[HN Gopher] Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental di...
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Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in
children
Author : lame-robot-hoax
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-09-12 21:48 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nih.gov)
| pier25 wrote:
| I know my mother smoked cannabis when she was pregnant back in
| the 70s (hippie parents etc). Maybe it wasn't related to that,
| but I did experience a number of mental disorders from my
| childhood to my late 20s.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Weed is bad for you, what a shocker. Like all drugs you have to
| weigh the positive effects with the negative. Generally it's bad
| to do most rec drugs if pregnant or around kids.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Cannabis is a vasodilator, among many other things.
| dekken_ wrote:
| Water is bad for you in sufficient quantities.
| endisneigh wrote:
| what does water have to do with anything?
| dekken_ wrote:
| The point is that weed isn't _just_ bad for you, it depends
| on your condition and the dosage.
| staringback wrote:
| Do you need weed to survive?
| jjulius wrote:
| It's a loose comparison, it doesn't have to be perfect
| and I'm pretty sure you understand the point they're
| trying to make.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Weed isn't "bad for you" as pointed out by your second
| sentence. Indeed, it has effects and you need to cost benefit
| weigh the effects.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| " 6 exposures (unplanned pregnancy; maternal alcohol, marijuana,
| and tobacco use early in pregnancy; pregnancy complications; and
| birth complications) independently associated with significant
| but small increases in CBCL total score. Among these 6, none
| increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically
| significant symptoms by itself. However, odds of exceeding this
| threshold became significant with 2 exposures (OR = 1.86, 95% CI
| 1.47-2.36), and increased linearly with each level of exposure
| (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.31-1.47), up to 3.53-fold for >=4 exposures
| versus none"
| ttpphd wrote:
| Huh. Weird that from that result the focus of the conversation
| is on cannabis.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Consuming weed during pregnancy is against Tupac's Thug Life
| principles.
| version_five wrote:
| "Don't get me started / my mother smoked so goddamn much when
| she was pregnant I'm surprised I ain't retarded"?
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Full title that wouldn't fit: Prenatal cannabis exposure
| associated with mental disorders in children that persist into
| early adolescence
| metamateme wrote:
| How could you possibly control for the major confounder of
| "having the kind of parent who would intentionally subject their
| unborn child to THC"?
| [deleted]
| 1-6 wrote:
| Why are pregnant women smoking weed to begin with?
| gfdsgfdsf wrote:
| morning sickness, the alternatives such as zofran come with
| their own complications
| scythe wrote:
| It's about 5% of pregnant women, while about 14% of women
| report smoking cannabis, and the rate is significantly higher
| under age 55:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smo...
|
| So probably about 20% of women who may become pregnant smoke
| marijuana, and 75% of them stop when pregnant, before adjusting
| for whether they are aware of the pregnancy. There are usually
| a few irresponsible individuals in any group.
| klyrs wrote:
| This is a backlash from anti-cannabis disinformation. People
| were told lies about how dangerous it is for decades, and now
| people don't know what to believe.
| Maursault wrote:
| I really think all men should withhold all judgement of women,
| pregnant or not.
|
| I also think it is interesting, after at least 10K years of
| use, someone noticed recently there is an association with
| mental disorders. If it was of any serious concern, it probably
| would have been noticed in, say, ancient Rome. Also, even the
| adolescent brain, let alone the prenatal brain, is so plastic
| as to be able to completely heal from such things as massive
| head trauma, but a little weed has degraded them for life. Uh
| uh, right. Any studies covering so short a period and making
| such grave conclusions immediately draw my skepticism. What are
| the chances there is conservative funding and bias behind the
| study? Huge. On with the misogynistic persecution of pregnant
| women!
| diab0lic wrote:
| Alcohol has been in use for ~7000 years yet society only
| began broadly recognizing it as harmful during pregnancy in
| the 1970s. [0] I don't think the form of your argument holds
| any weight. Would you make the same claim regarding the use
| of alcohol during pregnancy?
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26137906/
| someguydave wrote:
| Women are not in a vacuum, their decisions impact all the
| people and babies around them and those people and babies
| have a right to an opinion.
| tristor wrote:
| > I really think all men should withhold all judgement of
| women, pregnant or not.
|
| No. The right to an opinion and to express it is not
| contingent on ones gender or gender expression. It is
| perfectly reasonable for people to make observations, conduct
| scientific research, form opinions, and discuss those
| opinions even if the outcome of such doesn't personally
| affect them. And, in point of fact, it's /strictly necessary/
| for societal level issues.
| asveikau wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=cannabis+psychosis
|
| People are not making this up. It's a risk that needs to be
| weighed.
|
| Acknowledging this fact is not the same as being in favor of
| prohibition or criminalization or saying it'll happen to
| everyone.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I asked a then-pregnant still-weed-smoking coworker of my
| fiancee about this, she said "it isn't that bad for the baby,
| at least compared to alcohol or meth", and another coworker
| (female, roughly same age) agreed that "meth and booze are
| really bad for pregnant women, but weed not so much". from the
| sound of things (this was on a car trip to a nearby Native
| American reservation where the then-pregnant girl's parents
| lived), among this strata of people at least, if you get
| pregnant, you should definitely stop drinking and consuming
| meth, but weed isn't a big deal. no idea how this entered the
| public subconscious but there you have it.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Addiction, self-medication (eg. pain/nausea relief), escapism,
| peer pressure. To name a few.
|
| I used to be sceptical about weed addiction, and then it
| happened to me. It was relatively difficult to quit even though
| the habit was severely impacting my work and social life. In
| the end not having any weed around helped a lot. If you have an
| easy endless supply, boy, you're in trouble.
|
| If you enjoy weed, consider having a strict limit (eg. max 1
| smoke per week). If you smoke every day, you might find
| yourself unable to quit when need arises (eg. pregnancy, yours
| or your partner's).
| mosseater wrote:
| Also, you know, doctor recommended medication. And not just
| the "weed doctors" do it either, my conservative neurologist
| even told me to smoke THC heavy marijuana.
|
| I smoke every day. It absolutely impacts my work and social
| life, as without it I'm a painful ball of irritation that
| would have to be on opiates to get anything done.
| mcculley wrote:
| Presumably, for the same reasons they drink alcohol and consume
| caffeine.
|
| Most parents are not thinking ahead.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think it's more addictive than people think. I've known a few
| people who I think have a problem, but they become violently
| confrontational if you say it _might_ be addictive for _some_.
| I may get comments and downvotes along these lines.
|
| I guess some people may also have some exposure from before
| they realize they're pregnant. That probably also happens with
| things like alcohol. I think I've heard some say that's not a
| big issue, though.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| > but they become violently confrontational if you say it
| might be addictive for some
|
| Going out on a limb here but it might be in the same spirit
| as a similar response to "Strong encryption is for child
| abuse and terrorism" / "Bittorrent is for pirating movies" in
| that it's true in some cases but is used as a popular
| discourse wedge to promote governmental overreach
| pier25 wrote:
| When someone mentions addiction people think heroin
| addiction, but yeah people can become psychologically
| dependent on cannabis too. I know I did, many years ago.
| [deleted]
| westmeal wrote:
| People are nuts.
| [deleted]
| nth_degree wrote:
| It can help with nausea.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Thalidomide helped with nausea too.
| 404mm wrote:
| One response I received was: "weed is natural and comes from
| the Earth". It's absolutely mind boggling how stupid people can
| be.
| withinboredom wrote:
| And water comes from burning fossil fuels too, but I doubt
| that water would be good for you. Ibuprofen comes from the
| bark of tree IIRC, but that pill is a lot better than the
| soup you'd have to eat to get not nearly the same effect.
| Everything is natural. I really hate that argument.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > Ibuprofen comes from the bark of tree IIRC
|
| This is salicylic acid, in a number of tree barks but most
| abundantly in white willow.
|
| The medication form is aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid.
| 404mm wrote:
| In moments when I'm not speechless, I usually just say "and
| so does Mercury and Uranium".
| vorpalhex wrote:
| "So are sharks and volcanoes..."
| [deleted]
| JamesBarney wrote:
| These association studies are near useless. Every positive
| behavior and positive outcome are correlated, and every bad
| behavior and outcome are correlated.
|
| Mothers who get high during their pregnancy are different from
| mothers who don't.
|
| A more informed one would be looking at women with seizures that
| are treated with cannabis and comparing them to women with the
| same disorder who aren't. There are still differences but they'd
| be smaller.
| scythe wrote:
| Unpaywalled paper on the same data, showing findings:
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| stefan_ wrote:
| And wouldn't you know it, the title does not match the
| findings:
|
| > Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the
| threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself.
|
| The linked article bizarrely focuses on cannabis, but they
| looked at "unplanned pregnancies", "maternal alcohol, marijuana
| and tobaccos use in early pregnancy", "pregnancy complications"
| and "birth complications". The only finding:
|
| > Children exposed to multiple common, adverse prenatal events
| showed dose-dependent increases in broad, clinically
| significant psychopathology at age 9-10.
|
| Where is the article lecturing us about the dangers of
| unplanned pregnancies so everyone can kneejerk react to it?
| (Also, why is this study mixing in _alcohol_ use, which is of
| course already strongly proven to lead to all kinds of
| disorders..)
| tedivm wrote:
| The amount of research over last decade has been huge, even
| outside of this. It used to be the only way companies could
| research cannabis was by getting really crappy samples from a
| government grow house, but with legalization the supply of
| research samples and the quality of researchers willing to work
| on it has grown considerably.
|
| This is a direct safety issue. I used to moderator one of the
| bigger cannabis subreddits and one of the bigger questions that
| always came up was whether it was safe to smoke while pregnant.
| The answer I always gave was that we just don't know, and so it
| should be avoided. The lack of research though meant that people
| couldn't make informed decisions, and the stereotype around
| cannabis being safe meant that people did not always err on the
| side of caution. Now there is something concrete we can point to.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Common sense says you shouldn't be smoking anything while
| you're pregnant and marijuana is no different.
|
| But your response was "we don't know"? I feel like I see this
| kind of stuff from weed people a lot. "Well there's no proof
| that it's _not safe_ "..
|
| irresponsible
| flatiron wrote:
| I think a lot of people think it's "safe" is it's been used
| for thousands of years and has relatively well tolerated.
| It's nice to get more specific info like this though.
| Bud wrote:
| Why are you intentionally misrepresenting the very clear
| comment you are responding to?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Just as a baseline, we know smoking cannabis is unsafe
| because it's _smoke_ going into your _lungs_. That's never
| healthy. _Any_ particulate inhalation is bad for your lungs.
| tedivm wrote:
| If that's what you think my response says then you didn't
| read it at all. I literally said that I would tell people "we
| just don't know, and so it should be avoided". Not "we don't
| know". I said "We don't know, so avoid it". That's a very
| different statement than what you're quoting- literally the
| exact opposite of your "it's not safe" quote.
| ironick09 wrote:
| The only thing that's irresponsible is your reading
| comprehension, re-read their comment.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... weed people...
|
| Your bias is showing.
| mc32 wrote:
| I wonder if it has impact on sperm integrity and men who are
| reproducing should abstain for some time as well prior to
| inseminating.
| michaelwww wrote:
| I read this right after I got back from the marijuana store where
| a pregnant woman was buying weed. It made me uncomfortable. It
| just seems risky to me to take intoxicants while the babies brain
| is forming.
| tedivm wrote:
| I think the real problem- and something I'm hoping more
| research can help with- is that marijuana is a medicine for a
| lot of people. It prevents seizures, reduces or stops
| migraines, and (this one is really important considering the
| context) reduces nausea. Sometimes people have to balance
| between a bunch of crappy options.
|
| This isn't always the case, of course, but it's hard to judge
| what someone is going through from the outside so I tend to
| just give the benefit of the doubt. What would be nice would be
| if we could figure out _why_ cannabis helps with these issues
| and provide a more direct treatment.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| A lot of medications need to be discontinued during
| pregnancy.
|
| All of the women I know who are bipolar absolutely do not
| want to become pregnant because they would need to stop
| taking all of their medication.
| tedivm wrote:
| Yeah- and with a lack of research available there are a lot
| of people who limited their cannabis intake or didn't
| reduce at all during pregnancy.
|
| A lot of this comes down to balancing risks- which is
| absolutely something that should be done while consulting a
| doctor. If someone is so nausea they can't even maintain
| weight, let alone gain that healthy baby weight, then it's
| possible a small amount of marijuana may be more healthy
| for them despite the risks.
|
| To be clear though I'm just advocating a lot more research
| on the subject, and personally would err on the side of
| caution when it comes to things that aren't heavily
| researched.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| To add to that it isn't just "serious" prescription
| medications that may need to be discontinued; a variety of
| OTCs from Aspirin to PeptoBismol can also pose a risk to
| anyone expecting.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Yes, in moderation, weed is probably harmless and maybe good
| for you. Getting high (aka, poisoning yourself), not so much.
| Bud wrote:
| Why do you assume that any and all forms of getting high
| involve poisoning?
| surement wrote:
| Getting high and poisoning yourself are not the same thing.
| Psychedelic mushrooms are not weak versions of toxic ones.
| pitaj wrote:
| I always give them to benefit of the doubt: assume they're
| buying it for someone else, probably their partner.
| googlryas wrote:
| My pregnant wife refuses to buy me beer from the grocery store
| because of observations from strangers like this.
| jjulius wrote:
| My wife has picked up marijuana for me while pregnant from a
| dispensary before because it was right next to another business
| that she was already at. Please don't be so quick to judge
| others.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I'm glad this research is being done. I don't use cannabis, but I
| also don't frown upon it. However some of the conversations on
| the use of cannabis recently have changed from "it's a drug, but
| it isn't that bad" to "it is completely harmless". Which in my
| opinion is very dangerous and could harm entire populations
| before we have enough research. In my opinion, it should be
| considered similar category as alcohol, cigarettes, fat and
| sugar, a national health issue and research needs to happen asap
| on various short term and long term effects.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis
| recently have changed from "it's a drug, but it isn't that bad"
| to "it is completely harmless"._
|
| Or even worse, "it's nothing but beneficial!". And yes, I'm a
| semi-regular "user"
| xattt wrote:
| The same sentiment can be applied to current psychedelics
| research.
| taurath wrote:
| Can you post a source for any claim that theyre harmless? I
| don't think any reputable researcher has ever said that,
| but they have started talking about potential for positive
| effects, which is a far cry from "if you take this it will
| ruin your life".
| kevinpet wrote:
| You're missing the point of the conversation if you think
| this is about "reputable researchers".
| irrational wrote:
| It's still a DUI if you drive on it. The week after it was
| legalized in my state, a person managed to put their car
| through the second story of a home. The toxicology report
| showed the only thing in their system was cannabis.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Cannibis can be in your system for weeks or months, so take
| the authority reports that the accident was caused by
| cannabis intoxication with a grain of salt, and assume that
| absent other evidence it might be that the user in this case
| wasn't high at the time.
|
| I'm not saying this to say no accidents has been caused by
| cannibis, but that there's currently no way to tell current
| level of cannabis intoxication. Authorities will use the lack
| of nuance in their favor.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > absent other evidence
|
| Perhaps a car embedded in the second floor of a house?
| ok_dad wrote:
| A traffic collision is not evidence of inebriation,
| though, since people get in collisions when not
| inebriated. I'm talking about someone following them that
| saw them weaving, not holding a phone, perhaps nodding
| asleep, or maybe even someone saw them smoking a joint,
| then a just-lit joint was found at the scene.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Fat is an essential macronutrient.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Fat includes transfat. This back-and-forth does an excellent
| job of underlining GPs point about those being complex
| subjects that require study and nuanced explanation.
| Bud wrote:
| It's not that complex, actually. The vast majority of fats,
| all the natural ones, basically, are fine. Healthy, even.
| The weirdass plastic fats created by injecting hydrogen
| into vegetable oil are not fine.
|
| Done! Was that really so nuanced? No. It was not.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Try explaining to an average person how they can identify
| which food products at the supermarket have noble-gas-
| fat-products in them and which don't.
| lolinder wrote:
| "Check the nutrition facts label. If it has any trans
| fat, put it back."
| kube-system wrote:
| Trans fats are now banned in the US so there's not much
| of a need to look.
| feet wrote:
| That's easy. The packages are labeled with nutrient
| information, don't eat any that contain any amount of
| trans fats.
|
| Also as a side note, hydrogen isn't a noble gas
| newswasboring wrote:
| I think this would mean eating nothing but home cooked
| meals or a 3x in grocery bill. I'm not even sure of the
| latter strategy
| Bud wrote:
| I know. I edited my comment to correct that. Apologies
| for the error, hydrogen fans!
| jamesssssss833 wrote:
| In a lot of ways in the US i see the issue here coming down to
| prohibition. If Marijuana was legal and regulated then the FDA
| could prosecute fraudsters that claim the drug is "completely
| hazard free miracle herb that doctors HATE".
|
| Of course irresponsible fools are taking advantage in a gap in
| the law to make short term profits.
| HereIGoAgain wrote:
| So much this. It's become so white washed that you would think
| it's actually good for you if you only listened to media.
| scythe wrote:
| The primary positive effect of cannabis in the general
| population is probably that it tends to interfere with alcohol
| consumption, due to excessive sedation. This probably explains
| the lack of negative population-level effects of cannabis
| legalization. The most concerning effect of cannabis is its
| tendency to increase heart rate.
|
| Quite a bit of research is available on the effects of cannabis
| use -- the problem is that people don't read it.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>the problem is that people don't read it.
|
| More likely, they probably can't wade thru the noise to find
| it - search cannabis and health and be prepared to search
| thru hundreds, if not ten's of thousands of pages of
| propaganda claiming that it is nothing but good for almost
| any health condition you have - real or imagined.
| robocat wrote:
| > The most concerning effect of cannabis is its tendency to
| increase heart rate.
|
| Can you tell me why you think heart rate is more concerning
| than the psychological effects? Effects which the paper
| itself mentions and you seem to downplay for some unobvious
| reason to me.
|
| For me, the difficulty is discerning causation from
| correlation. Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and
| many of them have obvious mental issues. I am interested in
| knowing the root cause of mental issues, because then we are
| given the opportunity to affect behaviours to improve
| people's lives. A correlation is often little help to anyone
| but other researchers.
|
| I didn't read the paper but the abstract didn't allude to any
| insight into causation versus correlation. If an abstract of
| a paper ignores that issue, then I often don't bother
| reading, because there is not enough value from studies
| measuring correlation (for my personal use for any
| information).
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of
| them have obvious mental issues
|
| If there's a causal link, I wonder in which direction is
| more common? I know kids from my neighborhood who now smoke
| a lot of weed. I think most of them had issues long before
| trying weed and weed was more of an escape for them, much
| like booze is for many.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of
| them have obvious mental issues
|
| Do they have actual, diagnosed "mental issues", or are you
| judging that some of their behavior is out of the norm for
| your experience and thus it must be a mental issue?
| nico wrote:
| Recently attended a lecture on Cannabis by a renowned
| researcher on the subject (the Director of the UCLA Center
| for Cannabis & Cannabinoids)
|
| The most adverse (proven) effects of Cannabis are:
|
| * Frequent bronchitis (for people that smoke it)
|
| * Risk of vehicle crashes
|
| * Low pregnancy weight, preterm birth, NICU
|
| * Mental health (associated risk of schizophrenia,
| depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, Cannabis use
| disorder)
|
| * Impaired learning, memory, attention
|
| * Drug-drug interaction (mostly for CBD - liver toxicity)
|
| That's the complete slide. Not once in the whole lecture were
| heart rate issues mentioned or asked about by the attendees.
|
| As you can see, there are plenty of adverse effects, but
| heart-related issues are not one of the main concerns.
|
| Do you have any sources for the research you mention and how
| concerning it is?
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I agreed with all of that except for fat. You need fat. You
| don't need any of the others.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I need alcohol to be sociable.
| virtuabhi wrote:
| Hello, Mr. Koothrappali :)
| [deleted]
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Could someone help me understand the mechanism of action that
| triggers mental problems from cannabis consumption? I recall it
| being a trigger for psychosis in some cases.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| only spitballing, but everyone has intrusive thoughts, and we
| tune them out to various degrees
|
| weed can be a kind of thought dis-inhibitor, and can take any
| thought that crosses your mind and make it the most important
| thought you've ever had (see also: thinking your stoned ideas
| are revolutionary inventions, until you sober up and realize
| you've re-invented the tea kettle)
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