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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis puts females in mood for love
Mark Henderson The Times
Tuesday 23 Jan 2001 CANNABIS is a potent female aphrodisiac that works by interfering with a “neural love triangle” of bodily chemicals that influence sexual behaviour, scientists have found. When female rats are given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient of cannabis and marijuana, they become much more receptive to the sexual attentions of males. But the drug is bad news for males: it can cause low sperm counts, reduce the size of the testicles and cut levels of the male hormone testosterone. When female rats are given large doses of the drug they become too intoxicated to perform. In experiments conducted at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, female rats were given doses of pure THC and placed in cages with sexually-active male rats. The scientists removed the ovaries of the female rats and injected them with replacement female hormones to ensure that natural variations in hormone levels could not affect differences in behaviour. When the female rats had been dosed with THC they became much more sexually responsive to the males. The changes in sexual behaviour hinge on the way that THC interacts with progesterone, a female sex hormone, and with dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter that allows signals to be sent from one neuron to another. When the team repeated the experiments on female rats treated with drugs to block the brain’s receptors for progesterone and dopamine, THC had no discernible effects on the animals’ sexual behaviour. The results suggest that cannabis forms the third side, with progesterone and dopamine, of a “neural love triangle” that can be a powerful aphrodisiac. The findings are published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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