Wondering if Marijuana Can Help Your Weight Loss?
Recent studies have shown that marijuana weight loss enhancing results are actually possible. This may seem baffling to many people – including researchers – since pot is notorious for giving people the munchies. This has driven scientists to look into exactly why cannabis users tend to have a lower rate of obesity than non-users.
Is Marijuana Weight Loss Real?
We’ve all heard about studies that have made astronomical claims about the results a certain herb or other ingredients can provide to people who are trying to lose weight. That said, many of them are preliminary and very small. This has led many people to wonder if the claims about marijuana weight loss benefits. They wonder if they should be trusted.
People who use marijuana are less likely to suffer from obesity.
The truth of the matter is that very reliable data has indicated that – munchies jokes aside – people who use marijuana are less likely to suffer from obesity and when they do, it is not as extreme. Now, the hope is that this potential marijuana weight loss benefit may be something that can realistically assist people to lose weight in a healthy way.
Learning More About the Benefits of Cannabis
It is only over the last ten years or so that researchers have started to examine the relationship between cannabis use and body weight. In 2011, Dr. Yan Le Strat, a University of Paris psychiatry professor, published an analysis of a 2001 and 2003 data in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2011.
The 2001 data was from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. It involved the participation of 43,093 respondents to a survey. It revealed that about 25.3 percent of non-users are obese, but only 16.1 percent of cannabis users were obese.
The second set of data was from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication survey. It showed that 17.2 percent of cannabis users among the 9,283 participants were obese. On the other hand, among the non-users, a much higher 25.3 percent had obesity.
Heavier Marijuana Use Reduced Obesity Risk Further
The findings in the second study showed even more pronounced marijuana weight loss outcomes. It determined that heavy pot users – defined as people who smoked it over three times per week – were even less likely to be obese than people who never used it.
Interestingly, a large survey conducted in Australia among 21 year olds found highly comparable results. There, marijuana weight loss results were also suggested as users were far less likely to be obese or even overweight than people who do not use.
