heavy smokers with perfect heads of hair. People would normally (probably myself included) dismiss this observation as being biased and completely unscientific.

Turns out however cigarette smoking has been shown in a number of studies (like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383232/) to protect against the development of autoimmune conditions.

Considering the heavy density of inflammatory cells on the scalp relative to the rest of the body, the seeming connection between diet and hair loss as well as the genes related to hair loss that have nothing to do with the scalp and instead are related to the liver/pancreas/immune system it should be no surprise why we see frequent posts indirectly related to the immune system and hair loss.

Alcohol use increases baldness? (alcohol increases inflammation)
Cigarettes and keeping your hair? (nicotine suppresses the immune system)
Pot and a healthy head of hair? (pot reduces inflammation)
Masturbation and hair loss? (releases prostaglandin an inflammatory hormone)
Diet and hair loss? (poor diets lead to increased inflammatory markers, while diets high in antioxidants are anti-inflammatory)
Cortisol and hair loss? (cortisol naturally increased in response to naturally high inflammation)
Apple Cider Vinegar on scalp? (reduces inflammation)
Yogurt topicals? (reduces inflammation)
DHT and hair loss? (you guessed it, increases immune system inflammation)

Technically no, while smoking might have prevented the problem from occurring in the first place, since you are possibly experiencing an immune system problem already the addition of them back into the mix could have bad consequences. In addition to the suppression of the immune system, cigarettes also cause a massive increase in reactive oxygen species along with a decrease in nutrients in the blood and poorer circulation. If you're already having an immune system problem, the addition of these problems could further exacerbate your issues. You would have to eat the healthiest diet in the world and exercise constantly to negate these negative impacts from cigarettes.

As you mention, there are plenty of other anti-inflammatory compounds out there that you can take, most of which do not carry the same negative effects as cigarettes and many of which can be more specific to your scalp (such as cortisol injections).

I answered rather late to a post of your's in the general forums which I'm not sure if you frequent anymore so I'll just repost it here:

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Most of the functioning of your major organs are connected in one way or another to your gut. A strange pain there is NOT normal and should be urgently treated. As far as the pigmentation process goes, immune system related attacks on the scalp can kill off (most often temporarily) the pigmentation cells separately from the follicle cells. What sort of a problems do your relatives have?

 

[karlg]

thanks for the reply, i did see that the other day, ive just been so busy with work etc...

thats a very interesting post, so, i think ive got this right, but correct me if im wrong.

auto-immune conditions cause inflamation in the scalp which causes the immune system to attack the inflamed area, resulting in death of the follicle?

so would an anti-inflamatory diet , lifestyle, and regime benefit those who may have this as the cause of their loss?

you also mention that those with a high anti-oxident diet have less inflamation. how do the anti-oxidents cause the anti-inflamatory effect?

one other thing ive noticed, is about a month n a half ago i scuffed my elbow, broke the skin etc... now even though the wound has 'healed' there is still a red / darkish mark around the area i damaged. this would have normally gone away by now, as ive always have good healing response to cuts and bruises etc... but its not gotten any better then this.

the other thing ive noticed was on thursday last week, one of the cats scratched my finger, although it never broke the skin or bled, i still have this dark red line where the scratch was. this would most definately have gone by saturday normally but it's still there. pretty vivid too. would this lack of wound healing be an auto-immune condition?

the other thing i dont fully understand is, if smoking (or nicotiene) causes a suppression of the immune system, surely this would still be a good thing, as if the immune system were to be working at its full potential, then the auto-immune condition would be more intense?

so does an auto-immune condition attack hair, purely on the inflamation or can it just destroy cells with or whout inflamation being presant?

and does wearing a hat all the time cause inflamation of the scalp?

if im going to goto my docter to get checked out for auto-immune conditions, what sort of evidence do i need to present him? ive already mentioned the wierd pigmentation tng wit my ha and he just shunned it off as if it were nothing, the pills he has given me have done jack sh*t for the pain in my gut, although its releived my near constant heartburn substantially. however this is something ive had for years, well before any hairloss (used to have a stash of rennies where ever i spent any decent ammount of time )

everyone ive seen doesnt seem to be that clued up about hairlo, and are just like, accept it, there is *nothing* you can do about it (which everyone here knows that there is plenty you can do). and even when i talk about my hairloss being a sign that something else migh be going wrong, it took 7 months for anyone to care about this pain in my gut (and my kidneys a while back, but this has finally gone so not sure what that was). before i was just told, dont drink so much, everything your experiencing is normaomeone youre (bullsh*t is this normal).

are there any specifi auto-immune conditions i could look into, try and evaluate them before goin to the Doctor, so i have some evidence and reasons as to why i think it may b then goin in there and screamim "tis auto-immune condition, screen me for everything" as i know theyll just give me bs andill leave no better off.

 

[karlg]

oh, and my family has no history of these kinds of conditions, they are all relatively healthy, my dads staerted to loose some hair but he's 50 now, and my mum is in the same boat. my bro still has really thick hair and he's at the age where i just started to notice some loss. so more and more i think this is more then just genetics. the only trait we have in the family, on both sides is a history of cancer (i dont think everyone has died of it, but a fair few have, however they all lived into quite an old age, and it could be purely the fact they lived this long that they got cancer)

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

In the case of an auto-immune condition, the inflammation is there because of the immune system. Inflammation is a very important tool in correcting abnormalities (such as cancer) and killing off pathogens. Since abnormalities normally start off small and pathogens are pretty small to begin with, the immune system can just inflame the whole area and kill of a bunch of cells normally taking care of the problem. Because you are a vast multitude of cells, the death of a few of these should not be all that noticeable to your overall fitness.

Prooxidants are capable of stimulating the immune system and causing the release of histamine. Additionally some of the chemicals naturally used in your body to stimulate the immune system are free radicals. When you consume large amounts of antioxidants you can remove some of these from the equation. When in doubt, just eat more fruits and vegetables (grains are neither).

Your wound problems potentially could be related to an immune problem. With chronic inflammation wounds would be continuously be healed and destroyed by your body simultaneously.

Nicotine has been shown to delay the onset of certain immune conditions however it also produces many reactive oxygen species (free radicals). So once you're already at the point where your body's already killing itself the addition of cigarettes would be quite harmful.

Unfortunately while inflammation is the primary response of the immune system, no that is not all there is to it. You would need someone with more (any) medical training to go into greater depth about the secondary actions of the immune system but along side inflammation the immune system is also capable of inhibiting protein synthesis in the affected cells. This is why it's really important to try and find the trigger for what's going on instead of just covering it up with anti-androgens, shampoos or topicals.

Most autoimmune conditions have a very specific test that looks for specific antibodies such as for the thyroid (hashimoto's), the nucleus (lupus), or the intestinal lining (classical celiacs). Alternatively there are the tests that are used to determine overall rate of inflammation in the body. If your body is attempting to respond to the increased inflammation it can produce excess cortisol resulting in high levels on the cortisol serum test. However this isn't always the case and can be caused by other factors. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test is one measure of inflammation that I believe is relatively cheap for the lab to perform (they just measure how rapidly your blood cells precipitate) but it is not the most accurate of tests. The CRP test is probably the best overall inflammation test (to my limited knowledge). This measures the amount of C-reactive protein in your blood which is a direct marker of one of the chemicals used in the inflammation process.

In order to get your doctor to start treating it seriously you should focus on one thing at a time. Personally I think that gut thing is more important than your hair as problems on your scalp are very unlikely to affect the health of your gut while problems in your gut can easily affect the health of your hair. Tell your doctor that previously prescribed medicine has not solved the problem and you wish to be tested for celiac disease and crohn's disease. The other potential problems of the gut are simply collection of symptoms (like IBS/IBD) or are structural problems (which most likely would have caused other problems like death by now). Theoretically other autoimmune conditions could also be present (such as lupus, hashimoto's or sjorgen's syndrom) but these can actually be caused by other autoimmune conditions. I am not familiar at all with Crohn's disease so your doctor's word on the necessary tests for that are probably best, however the odds of you finding a doctor who knows how to properly test for a gluten problem is quite low assuming you're in the US. The tests you need to tell him to give you for celiac's would be the deamidated gliadin iga/igg tests, total iga test, tissue transglutaminase iga test. Those four are the current best tests available (besides the diet test) in the US for diagnosis, if you're in europe then there's a much more accurate one that involves a gluten suppository.

This is your health and your body so if you ever run into a doctor who isn't willing to find out the real problem you're having, find a new doctor ASAP.

Genetics is not a deterministic force. If you have the genes to develop a medical condition then you have a chance to get it. That chance isn't always 100%. Additionally when it comes to immune genetics there are normally multiple genes that can cause the same type of problem, but all with varying degrees of probability.

 

[Obsidian]

A friend of mine has been smoking pot since 16 everyday and is a NW4V.

 

[3am]

... and they celebrated their 92nd birthday last week..?

Seriously now ... how old is s/he Obsidian?

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Unlike the finasteride pushers on this board I try to make it clear that I don't think everyone has type w/e of hair loss. The hair loss we're referring to being helped by pot and other anti-inflammatory compounds is that mediated by the immune system. If your friend is someone with real androgenic alopecia (not just hair loss that has receding temples) then pot would do nothing for his hair loss.

 

[balanceguardian]

Additionally, while cigarette smoking is certainly damaging to your life expectancy. It actually suppresses the immune system making it a fantastic treatment for many kinds of hair loss... you know, besides the whole cancer side effect (part of the immune suppression technically).

Where did you get this bullshit and the crap about marijuana being an anticarciogenic?

Marijuana is 10 times more carciogenic than cigarettes. Both highly alter your natural hormonal balance. Im addicted to both but im not claiming that they have any health benefits.

 

[nickypoos]

My hairloss started and progressed when smoking pot every day. Not saying weed was the cause, but it certainly didn't stop it.

But I personally believe I don't have inflamatry based hairloss, my scalp is never itchy or flakey.

 

[Obsidian]

... and they celebrated their 92nd birthday last week..?

Seriously now ... how old is s/he Obsidian?

Same age as me, 23. :gay2:

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Where did you get this bullshit and the crap about marijuana being an anticarciogenic?

Marijuana is 10 times more carciogenic than cigarettes. Both highly alter your natural hormonal balance. Im addicted to both but im not claiming that they have any health benefits.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16078104?dopt=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20053780
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/mrmc/2005/00000005/00000010/art00006
http://gut.bmj.com/content/54/12/1741.abstract
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/65/5/1635.abstract
http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/308/3/838.abstract
http://americanmarijuana.org/Guzman-Cancer.pdf

WTF, does google not exist for people as dumb as you? The world is not all your retarded 3rd grade teacher warned you it was.

I'm addicted to neither but read a sh*t ton of research and so I generally try to at least have a semi-rudimentary view before making medical claims. Where's your papers claiming "10x more carciogenic"?

I know this is a somewhat harsh reply to what I'm sure seemed to you to be a quite banal comment but I recognized that DARE story for the absolute sh*t it was when I was first exposed to it in middle school and hate living in a world where adults can't make the same distinctions.

 

[balanceguardian]

ok i take back the bit about knowing it to be 10x times more carciogenic.

But i have been addicted to pot for 15 years now and it has degraded my quality of life. I used to believ that the established world knows nothing and seek out evidence that suited my own agenda.

Cannabis robbed me of my ambition. Aged me 10 times quicker, and because it is socially unacceptable, it helped me to destroy dear relations.

I wouldnt advise any youth to experiment with smoking cigarettes or marijuana regardless of what health benefits they may have.