Let’s compare coffee and cannabis, two of our favorite things to take for increased focus, energy, and other effects. Caffeine is naturally present in over 60 different plants across the world. Coffee has been drunk since at least 1000 BC. Tea has been sipped for approximately 4000 years, according to legend. Chocolate, which also contains a little amount of caffeine, has been around for almost 4000 years – and was popularized in Europe during the 1500s after they first tasted it. Looking to try something new? Check out this.
Caffeine has been removed from its natural roots and is now produced in a white powder similar to cocaine. It’s also present in energy supplements, diet pills, and headache remedies.
Caffeine is included in headache medication because it causes headaches when you quit consuming it. When you stop suddenly, you get nauseated — and most often, a headache follows. As a result, they added caffeine to headache medicine since people are typically caffeine addicts and headaches are “feeding their Jones” and “providing them with a fix.”
Whay is it?
Cannabis is a genus of plants with psychotropic components, including Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. Once dried and harvested, it becomes one of the world’s most frequent recreational drugs. Cannabis is employed for its relaxing and soothing qualities as well as other medical uses such as chronic pain, inflammation, glaucoma, nausea, appetite stimulant addiction. Cannabis is made up of a variety of cannabinoids, with two of them being the most important: THC and CBD. The psychoactive component in cannabis is known as THC, which makes you feel “high.” The common connection between cannabis and pain, inflammation, seizures, and anxiety. The second most prevalent cannabinoid in cannabis has therapeutic qualities that are not produced by the brain’s natural endocannabinoid system; it’s commonly used to treat pain, inflammation, seizures, and anxiety. Marijuana has a wide range of physical, mental, and emotional effects, affecting regions such as the amygdala, cerebellum, hippocampus, cerebral cortex, and the endocannabinoid system. CBD and THC interact with these receptors via CB1 and CB2 cannabinoids to impact our bodies and minds. Cannabis is made up of various strains with varying amounts of terpenes and other compounds that gives it this incredibly complex yet still unknown plant.
The Effects of Cannabis vs Caffeine
We must look at the benefits and drawbacks of cannabis and caffeine in order to understand them. Caffeine is a stimulant that is used to fight lethargy, reduce drowsiness, reduce hunger, and improve attention and focus.
Cannabis may also act as a stimulant when the proper strain and quantity are taken. Cannabis’ many hundreds of distinct terpenes and cannabinoids, as well as its potential to function both an anxiolytic and a relaxant, have aided it earn a reputation as a performance-enhancing psychotropic substance. Humans are just starting to attempt to classify cannabis strains according to their effects in order to understand this plant’s true potential.
Weighing the Risks
Caffeine and cannabis are both low-risk medicines, yet they have significant differences. The first is the risk of dying from an overdose. While caffeine overdoses are uncommon, they do happen on a regular basis. An adult’s lethal dose of caffeine is between 3200 and 10,000 milligrams at once.
A cup of coffee generally has 80-180 milligrams of caffeine. Anti-sleep and diet medicines have a maximum dose of 300 milligrams. A “Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee with Turbo Shot” has a 436mg caffeine content. Crackheads2 coffee bean candy boxes contain 600 mg, with the warning label “one box per day.” An adult may overdo it if they consume more than six boxes at once.
You can find it in bulk quantities on Amazon. It comes in a box with 124 one-gram packages, which is enough to kill 12 people.
Although the number of caffeine overdoses is small, it has been rising in recent years as a result of energy drinks. Some researchers believe that many heart attack fatalities may be misdiagnosed caffeine intoxication deaths, raising the true death toll significantly.
There have been no confirmed cannabis overdose deaths since its introduction, as opposed to zero for marijuana. Even a little dose of cannabis, however, may produce an unpleasant experience, especially if one is unfamiliar with the side effects or under stress in their body.
If enough edible cannabis products are consumed, virtually everyone will be uncomfortable. Moderation is essential to avoiding undesirable side effects. When cannabis is smoked, very little quantities can have an impact almost immediately, allowing for “self-titration” or dosing. This is not the case with orally ingested medicines like caffeine.
Risks and Side Effects
There is little research on the combined influence of cannabis and caffeine. According to researchers, combining these substances may result in significant effects due to the adenosine and cannabinoid systems’ interactions, where coffee and cannabis act in the body.
The interaction between cannabis and caffeine is said to occur in the hippocampus, where adenosine and cannabinoid receptors are also present, according to the researchers behind this study. The attention and memory are controlled by these receptors.
Caffeine can exacerbate the negative effects of THC. This may explain why cannabis and caffeine are linked. However, further study is needed to verify these detrimental effects.