THE ESSENTIAL
- In France, the consumption of cannabis represents 80% of the use of all drugs.
- 1.2 million French people consume it regularly.
Smoking weed regularly causes our bodies to age faster, according to a new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Epigenetic clock
The rate at which we age does not only depend on the passage of time: environmental factors also play a key role, and these external influences lead to changes in the expression of some of our genes. Armed with this knowledge, scientists have recently developed a tool called “epigenetic clock”, which analyzes DNA methylation patterns and helps determine a person’s biological age.
The authors of the study cited at the beginning of the article therefore decided to use this new method to determine whether the fact of smoking cannabis led to a discrepancy between the epigenome of an individual and his real age.
Heavy smokers more marked
After analyzing the genes of 154 Americans, they found that by the time they reached their 30s, regular cannabis smokers tended to display patterns of gene activation that exceeded their age. Another lesson: heavy consumers showed the highest rate of acceleration of their biological clock.
“Epigenetic aging also depended on the recency of marijuana use: the closer in time it was, the more influence it had on the organism,” add the researchers. “These results indicate a causal role of cannabis use in epigenetic aging,” they conclude.
