Is Glucose a
Cannabinoid?
the health professions). Of course
the cognitive impairments that follow take years or decades to manifest after the metabolic diseases
are expressed, but that in no way
reflects the true sequence of causation.
One of the least understood effects
of refined carbohydrates and sugar
consumption is the effect on hunger. Indeed these foods make us
hungrier shortly after consumption
than before. Why?
In 2011 Seul Ki Lim and team
at Chonnam National University,
South Korea, examined the effect
of hyperglycaemia on retinal pigment cells (these are classical glial
cells that pump glucose into the
retina – exactly as do cerebral
glial cells). They found that hyperglycaemia induces apoptosis by
suppressing the FAAH 1 enzyme
that degrades endogenous cannabinoids, thus activating cannabis
CB1 receptors that suppress the
cerebral glucose pump – the glutamate/glutamine cycle. In other
words, glucose as hyperglycaemia
acts as a cannabinoid and replicates
cannabinoid-driven ‘munchies’. In
this sense hyperglycaemia acts as
a cannabinoid signalling system,
deprives the brain of energy, and
upgrades the orixegenic (appetite)
hormones.
The eye is an outpost of the brain
and retinal glial cells provide an
excellent model of the effect of
hyperglycaemia and hyperinsulinism on glial cells, and of cerebral
energ 䁵