Diet + The Endocannabinoid System

If you guys are getting bored with the sciency stuff just tell me okay? The more we learn about it, the more we want to spread it around and help others understand the importance of feeding our Endocannabinoid System what it needs: CANNABINOIDS. I am most passionate about bringing these ideals to our nay-sayers and skeptics; as you all have most likely noticed.

Stress response, glucose metabolism, and intestinal function are three of the many parts of our bodies that is strongly effected by the endocannabinoid system. If you're unfamiliar with what this system is/does, refer back two posts ago! I choreographed some content specifically to lay it all out there where this particular system is concerned.

ANYWHO.

Cannabis has been a friend to humankind since before the written word, providing fiber for cordage and cloth, seeds for nutrition, and roots, leaves and flowers for ritual and healing. During the Neolithic period, our ancestors discovered uses for every part of cannabis, which was one of the first agricultural crops, perhaps the first, ever to be grown and harvested some 12,000 years ago.

Agriculture, strictly speaking, is not a natural phenomenon. It is an expression of human ingenuity, an invention that has been described as the basis—literally the ground—of modern civilization. “The onset of agriculture was probably one of the most dramatic and important developments in human history,” writes Swiss scientist Jürg Gertsch, who explores the profound consequences of dietary changes brought on by food cultivation in a recent article in the British Journal of Pharmacology, entitled Cannabimimetic phytochemicals in the diet – an evolutionary link to food selection and metabolic stress adaptation?

Gertsch’s provocative thesis is that chronic metabolic disorders, currently a worldwide pandemic, are rooted in “a mismatch between ancient genes and high caloric diets” that ensued with the introduction of agriculture. “The multimillion year evolutionary process during which nearly all genetic change reflected the life circumstances of our ancestors [was] suddenly disturbed” when “carbohydrate farming” supplanted the “hunter-gatherer diet rich in animal food,” says Gertsch, who maintains that “the interplay between diet and the endocannabinoid system” is key to understanding today’s obesity/diabetes crisis and its potential remediation. I have wondered as of late how many actual American physicians are familiar with and/or teach about the endocannabinoid system. I would like to hope, as articles such as this take their spin around the internet, it will be more common.

The endocannabinoid system, an ancient biological signaling network, regu