Revealed - why smoking dope gives people ‘the munchies’

Scientists have finally revealed why people feel an insatiable hunger for snacks after smoking dope.

The effect - known as ‘the munchies’ - is very real, the Yale University team says, but it works on brain cells, rather than users’ stomachs.

There is also no cure, except for eating vast quantities of snack food.

Chemicals in the marijuana ‘reverse’ a signal in the brain, which normally tells you that you’re full and you should stop eating - making smokers feel like they’re hungry.

Tests on mice found that marijuana ‘fools’ the system which normally tells (both mice and men) when they are full.

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The research found that cannabinoids (the active ingredient in marijuana and cannabis) actually increase the activity of brain cells which normally suppress appetite - but flip them ‘into reverse.’

The neurons, instead of emitting their usual appetite-killing neurochemicals, emitted completely different ones.

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Called endorphins, they traveled to the brain’s appetite-control region, the hypothalamus, stimulating the mice’s desire to eat.

‘Neurons that normally shut down eating instead promoted it, even when the mice were full,’ Horvath said in an interview. ‘Marijuana fools the brain’s feeding system.’