New Delhi: Cannabis is often considered a “stress reliever” but a recent study found that regular cannabis users had similar stress levels to those who inhaled a placebo instead.
The study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, led by researchers at the Washington State University, suggests that the “relaxation” associated with cannabis is not related to a reduction of the body’s physiological stress. While some physical markers of stress are indeed reduced, the study found that cannabis increases the heart rate.
“One measure of stress is just to ask people: How stressed do you feel right now? Interestingly, that often doesn’t actually map onto physiological indicators of stress that we measure. Consumers should understand that while they feel like cannabis is reducing their stress, that could largely be a kind of placebo effect, due to their expectations of what they think cannabis is going to do,” lead author Carrie Cuttler, professor of psychology at WSU, said in a statement.
For the study, the team of researchers created three separate groups of participants — 120 regular cannabis users were divided into two groups, one consuming 20mg of the drug, and another using 40mg of the drug. The third was the placebo group which Cuttler highlighted was essential to the study because of how powerful placebo effects can be. Due to the double-blind, placebo controlled nature of the study, participants did not know whether they are receiving the drug or not.
While stress can take several forms, researchers measured it first by asking participants how they felt, then by recording the presence of cortisol, a hormone released as a stress response. They also studied skin conductance, the changes in sweating patterns or electrical activity of the skin, and changes in heart rate. The measurements were taken five minutes after vaping cannabis and then again an hour later.
“We found that these different indicators of stress didn’t correlate with each other. Changes in cortisol were completely unrelated to changes in subjective stress. Changes in cortisol were completely unrelated to heart rate. It was completely unrelated to electrodermal activity. Changes in electrodermal activity were not related to changes in heart rate, heart rate variability, or subjective stress, suggesting that these things are affected differently by cannabis,” Cuttler added.
Although the study noted that cortisol levels fell soon after vaping higher doses of the drug, they rebounded before the next reading. The study also found that the drug raised heart rates significantly compared to the control group.
“Common perceptions of stress relief do not reflect uniform suppression of stress-related outcomes. This has important implications for the widespread use of cannabis as a coping strategy,” the study read.