Cannabis Use in Hunter Collectors Reduces Intestinal Parasites
According to research among Aka people in Congo, hunter gatherers who consume more cannabis have fewer intestinal parasites. This may indicate that Aka people are inadvertently using medical marijuana.
Ed Hagen, an anthropologist at Washington State University, wanted to investigate the use of cannabis among Aka hunter collectors and wanted to see if people outside the cultural and media influence of Western civilization were using plant toxins for medicinal purposes. “Just as we sometimes want salt, Hagen might want psychoactive plant toxins because they kill parasites, H says Hagen.
In an earlier study, Hagen found that the Akalar, a tobacco drinker, had fewer helminths, parasitic intestinal worms. But Hagen warns that there is a certain limit to these studies, although nicotine has been proven to kill worms in farm animals, but this effect has not yet been fully established in humans. Although cannabis appears to be killing parasites in a petri dish in the laboratory, it has not yet been seen killing animals.
The Aqas are pygmies in the Congo Basin, a community where adults are shorter than normal. As one of the world's last hunter gatherers, the Akas help anthropologists learn and explore lifestyles that continue in almost 99 percent of human history. Now they can help develop an alternative hypothesis about drug use.
The most common and valid explanation for drug use is that they make people feel good by gas usurping the centers of pleasure in the brain ”. But drugs also trigger mechanisms that tell us that we consume things that make us feel toxic and sick.
“Why do so many people around the world use plant toxins for their joyful purpose?“ we thought. When we look at non-human animals, we see that they do the same thing, and many biologists think that they do it to kill parasites.
Hagen and colleagues report that this study is important because substance use and helminth parasite infection are ikisi two of the biggest health problems in the developing world enfeksiyon.
Researchers don't know when Akas first drank or when cannabis first arrived on the continent. Although it is thought that it came with merchants from the Indian subcontinent in the 1st century AD, cannabis was not smoked until the colonization of Europeans in the 17th century.
Hagen spoke to almost all of the 400 adult Aka's on the banks of the Lobaye River in the Central African Republic, and found that approximately 70% of men and 6% of women used cannabis. This survey was also supported by the high rate of THCA, the active substance of cannabis, in 68% of men in biological tests.
Fecal samples from males revealed helminth parasites in 95%, but the rate of infection in cannabis users was significantly lower. Less than one year after the administration of helminths, less worms were found in the re-infection of cannabis users.
“Aka people use tea made from a local plant called ung motunga karşı against parasitic infections, but they don't see cannabis or tobacco as a medicine, H says Hagen. This suggests that they use cannabis against parasites without being aware.
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