People who often use cannabis start their day with higher cortisol levels than people who don’t, indicating a relationship between frequent cannabis use and a possible dysregulation of the body’s daily stress rhythms.
This is according to a study by Oregon State University scientists, and which was published in the journal Cannabis.
The researchers note that stress is a primary motivation to use cannabis and is linked with problematic use. While cannabis may provide short-term stress relief, its chronic use might negatively affect stress-response systems over time, they say.
Led by Anita Cservenka of the OSU College of Liberal Arts, the study is one of the few to examine the link between frequent cannabis use and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the major neuroendocrine system that governs the body’s response to stress.
The findings are important because in the United States, 29% of adults ages 19-30 report having used cannabis in the previous 30 days, a figure that has nearly doubled over the past 15 years. Greater than 10% of that age group report using cannabis 20 or more times in 30 days – more than twice the percentage seen 15 years ago, the scientists say.
Cservenka emphasizes that the research doesn’t prove frequent cannabis use causes people to wake up with higher cortisol levels, or vice-versa.
“We would need to study the same groups of people over a longer period of time to understand any cause and effect relationship, but we think this provides an important starting point,” she said.
Cortisol is a hormone produced in the adrenal glands; hormones are the body’s chemical messengers.
Nicknamed the “stress hormone” because it is released when people find themselves under pressure, cortisol assists in fighting infection, maintaining blood pressure and regulating blood sugar and metabolism.
Cortisol is beneficial for dealing with stress in the short term, but prolonged periods of high cortisol levels can have harmful effects on the body, such as an increased risk of anxiety, depression and heart disease.
Cservenka and OSU colleagues Julia Donner and Alexia Obrochta centered their cannabis-cortisol study around what’s commonly known as CAR, or cannabis awakening response.
“CAR is the cortisol rise that all people experience in the morning, peaking around 30 minutes after they wake up,” Cservenka said.
Calculating CAR is straightforward: You measure people’s cortisol right after they awaken, measure it again a half-hour later, then subtract the first number from the second number. The difference is considered a marker of the body’s ability to prepare for the stressors of the day.
The collaborators found CAR to be similar among both cannabis users and non-users, but they found cannabis users had a higher starting point – i.e., they woke up with more cortisol circulating through their bodies.
“Our research suggests cortisol levels upon awakening may serve as a neurobiological marker of problematic cannabis use, and that connection needs to be investigated further,” Cservenka said. “Earlier studies by other researchers found CAR to be blunted in frequent cannabis users, but we didn’t replicate that finding, which suggests there is a lot of nuance that could be related to analytic strategies and sample characteristics.”
Still, she said, it’s reasonable to think that individuals who use cannabis often may have impairments in their daily stress rhythms – and that a dysregulated stress system could in turn lead individuals into a cycle of more cannabis use.
