Munchies in English, “foncedalle” in French. Whether you are a cannabis user or not, this feeling of hunger that follows the consumption of a joint is a well-known phenomenon. And a team of researchers has just shed light on how it works…
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One in two adults have already consumed cannabis in France and have therefore probably experienced what is commonly called “la foncedalle”, this sensation of a pasty mouth and irrepressible hunger which pushes consumers to eat everything and nothing. anything after smoking a joint. If you were wondering why this phenomenon exists, you’ve come to the right place.
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Stomach or brain?
A recent study has just highlighted how cannabis makes you hungry. Verdict: nothing to do with the stomach. The drug actually acts on specific neurons, which normally fire when you anticipate eating tasty foods. By using a cannabis vaporizer on mice, coupled with calcium imaging techniques, which demonstrate the depolarization of neurons – understand their activation -, and tools from genetic manipulation, which make it possible to activate and deactivate neural networks as they wish, scientists have highlighted the effects of cannabis on certain cells that govern our appetite.
They showed that exposure to cannabis specifically activated AgRP neurons to Agouti related protein neuronneuroncells present in the hypothalamus, which produce a neuropeptide playing a crucial role in food intake, counterbalancing the effects of other moleculesmolecules anorecticsanorectics, such as melanocortin. In other words, and even more simply put, when it is secreted, it makes us hungry. To ensure the involvement of these neurons in the foncedalle mechanism, they inhibited them using a virusvirus who was responsible for targeting them. In mice whose AgRP neurons were inhibited, cannabis no longer had any significant effects on their food intake, which clearly demonstrates that it is through these cells that cannabis acts on our feeling of hunger.
A mystery finally solved?
These results add to those of numerous other studies, which have, for years, attempted to establish the lightlight on this surprising phenomenon. One of them, published in 2014 in the journal Nature Neurosciencesuggests in particular that the THCTHC, the flagship molecule of cannabis, would sharpen our perception of smells and taste. But it is quite possible that with AgRP neurons, researchers have discovered the ultimate key to this great mystery. Bonus point: this research allows us to learn more and more about the neurophysiological mechanisms of our food intake. Another recent study, published in November 2023 in the journal Nature, showed that satiety was a sequential process, with neurons responsible for adapting our behavior in the very short term and others in the long term. We must hope that this type of discovery can be translated into clinical progress against diseases such as obesity, anorexia nervosa or malnutrition in pathologiespathologies serious as the cancercancer.
