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For most people eating food and staying hydrated are simple parts of everyday life, tasks that they take care of almost mindlessly as if on autopilot. When you’re hungry you eat, when you’re thirsty you drink. Sounds foolproof right? Unfortunately, for an alarmingly high number of young people these simple functions can become difficult, if not impossible. Eating disorders affect over a million Canadians – as high as 3% of all Canadians ranging in ages from 12 to 60 have suffered from the debilitating mental & physical effects of anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders.
What is an eating disorder? A person might suffer from neurological conditions that affect how they perceive food or how it influences their bodies. In other examples nausea and gastrointestinal issues can lead to a lack of appetite. Despite all the research into these kinds of conditions, it can be very difficult figuring out how to fix eating disorders because these kinds of disorders impact a person both neurologically and physiologically.
Recent studies have indicated that there might be some interesting connections between eating disorders and the human endocannabinoid system (ECS). Many people are taking CBD for eating disorders, smoking weed for anorexia or relying on edibles for their eating disorder symptoms.
Is it possible to develop eating disorders from weed? Can you fix eating disorders with cannabis treatments? How effective are edibles for eating disorders if you’re already struggling to keep food down?! There are a lot of questions surrounding this controversial subject, but we’ve compiled all the recent findings for an in-depth look into eating disorders and weed.
CAN YOU DEVELOP EATING DISORDERS FROM WEED?
Cannabis can have profound impacts on brain health and cognitive functions, some of which include the symptoms of eating disorders. Before we look at how to fix eating disorders with cannabis treatments, an important question to answer is: can you get eating disorders from weed?
It’s a common misconception, but cannabis does not cause conditions like eating disorders that are primarily behavioral in nature. Despite the fact that some eating disorders can be the result of neurological impairments or gastrointestinal issues, many eating disorders develop because of social, behavioral or emotional trauma.
Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, compulsive overeating and other eating disorders are most likely caused by a combination of factors, including:
Social pressures
Body images issues
Emotional/physical trauma
Genetic predisposition
Lack of education on nutrition/fitness
Stress, anxiety or depression
Environmental factors (availability of food, etc)
Economic factors (lack of funds for nourishment, etc)
What causes a person’s eating disorder can vary greatly from one to another, but the common themes are that outside influences typically lead to the development of anorexia, bulimia or other conditions. There are instances where someone’s gastrointestinal issues can cause them to want to eat less or purge themselves of food after eating, but these cases are fewer and far between when compared with standard cases of eating disorders.
Now that we know what are eating disorder causes and types we can determine if you can develop an eating disorder from weed consumption. The current understanding of how eating disorders and the endocannabinoid system are related suggests that the opposite is true: eating disorders can disrupt your ECS. It appears that a person’s endocannabinoid system can be negatively influenced by conditions like anorexia and bulimia.
Taking weed for anorexia can potentially help with some of the adverse symptoms of this kind of eating disorder, but it can also help to balance your ECS. The endocannabinoid system is involved in numerous essential bodily functions, and among them are its role in stimulating hunger or signaling food/beverage rewards in the brain.
As it turns out from a study at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium the brains of anorexic women were scanned and exhibited some interesting results. People who stopped taking CBD for eating disorders or who had never tried to fix eating disorders with weed showed drastically more inactive ECS than others. Certain areas of the brain, such as the ‘insula’, can modify how we interact with nutrition. This neurotransmitter can engage pleasure centers and emotional responses from food or beverages, and in patients suffering from eating disorders these insula were severely under performing.
So, if you’re trying to figure out how to fix your eating disorder and struggling to make any progress it’s no wonder when you discover the uphill-nature of this battle going on in your brain and body. Insula helps to govern your brain’s perceptions of food such as recognition of textures, flavors and the satisfaction we derive from food’s overall appearance/aroma. If this particular neurotransmitter is negatively impacted by anorexia or bulimia, what else might be adversely affected? What about cramps, soreness or muscle spasms associated with many eating disorders? How about binge eating syndromes being negatively influenced by an imbalance endocannabinoid system?
It seems that edibles and eating disorders can indeed go together despite seeming like opposites. The introduction of cannabinoids like THC and CBD for eating disorders help to re-balance your endocannabinoid system, but they can also work together to ease feelings of nausea, pain, inflammation or anxiety brought on by anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating and more. What else can people suffering from eating disorders get from weed? Let’s continue to uncover how to fix eating disorders with the help of cannabis.
HOW TO FIX EATING DISORDERS WITH WEED
There are two distinct schools of thought when it comes to using weed for anorexia or bulimia treatment. The first has focused their efforts on regulating the influences of eating disorders by managing strict cannabinoid doses and by modulating the endocannabinoid system. This might mean taking consistent doses of CBD oil for eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia, with the aim of reversing those inactive insula neurotransmitters or improving a person’s responses to nutrition/hydration.
This recognition of an eating disorder’s effects on how we behave, how we respond to stimuli and how we’re emotionally connected/disconnected to our health is seeing some traction in the eating disorder community. Taking cbd for eating disorders for its antidepressant & anti-anxiety properties is a great way to try and control one of the root causes of conditions like anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorders. This is also a proactive approach to tackling both the mental and physical symptoms of eating disorders – i.e. balancing hormones and optimizing your neural interface through consistent cannabinoid treatments, which also helps to avoid/reduce negative physical responses to food/drink.
The second school of thought surrounding the benefits that eating disorders get from weed is more tied to the physical symptoms associated with anorexia, bulimia and other food-related disorders. Gas, bloating, abdominal pain/inflammation, nausea, diarrhea and extreme bouts of vomiting are just a handful of the debilitating physical symptoms of many eating disorders. On top of the soreness, spasms or swelling a person can experience there are also lingering effects like chronic fatigue, lethargy, low energy, headaches, muscle & joint stiffness and insomnia.
It’s not always easy to identify what are eating disorder signs in young persons because of the already high level of social, emotional and physiological pressures of high school, college and a person’s early adult years. For these reasons, this school of thought focuses on providing immediate relief from symptoms like nausea, fatigue or pain & inflammation with cannabis products such as oils, topicals and even edibles for eating disorders.
In this kind of scenario, a person might smoke weed for anorexia whenever they feel the onset of food-related anxiety, cramping in their stomachs or other symptoms of the disorder. Instead of focusing on the mental causes/effects an eating disorder has on the brain, these kinds of cannabis treatments seek to alleviate pain, inflammation, discomfort and stresses to the body that can severely weaken a person.
Neither school of thought seeks to outshine the other – in fact both kinds of treatments are acknowledged by the other for their potential to provide relief to people suffering from eating disorders. Both cases aim to understand the nature of a person’s relationship to nutrition/hydration, and each recognizes a different important aspect to these kinds of disorders – i.e. the physical toll that eating disorders can exact such as pain or nausea, in addition to the neurological damages anorexia or bulimia can bring about.
What does this mean about learning how to fix eating disorders through cannabis treatments? Once you are aware of what are eating disorders warning signs you can immediately introduce THC or CBD for eating disorders symptoms like pain, nausea and anxiety. Once you’ve ingested or absorbed cannabis orally/topically and eased some of the initial effects of eating disorders, continuing to take measured doses of certain cannabinoids and terpenes can help to stave off some of the impacts of anorexia, bulimia or binge eating.
In most studies where cannabis treatments for eating disorders were successful it was considered to be because of the consistent preventative/proactive use of cannabinoids in both the short- and long-terms. Every person’s responsiveness to cannabis treatments can vary, but relying on a multitude of cannabis products to manage their emotional/behavioral states can lead to sustained success. When symptoms become too much to bear turning to higher doses for on-demand relief can also support a person’s quest to free themselves from the mental & physical shackles of their eating disorder.
EDIBLES AND EATING DISORDERS
Taking edibles for eating disorders can be of great benefit, but you need to be extra careful with these kinds of treatments. Just like a person with asthma will be unlikely to draw as much benefits from smoking weed as a person without, people suffering from anorexia, bulimia or overeating syndrome might not be able to handle edibles for their eating disorder.
Why would we even suggest taking edible weed for anorexia?! The reason why edibles are even discussed is because a lot of the physical trauma caused by eating disorders is found orally and internally. Your gastrointestinal system can be thrown into flux, you can feel extreme pain or experience swelling in your abdomen, throat and bowels and the chronic fatigue that follows will make any notion of healing seem impossible. On top of these symptoms, the stress, depressed thoughts and feelings can send a person spiraling out of control.
Taking easy-to-digest edibles for eating disorders provides targeted relief where they might need it most. In extreme cases of nausea, vomiting or gastrointestinal discomforts resulting from an eating disorder you can certainly avoid edibles and switch to cannabis oils, topicals or inhaled products like vaporizers. There are so many uniquely potent and effective ways to get the cannabinoids you need that it’s really up to personal preference.
We hope that you and yours can find some peace and relief from the symptoms of your eating disorder with the help of cannabis. There are so many products to suit your needs, and Haute Health has all of the top choices available online in Canada. Stay informed and stay healthy when you shop for all your cannabis needs at Haute Health.
