A long term health study shows that people who use marijuana are more prone to have prediabates during their middle age.
Mike Bancks, the lead author of the study from the University of Minnesota said that use of marijuana is associated with the development and prevalence of prediabetes.
Prediabetes is said to be the state where the body is having poor blood sugar control. Although the stage is not really considered as diabetes, it has a high chance of becoming Type 2 diabetes.
The study was conducted by examining the data from Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA). In the given data, 5,115 participants of ages 18-30 were recruited from 1985-1986 by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
The researchers then studied the information by associating self-proclaimed marijuana use to cases of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Each of the subjects' blood were also taken into sampling, after 12 hours without consuming foods.
Some factors such as race, sex, tobacco and alcohol used, educational level, medication use, psychological well-being, lifestyle like diet and exercise were also taken into account.
The results show that those individuals who are currently using marijuana have a 65 percent increased risk of acquiring prediabetes. On the other hand, those participants who admitted that they were using marijuana 100 times or more, have a 49 percent increased chance of having prediabetes.
Also, more than 50 percent of the patients who have no history of prediabetes have developed the said medical stage after they used marijuana.
The authors of the study stated that although the results show that marijuana is one of the factor that relates to prediabetes, they cannot pinpoint how the plant can really affect the person to have an increased risk of the said condition.
The outcome of the research is available in Diabetologia, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
