APPETITES OF CANCER PATIENTS CAN BE BOOSTED BY SYNTHETIC THC: STUDY

A University of Alberta professor is using the age-old marijuana
munchies trick to get cancer patients to build up their appetites.

Wendy Wismer, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food,
and Nutritional Science, was the lead researcher in a group that
studied the effects of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main
psychoactive found in marijuana plants. The group used a
pharmaceutical known as marinol, the synthetic form of THC, on
patients with advanced forms of cancer. As the appetites of these
patients improved and they indicated that their food also tasted
better, results corresponded with the known belief about the
marijuana munchies.

"I expected food to taste and smell better and I didn't know if it
would improve appetite as a result. Just because this group of
patients, they really suffer from this lack of appetite, and they
have to really exert a lot of conscious thought about eating -- it's
a lot of willpower," Wismer said. "So the fact that appetite was
stimulated with the THC is certainly a benefit, but I didn't know
that that was how it was going to play out."

Throughout the study, participants regularly filled out
questionnaires about their perceptions of taste and appetite levels.
They recorded what they ate at the beginning and the end of the study
and the results were very positive, as more than half of the patients
who took the THC recorded that their appetites improved.

"They didn't actually increase their caloric consumption relative to
those on a placebo. So they certainly felt like eating more, although
they weren't able to take in more calories," Wismer said. "Just the
fact that they had an appetite and felt like eating more, I think,
would increase the enjoyment of the food consumption experience."

Lack of appetite has been a major problem for cancer patients in the
past. After patients are released from therapy, they experience
enhanced metabolism and require a lot of calories, but they don't
have any appetite. This causes many of these patients to die of
weight loss, rather than their actual disease.

"It's just terrible. They have this great need for calories and they
just don't feel like eating. And so when you interview them, they
talk about having to exert what we call conscious control. You know:
'Today I will eat because I need to survive,' " Wismer explains. "And
as their appetite decreases, then they adjust their expectations
about the amount that they can eat, so they try and be satisfied with
the consumption of smaller and smaller amounts of food."

In fact, the problem that Wismer described actually held back the
beginning of this study, as some patients were hesitant to take part.

"There were a lot of people who didn't want to participate because
there was a chance that they would be assigned the placebo. And if
people are going to spend time on a trial they really want the drug.
Whether it's an attempt to cure cancer or improve appetite, they
would really rather be on the drug," Wismer said.

Wismer called the research a "proof of principle," but noted that
there are more studies to be done before these findings can be
applied in real-life.

"I think the next step would be to have a trial to see that if longer
use of THC would really be a benefit and perhaps increase caloric
intake. People said that they felt hungrier and they wanted to eat
more and that foods tasted better and they also reported greater
relaxation and quality of sleep," Wismer explained. "I think that
there are a lot of things there that could potentially lead to an
increase in calories, but a study would need to be longer than two
weeks in order to find that out."