Mic the Vegan IS WRONG: Brain Damage from THC.

- yen if instead of asking he's gonna
want to healthier unhealthy we asked the question is it a proven scientific fact that marijuana caused freedom the answer is shockingly horrifyingly yes it is a proven scientific fact that marijuana causes bring in that new yen hey guys I'm recording this video on my weight bench in my workout room my home gym I guess you could say just because the natural sunlight today is so bright that most the other locations for my apartment there's blinding white light coming through the windows you can even see that in the background a little bit this video is from my perspective about a very serious issue and I'm sorry if I have to fill 10 minutes of your time with reading out formal peer-reviewed academic articles but I don't know any way to get across the seriousness of this information to the audience and as boring or anti-climatic as it may be I even think right now to kick off this video I have to cut straight to reading formal scientific opinion from a peer-reviewed scientific article because there's no other way this video will be taken seriously by its audience that's a great shame because the majority of people who watch this video will themselves be vegan and if you're vegan you've already been through a process of questioning many ostensibly real medical nutritional assumptions probably if you're a vegan today at some point in the past you believed that dairy milk was healthy you believed that yogurt was healthy or you may have even believed that it wasn't possible to live it wasn't possible to survive without having dairy products in your diet a lot of us grew up with these ideas seeing them advertising them promoted by medical professionals being told this by our teachers or parents or what have you and at some point you turn the corner and you realize not only that this specific health claim is untrue you can be healthy without any dairy in your diet but the way in which selectively facts can be presented out of context to be misleading more than they're false many of the health claims made for the dairy industry on behalf of milk and yogurt and what-have-you they are true provided in isolation dairy products do contain a lot of calcium that's true that's not a lie but when you put the pieces together when you look at the whole lifecycle of a human being when you look at the variety of health impacts under many different headings it becomes clear that dairy is something you really overall when want to exclude from your diet to be honest with you I feel that the case with cannabis with marijuana is much more one-sided and clear-cut because when we're talking about marijuana we are fundamentally talking about brain damage and I don't know anyone who wants to endure a moderate amount of brain damage the optimal amount of brain damage is zero so let's start by just quoting this peer-reviewed academic article conclusions cannabis seems to have been causally related to several instances of cerebral ischemia and infarction now these are scary words if you look it up in a dictionary the real meaning of ischemia which changes a little bit in context in medical literature and infarction may surprise you but this is stating very clearly marijuana causes brain damage so the comb aid by Mike the vegan ask the question is marijuana healthy or unhealthy I don't know anyone who would approach this issue by saying that brain damage is healthy or that brain damage is a type of health risk or disadvantage they'd be willing to dabble in if instead of asking is marijuana healthier unhealthy we ask the question is it a proven scientific fact that marijuana causes brain damage the answer is shockingly horrifyingly yes it is a proven scientific fact that marijuana causes brain damage and that includes ischemia and infarction in this context ischemia means lack of blood flow within the brain causing brain damage causing cell death causing other structural and functional problems in the brain and infarction it can mean an occlusion of any kind so where the blood flow is is blocked in this case it probably means where the blood flow is blocked by dead tissue you can look up for yourself ischemia and in Fortune the rest of this quotation is worth reading illicit drug use has been causally implicated in six percent of all cerebral infarction Xin some Hospital Series 1 and 15 to 40 percent of inversions in young patients the connection between cannabis use in cerebral vascular disease is not as not as established so it means they're not as well proven not as established as that for other drugs but this may be a result of an under reporting of cannabis related events because of a general unawareness of a potential relationship because cannabis remains the most commonly used illicit drug it may represent a modifiable risk factor so this is what you have to expect in formal medical literature it's not ringing alarm bells and I think that many people who want to make excuses for the use of cannabis will ignore just how deadly serious the warning there is because it is stated in the proper jargon not overstating the certainty or you know expanding on the conclusions this isn't propaganda this isn't a reefer madness movie or anything like that this is really stating very clearly it is a proven scientific fact that marijuana causes brain damage now we can measure that brain damage more than one way one of the ways that the brain damage is measured is by tests of the use of people's reasoning capacity you see people they'll do intelligence tests memory tests performance based tests of how well you can use your brain how well the organ is functioning as it were another way to measure brain damage is through magnetic resonance imaging scans which is a type of scan much more advanced than an x-ray but if you don't know what MRI scanning is you can imagine it as an x-ray only much much higher quality images that it produces including 3d images and moving images of how the organ is functioning and then third category dimension here very unbeaten source information we have information about the damage cannabis does to our brains through torturing rats to death torturing animals in based experimentation again if you want to read every word of this you can pause the screen or you can follow up through the footnotes find these articles and read the studies in full but I quote learning and memory are often correlated with cellular changes within the hippocampus and drugs or environmental factors which affect learning and memory with us often induce observable morphological changes in the structure in the current study investigate whether or not these changes could be related to structural changes within the hippocampus now they do this through torturing a certain type of rat to death and now if we skip down to the highlighted portion at the bottom it says this work shows the potential for cannabinoids to influence hippocampal morphology the pattern of changes may be similar to that seen after ice quemic or toxic damage guys if you don't know what this means it's talking about brain damage the hippocampus is one part of your brain that is damaged by cannabis use that is damaged by THC and as you're going to learn in this video that is proven through animal experimentations and through MRI magnetic resonance imaging scans on the human brain persistent behavioral effects resembling those of hippocampal brain lesions have been reported following chronic administration of marijuana or its major psychoactive constituents THC to rats we used morphometric techniques to investigate the effects of chronic THC on the anatomical integrity of the hippocampus the rats were dosed with THC and then electron micrographs revealed a striking ultrastructural appearance and statistically significant decrease in the mean volume of neurons and their nuclei samples from the hippocampal ca3 regions of rats treated with the highest doses of THC a 44% reduction and the number of synapses per unit volume was demonstrated in these same rats skipping down to the concluding sentence the hippocampal changes reported here may constitute a morphological basis for behavioral effects after chronic exposure to marijuana I think it's deeply irresponsible and deeply dishonest for anyone to make a video talking about whether or not marijuana is healthy purely in terms of the effects on your lungs purely in terms of the chances of your getting cancer whether or not you get cancer from using marijuana maybe a roll of the dice whether or not you get brain damage is not no loss of memory function is a deadly serious issue and for some reason when people talk about cannabis use they make a joke out of it I don't know anyone who's really willing to live with impaired memory function or would make that decision casually in terms of your health in terms of your quality of life in terms of your ambitions and aspirations however if you read this abstract it sets out for you the frightening fact that the loss of memory function caused by THC caused by cannabis use it does correlate to brain damage that we can measure physically real damage to the organ of the brain and what did you think everyone accepts with their myriad tests and studies showing that cannabis impairs function of human memory what do you think that was a cultural change you think it because people start smoking cannabis they start listening to a different type of music that culturally they start doing something that changes the function of the brains memory no it's due to physically real damage to the organ of the brain so this abstract begins by saying marijuana consumption elicits diverse physiological and psychological effects in humans including memory loss skipping ahead to the final sentence here these data suggests that some of the memory deficits caused by cannabinoids may be caused by THC neurotoxicity guys if you read the whole quotation in full what you're gonna find is that this is talking about apoptosis a word I don't use very often in English or in Latin neural apoptosis neuron death dead cells dead tissue within your brain it's not something to joke around about it's not something to casually say is healthy it's not something we can casually say if used in moderation will only cause effects you'll never complained of yes there are some people who are dying of cancer who use marijuana or THC as a medicine it may be less damaging to them than the older alternatives that people use it as a painkiller to use it to manage various incredibly serious medical conditions understand that but if you're otherwise a healthy person using this there was a recreational drug or for alleged psychological reasons face facts we're talking about brain damage we're talking about dead cells dead tissue inside your skull impairing your memories ability to function human beings are uniquely gifted with in the animal kingdom at making excuses I don't know any other species that's as good at making excuses we are some people will claim that these brain damaging effects are only a problem if you keep using marijuana for 20 years well here's a study that transpired over just five years looking at morphological changes in the brain changes in the substance of the brain itself the shape and function the brain appears just five years a lot of people watching this video now have probably used marijuana for five years or more at some point in their life whether or not they're doing so today guess what in this period of five years at the beginning cortical thickness did not differ between patients and controls and between cannabis using and non using patients over the follow-up period we found excessive thinning of the right supplementary motor cortex inferior frontal corporate cortex superior temporal gyrus angular gyrus occipital and parietal lobe in patients relative to controls after controlling for cannabis use sir guys have studied a lot of languages but modern Latin is not one patients use cannabis shows showed additional thinning in the left dorsolateral prefrontal prefrontal cortex left anterior cingulate cortex and left occipital lobe as compared to those patients that did not use cannabis during the scan interval guys I can't take out a map of the brain and show you which parts of your brain those different Latin terms correspond to probably you watching this video can't either is there any part of your brain you would be comfortable with damaging for the mild form of high distraction and fresh stress relief provided by marijuana I don't think anyone's comfortable with any part of their brain and during these kinds of structural and functional changes the progress of science is slow and an area of research like this where the use of magnetic resonance imaging is really quite expensive it comes along step by step and by 2008 here we have this article using high-quality MRI imaging and proving once again as if there was any doubt that yes cannabis use does cause brain damage cannabis users had bilaterally reduced hippocampal and amygdala volumes right you can read through all the details here about the precise location and nature of the brain damage it's the type of research this is conclusions these results provide new evidence of exposure related structural abnormalities in the hippocampus and amygdala in long-term heavy cannabis users and corroborate similar findings in the animal literature again the progress of science is slow but progress in one area tends to verify progress in another in this case the experiments that were done torture and rats to death is verified by directly scanning the human brain indeed despite strong evidence of neurotoxicity in the animal literature to our knowledge no neuroimaging study has examined the neurobiological quences secretly consequences of long-term heavy cannabis use while controlling for important compounds of politoed abuse and co-occurring psychotic disorder so so the authors are claiming here that their study in 2008 is a breakthrough is really the first study to prove this point definitively so if anyone tells you that there's no scientific evidence that cannabis causes brain damage if you want to play that game you can say well since 2008 that's simply not true the only reason why I've taken so much time to read through evidence of this kind is because I know the tendency amongst my viewers this was true even back when I only had a blog when I was writing a text form not making videos on YouTube confronting people with the frightening reality of the impacts cannabis use has in their brain well in some ways it comes as a shock to them and in some ways it's tremendously familiar and they're used to making excuses for it there are by contrast there are recreational drugs that people use to try to get higher scores on exams the most common of course is something like caffeine but also something like adderall different drugs people who are studying for exams might use to increase their focus and during the period of studying or their ability to retain their detailed memory of what they studied afterwards this stuff is well no I'm sorry I'm not good they're not gonna die gress it into this video but see there is no people who use cannabis whether they make excuses for it or not none of them would claim that cannabis helped them to perform better on exams to perform better academically or that it enhanced for instance the process of learning a new language and people do claim that about other drugs there are other drugs not talking about performance-enhancing drugs like steroids there are other drugs that people use to help them have mental focus and clarity when lifting weights or doing other physical tasks but mental tests as well on some level I think that most people use cannabis are accustomed to many excuses for what this article is attesting to measuring that in effect quote long term cannabis users perform significantly less well then shorter term users and controls on tests of memory and attention they had worse memory worse ability to to pay attention these results confirm that long-term heavy cannabis users show impairments in memory and attention that injurer beyond the period of intoxication animal research suggests an import role for the cannabinoid receptor and regulating neural activity for memory processing and the greatest impairment on almost every measure indicates generalized memory deficit with impaired learning retention and retrieval in conclusion our results confirm that cognitive impairments develop as a result of prolonged cannabis use so on one level people use cannabis themselves they experience this the joke about it they talk about it they talk about failing a test doing badly in school because of cannabis use they're aware on the surface level of what cannabis use means they may accept and even embrace and kind of celebrate the fact that it destroys their memory their capacity to learn new things their capacity for higher reason I don't know why that is it's not a laughing matter this is not something to joke about whether it's yourself or your child or your cousin your best friend your husband your wife if there's anyone in your life using this drug I would think that that loss of higher reasoning ability capacity to learn new things would concern you just as much as if you learned they were huffing glue or snorting cocaine even though the effects of cannabis are subtle they're tremendously negative they'll impact your life short-term and long-term in exactly the way this studies just said but it's interesting to me that people seem to very easily accept those surface measurements the measurements of performance now use your brain to they'll accept that yes there is memory loss but then they'll be shocked when you tell them there's a biological basis for that memory loss namely brain damage including cell death including including changes that we can measure and in a sense photograph with MRI scans changes in the actual shape and functionality of some lobes within the brain so look guys this is not a joke to me it's no laughing matter I've known people dozens and dozens of people whose lives have been seriously negatively impacted by marijuana use maybe you do too I'm not making this video to call Mike the vegan an idiot but Mike you're an idiot you've given advice to people that is in effect an excuse for their bad habits in this video you've raised spurious but true facts about marijuana in a way that convincingly distracts people from the overweening importance of the question of brain damage I've seen that done before on the Internet and as I said at the start of this video it's a method that vegans are familiar with from the dairy industry in the media industry when they point to facts that are true examined in isolation the facts that are nevertheless misleading when compared to the Gestalt the many complex factors we need to put together to really understand whether the use of a drug or consuming of a food in our diet whether it is healthy or unhealthy when looking at our life cycle as a whole like the vegan may be unaware of the extent to which he's doing this he may be unaware that in his approach to cannabis he's committing exactly the same crimes exactly the same offenses that he points the finger at the dairy industry in the meat industry for committing like sincerely I'd like to say to you either take that video down or you know we have our permission you can upload this video on your own channel you can deal with the peer-reviewed sources that are cited in this video but Mike I hope your fans send you this link I hope you get the message I hope you take seriously the fact that you've told tens of thousands of people to go ahead and inflate brain damage on themselves that's something I would never do Mike I've been on YouTube before you came on the scene and remember when your channel was small yet your first few thousand viewers of senior ascent to being an influential voice with great power comes great responsibility you should take responsibility for this you should delete the video you've made or revise it or make a new video that takes serious of the fact that marijuana causes brain damage and that this is now a thoroughly attested thoroughly proven fact I banish in all of the scientific sources used in this video were cited directly or indirectly in this article posted to my blog on tumblr about four years ago it's an article that got a big reaction at the time and received a lot of email very emotional reactions to it because my fellow vegans did not want to face up to this shocking but simple fact including vegans who I knew at the time were smoking marijuana during pregnancy and absolutely certainly damaging the health of their own unborn child quote vegans generally are people who have questioned and rejected the premise that yogurt was essential to their health who have questioned many things that were told by parents teachers doctors and marketing agencies vegans generally are people who have been willing to question cultural assumptions of what healthy means why would it be any harder for us to question the myths surrounding cannabis it causes brain damage there is proof [Music] the blue shell