How Does Medical Marijuana alleviate nausea in cancer?
How marijuana is processed in the brain and what it does exactly involves an extensive background in neuroscience, thus the explanation given next is an overview of some of the main events that take place when marijuana is ingested, smoked, or inhaled. The events focused on are the ones that are related to what causes the anti-nausea effect. Remedies that are not THC or marijuana based to alleviate nausea in chemotherapy aim to block the serotonin release into the synapse and into the postsynaptic neuron. Marijuana and THC do just that. Both block serotonin release and reuptake, causing the nausea effect to be eliminated. How this happens is explained further. There are two types of Cannabinoid receptors (THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana binds to these), CB1 receptors which are present throughout the central nervous system, and CB2 receptors which are located in the periphery nervous system, primarily on immunocytes (white blood cell capable of producing antibodies) a
