Despite the munchies, the urge to eat after smoking pot, research has concluded that marijuana users may have healthier weights than those who do not use the drug.
A paper was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology where experts from Michigan State University found that people who regularly consume marijuana are less likely to be overweight or obese when compared to non-users.
“Over a three-year period, all participants showed a weight increase, but interestingly, those who used marijuana had less of an increase compared to those that never used,” study co-author Dr. Omayma Alshaarawy, assistant professor of family medicine at Michigan State University, stated. “Our study builds on mounting evidence that this opposite effect occurs.”
The Body Mass Index (BMI) of 33,000 participants had been looked at for the study.
“An average two-pound difference doesn’t seem like much, but we found it in more than 30,000 people with all different kinds of behaviors and still got this result,” said Alshaarawy.
“There’s too many health concerns around cannabis that far outweigh the potential positive, yet modest, effects it has on weight gain,” Alshaarawy added. “People shouldn’t consider it as a way to maintain or even lose weight.”
