In the September 2018 edition of JAMA Psychiatry, researchers of the King’s College study in London, found that cannabidiol, one of the active compounds in the cannabis plant, significantly reset brains inclined towards psychosis back to normal states. The study was a double-blind study with thirty-three participants who were at high risk of psychosis and had not previously been prescribed antipsychotic medication. Nineteen healthy subjects served as controls. Six participants in the high-risk group received a single oral dose of 600 mg of CBD daily, and seventeen participants in the high-risk group received a placebo. The control participants were given neither substance. All participants were studied and monitored closely over the course of 40 months by receiving a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, or fMRI, while at the same time performing a verbal learning task.

The primary measures of the study were levels of brain activation during verbal encoding and recall, as evidenced by increased blood oxygen flow to specific regions of the brain. Before CBD treatment, the brains of the high-risk group were identified as functionally different from healthy brains, displaying abnormal activity in the caudate region (shown in red/yellow), a part of the midbrain associated with a of psychosis. The team of researchers found that a single, large dose of CBD quickly reset brain activity in the caudate region back to normal levels.

How remarkable is that?

We’ve been told all along, without any science to back it up, that cannabis is actually the cause of psychosis. Another lie that permeated the mainstream for many years.

Dr. Sagnik Bhattacharyya, one of the authors of the study, noted how traditional psychoses medications, developed in the 1950s, do not meet the needs of most patients today. “Our results have started unravelling the brain mechanisms of a new drug that works in a completely different way to traditional antipsychotics.” (source)

This is why for mentally ill patients, it could be a great option to grow your own medical cannabis legally.

What’s great about cannabis compared to other prescription medication, is that it has no side effect and is virtually harmless. It’s a much better option. This is not the only positive effect components of cannabis can have on the brain, it’s showing promises for a number of brain degeneration related diseases, like Alzheimer’s. You can read more about that, in detail, here.