Cannabis and Protein Synthesis: The Effect of Marijuana on Your Body's Building Blocks

Proteins are vital building blocks that do everything from building muscle to fighting infection in your body. Your body creates these proteins through the process of protein synthesis.

How this all Applies to Cannabis

Cannabis contains compounds called cannabinoids, with THC and CBD being the most well-known. When you consume cannabis, these cannabinoids enter your bloodstream and begin to interact with a system in your body called the endocannabinoid system. This system is made up of receptors throughout your body.

Cannabis has more than 100 cannabinoids and each cannabinoid modulates the endocannabinoid system (ECS). ECS modulation influences a variety of cellular activity including protein synthesis. Cannabinoids bind to the receptor and initiate an intracellular signaling cascade, which can then modulate the mechanisms of mRNA translation, resulting in proteins being generated.

Cannabis and Your Body’s Protein Making Factory

The receptors are the intriguing part; when these cannabinoids activate the receptors, they may change how your body processes proteins in several interesting ways:

Muscle Building: Some research suggests that cannabinoids may affect the signals that stimulate muscle protein synthesis. This is especially interesting for athletes and fitness enthusiasts that are always looking to maximize muscle growth.

One short-term consequence could be a reduction in anabolic signaling after acute use of cannabis to changes in stress hormone levels. Another example would be that chronic use of cannabis and cannabinoids may reduce inflammation and influence recovery, thus influencing protein synthesis.

Nerve cell communication: Your brain uses proteins to help the nerve cells communicate. Cannabis has the potential to affect the synthesis of these proteins, which helps account for some of the effects cannabis can have for memory, mood, and cognition.
Immune Response: Cannabis can influence the body’s production of proteins related to inflammation and immune function.
Appetite Modulation: Ever wonder why cannabis makes you “have the munchies”? Because some of the proteins related to appetite signaling in the brain.

Manipulating Synaptic Plasticity

In neural tissue, cannabis compounds that modulate protein synthesis can influence synaptic plasticity (e.g., how neural connections are either weakened or strengthened). Cannabinoids can modulate long-term potentiation and long-term depression by localized drug effects on protein synthesis at the synapse. These cellular effects in neurons can further explain the effects of cannabis on cognition and memory.

The Complicated and Variable Relationship

Cannabis use and the subsequent interaction with protein synthesis is not a straightforward relationship. There are many variables playing into use and experience. Below are just a few of the controversies:

The strain and strain cannabinoid profile
The quantity and frequency dose
Individual body chemistry
If consuming cannabis while exercising or during recovery from exercise, etc.

As the science of marijuana rises and more singular, double-blind research studies are outputted, we will understand more about the impacts of cannabis on these very building blocks of life, and if we can harness those interactions for productive healthcare interventions with treatment and recreation.