The word is still out on what marijuana really does to our sleep quality. According to Matthew Walker, author of the extremely popular Why We Sleep, marijuana can reduce the amount of REM sleep we experience, which has unknown long-term effects. Now, a new study is adding some nuance to the story by pointing out how weed can effect people in different ways depending on their inflammation levels.
Inflammation, in particular higher levels of cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-alpha, has a huge role to play in degraded sleep quality, and the study recently published in Frontiers showed that some forms of cannabis helps more than others. For instance, CBD-leaning strains were found to be much more effective for high-inflammatory subjects. For THC-dominant strains, the effects were mainly in the very low or very high inflammation categories, but mostly on the negative side.
The main gist here is that cannabis can be an extremely powerful factor for those whose sleep issues stem from inflammation, given some strains anti-inflammation qualities.
This study gets us closer to understanding marijuana’s effect over our sleep. It’s not the whole picture, but it is an important nuance.
Find the full study here, and a breakdown at Neurosciencenews.com.
