Drinking Coffee May Decrease The Effects Of Cannabis

Coffee and cannabis: two great tastes that go great together. But new research may have some bad news for collab enthusiasts (or at least the ones who like their gravy to be extra wavy): coffee may cancel out the effects of cannabis, and not just because coffee is an “upper” and cannabis is a “downer”.

In a new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, assistant professor of preventative medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine Marilyn Cornelis takes a look at how coffee consumption affects chemical levels in the blood. According to LiveScience, Cornelis and her team found that coffee had an effect on a total 155 metabolites in the blood, 34 of which “don’t even have names or known roles in the body.”

One of the known affected metabolites are what is known as endocannabinoids, “molecules that bind to cannabinoid receptors, which are found all over the nervous system, as well as in immune and endocrine tissue.” When you consume cannabis, the endocannabinoids in the plant bind to the receptors in your body, causing the sweet, sweet effect.

The research from Cornelis found a decreased number of endocannabinoid metabolites in persons who consume four to eight cups of coffee daily, which she posits may mean that coffee works to suppress endocannabinoids. But the nature of these effects remains unknown. Cornelis offers an alternative explanation for the lowers metabolites. From LiveScience:

The same endocannabinoids that declined with coffee also decrease when the body is under stress. It’s possible that the amount of coffee that participants were drinking (four to eight cups a day) caused stress, which led to a drop of endocannabinoid levels as some kind of protective measure.

The relation between coffee consumption and efficacy of cannabis is still a bit of a mystery, but as the new research shows, there is at least a correlation between drinking coffee and a decreased endocannabinoid effect. So if you’re looking to just get a good walking-around high going, maybe chug a lug of some batch brew beforehand.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via Dank Roast: Trichome Seattle Puts Weed In Coffee And We Tried It

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