A mysterious cannabis-related illness is turning up in emergency rooms.

People are getting sick from a new disease caused by weed.

So today, we're going to explain the science behind what is going on and whether or not it's gonna impact marijuana legalization around the world.

Because as a stoner, me scared.

The disease is called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, and it was first described in the early 2000s when a handful of marijuana users ended up in Australian emergency rooms with uncontrollable vomiting.

Ever since then, the disease has been increasing.

For example, in Ontario, Canada, where I live between January 2014 to January 2021, there was a 13-fold increase in people ending up in the ER from cannabis-induced vomiting syndrome

In Colorado, where marijuana is legalized, there was a 29% increase in vomiting-related emergency room visits from 2014 to 2019.

At this time is when doctors started to notice these cannabis users would "scromit," which means they were screaming while vomiting.

It was then understood that these cannabis users kept vomiting even though they didn't have enough food left in them to throw up, which led to the creation of this weird noise that the doctors called scromit.

Now, scromiting may be one of the first indications that a patient who has come to the ER, may have this new weed disease.

So what is happening here?

Why is marijuana making people sick?

Well, it has to do with your endocannabinoid system.

It's a widespread neurobiology system in your body that allows you to maintain homeostasis, AKA the balance in your body that allows you to live.

If you become stressed, it helps you to physiologically relieve it.

If you swallow a toxin, the endocannabinoid system will help you vomit it back up.

This is all to keep you at homeostasis.

The healthy baseline that you as an organism needs to maintain life.

It is controlled by natural neurotransmitters in your body called cannabis, which act on receptors such as the CB1 receptor in your brain.

The thing is that marijuana contains molecules that mimic these cannabinoids.

Without marijuana, cannabinoids circulate at lower quantities in your body.

But when you ingest marijuana, you create an influx of cannabinoids to your system, such as the psychoactive component, THC, which resembles a natural neurotransmitter and nide.

This creates neuronal activity in certain parts of your brain that make you feel high, causing thoughts, imagination and perception to magnify.

But since the endocannabinoid system affects other aspects of homeostasis such as sleep, mood, appetite, anxiety, or nausea, these things will be affected as well when you consume marijuana.

Researchers think that the over stimulation of the endocannabinoid system in high users of marijuana leads to a derangement in your body's intrinsic control of nausea, anxiety and vomiting.

This has led to this new disease called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.

So, physiologically, how exactly does it work?

Well, cannabis consumption modulates serotonin in areas of the brain that control nausea and vomiting.

So, at low doses, it can actually be therapeutic for patients undergoing chemotherapy in order to relieve them of their nausea.

But in large amounts over long periods of time, the cannabis overstimulates your CB1 receptors and your endocannabinoid system stops working properly.

Essentially, your ability to maintain homeostasis becomes deregulated.

For example, if you consume too much marijuana when you are nauseous, the body may have a hard time shutting off the nausea.

If you are stressed or anxious, your endocannabinoid system now has a hard time bringing you back down to baseline.

This is what can now lead to this uncontrollable, stressed and vomiting state known as the cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.

On top of this, we know that marijuana can affect your stomach.

Ever heard of the munchies.

Researchers found that marijuana increases activity in parts of your brain that promote hunger.

One study found that smoking marijuana leads to significant decreases in peptide tyrosine tyrosine, which is a gut hormone that inhibits food intake.

As well Marijuana is known to increase the hunger, hormone, ghrelin, and important hormone produced by your stomach.

This can lead to the munchies. Yes.

But again, if you consume too much of this cannabis, researchers see that the first symptoms of this syndrome is a decrease in appetite that slowly leads to this vomiting state.

Suffering from this disease depends on a variety of factors such as diet, age, the size of your body.

But most importantly, how and how often you consume marijuana.

One study looked at people who had the cannabis vomiting disease versus people who didn't, and the amount of marijuana consumed in order for the study to work was 4 grams of marijuana per day.

That's about eight large joints per day.

So you can now see this is a disease that is happening in people who are consuming a lot of marijuana.

Now, most of the research on this new disease is coming out of places where marijuana is legalized.

In Alberta, the amount of cannabis-induced syndrome patients in the ER went from 15 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 32 per 100,000 people in 2020.

But this leads to another important statistic about how this could be affecting younger people more.

In Alberta, if you look just at the ages of 16 to 24-year-olds coming into the ER, with this disease, 600 out of 100,000 of them have this cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.

That's a lot and it could be because the endocannabinoid system in younger people is actually more sensitive, or it could just be that 16 to 24-year-olds are consuming the most amount of marijuana because that has been the trend in Canada for many years.

If these trends continue, you will be hearing a lot about this disease in the future.

The only way that we now know how to stop it or cure it or help it is to decrease the amount of marijuana the person is consuming or cut it out completely.

But I am well aware of how hard this is.

You can watch our video here about quitting marijuana.

It is a seriously challenging thing to do.

Does this mean that legalization will be halted?

I'm unsure about this in Canada, where I live where marijuana is legalized.

So is alcohol, so are cigarettes, so are vapes. Alcohol, for example, kills way more people than marijuana.

You can overdose on alcohol, you cannot overdose on marijuana.

Right now, researchers don't think that legalization will be stopped, but we need to be aware of this new disease.

Homeostasis in your body is important. Your endocannabinoid system is important. Playing with it by consuming a lot of marijuana is going to be affecting your life.

If you consume too much marijuana, your body will lose its ability to control sleep, mood, anxiety and vomiting.

As someone who consumes a lot of weed, I think this information is extremely fascinating and important because we need to understand that these things are going on to make the proper decisions for our lives as well.

We need a lot more researchers on this topic.

We need money being funded towards this because it's a new disease and all this information is extremely new.

Thank you so much for watching. Share this with your stoner friends and we'll see you soon for a new science video.