Surprising New (Healthy!) Compounds Found In Cannabis Leaves

…and other items from this week’s health science news:

The other cannabis chemicals

Researchers (Dr. Magriet Muller et al.) found the first evidence of rare flavoalkaloids in cannabis leaves, revealing previously overlooked medicinal compounds in plant material that’s often treated as waste.

In particular, Dr. Muller and her team identified 79 phenolic compounds across three cannabis strains, including 25 never before reported in cannabis and 16 rare flavoalkaloids that are seldom found in nature.

As regular 10almonds readers will know, flavonoids and related polyphenols are important for antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer reasons, so these newly-detected compounds look set to expand cannabis’s biomedical relevance beyond cannabinoids.

But it goes further than that in this case because of the rare flavoalkaloids, although those were concentrated mainly in the leaves of one strain, showing that chemical composition can differ dramatically even among a small number of cannabis varieties.

Read in full: Don’t toss cannabis leaves: Scientists found rare compounds with medical potential

Related: Cannabis Myths vs Reality

Back up your brain

Ok, so it’s not quite like in science fiction yet! These digital “brain twins” aren’t conscious or sentient replicas, but rather are used as predictive tools designed to model disease progression, test treatments virtually, and improve scientific understanding without direct risk to the person.

More specifically, they’re personalized computational models built from an individual’s brain data (including such things as MRI-scanned anatomy, functional activity, and connectivity maps) to simulate how that specific brain functions and changes over time. This means that instead of relying on broad population averages, clinicians can test interventions on a patient’s digital twin first, improving safety, precision, and treatment outcomes (and, once the tech is rolled out, saving costs, too).

A current example is how epilepsy research is already using patient-specific digital brain models to identify seizure origins and help guide surgery.

That said, the brain’s complexity across multiple spatial and temporal scales demands enormous computing power, making whole-brain high-resolution simulation extremely difficult for now.

Read in full: A virtual copy of your brain? Scientists say it’s closer than you think

Related: Are Brain Chips Safe?

What climate change will do to your brain health

A lot of older people consider that climate change is a younger people’s problem, if indeed a problem at all. However, researchers (Dr. Anna Ranta et al.) have found that climate change is becoming a major global brain health threat because environmental changes (especially increases in heat) raise both stroke risk and stroke mortality.

This is because increased heat can not only dehydrate your body, but also thicken your blood and increase clot formation, all of which raise the risk of ischemic stroke.

It’s not just the heat itself, though; many things that are becoming increasingly common as climate change progresses, such as rapid temperature swings, humidity shifts, barometric pressure changes, wildfires, and dust or sandstorms can elevate blood pressure, strain your cardiovascular system, and damage blood vessels, again raising stroke risk and increasing the severity when stroke does occur.

Notably, more than 20% of global strokes are attributed to air pollution, with wildfire smoke and particulate matter contributing by damaging blood vessel walls after entering your lungs and, from there, your bloodstream.

In other words, as the researchers show, climate change is increasingly a neurological and cardiovascular public health emergency, making stroke prevention partly dependent on climate change mitigation.

Read in full: Climate change a global threat to brain health, stroke experts say

Related: Stay Safe From Heat Exhaustion & Heatstroke!

Take care!