The use of marijuana, or cannabis sativa, whether in the form of smoking weed, eating cannabis cakes and cannabis cookies or whether you are a teen or an adult, sickly or pregnant, has immediate and direct results to the health. Let’s take a look at what the experts have to say about the health effects of marijuana.

Cannabis And Your Appetite

The so-called Munchies. Munchies are the cannabis jargon for feeling hungrier. This comes about during and after a pot session. The craving is a natural reaction to the health effects of marijuana wherein a user has an increased craving for food ingestion. Munchies are almost always accompanied by the so-called “happy” tripping.

Marijuana Appetite
Marijuana will change your appetite

For hundreds of years, experts and enthusiasts have experimented with smoking weed and ask themselves if marijuana has an effect in weight and weight control. The good news is, after some therapeutic studies related to the effects of cannabinoids to a user’s body, experts agree that, along with the Munchies, a user tends to increase his weight. Medical experts have taken advantage of this and made marijuana an appetizer to AIDS and even cancer patients.

Marijuana is compared to opiates when it comes to its effects to one’s appetite. The different parts of the body which are stimulated by smoking weed are the following – the limbic forebrain, hypothalamus and hind brain and the stomach as well as intestinal tissues.

Thus, this means that cannabis cakes and cannabis cookies are not only good as desserts, they’re even better as appetizers.

Cannabis And Respiration

Studies show that the use of marijuana or smoking weed for a very long period of time is very much related to the addition of dangers to many respiratory problems such as wheezing, inflammation of the nostrils and lungs, creation of sputum and cough (asthmatic). This means that marijuana use has effects very similar to cigarette smoking.

What are some of the health effects of marijuana in terms of its method of use? For those using water filters, there is no sufficient reduction of risks of tar intake. For users of vaporizers, they are found to be more suitable in intake of medical marijuana. In the case of eating marijuana edibles, there is no clear or obvious respiratory side effect whatsoever.

Other methods of marijuana use such as rectal, transdermal or sublingual delivery have no strong results to be analyzed as of yet.

Cannabis And Pregnancy (Including Reproduction)

On marijuana and pregnancy, experts have shown that marijuana use have debilitating health effects to users in terms of their fertility, pregnancy, babies, breast milk and the over-all impact to pregnancy care.

Marijuana effect
Pregnant girl using marijuana

The problems seen by experts may range from the disruption of the menstrual cycle to decrease in testosterone and sperm quality; from disruption of oxygen intake to the user’s body to growth restrictions of a baby’s limbs during a user’s pregnancy; from the risk to other diseases aside from the respiratory ones such as leukemia, cancer and rhobdomyosarcoma.

Over-all, the health effects of marijuana may still be positive in the light of recent trends and researches as viable treatment for osteoporosis for AIDS and cancer patients lacking appetite and as anti-depressants. But when it comes to the appetite, respiratory, reproductive and pregnant care of the users themselves, cannabis sativa seems to hold something more than just smoke in the pot.