Are Women More Sensitive To THC
It does with alcohol, but does marijuana affect women differently?
While we can put together people in general categories – men, women, Indian, left-handed, each person is slightly different…and some categories are different than others. So are women more sensitive to THC in cannabis? Reactions to alcohol is different between women and men, some South Asians are effected differently than North Americans with alcohol….so what about with cannabis?
Science shows biological differences in body structure and chemistry lead most women to absorb more alcohol and take longer to metabolize it. After drinking the same amount of alcohol, women tend to have higher blood alcohol levels than men, and the immediate effects of alcohol usually occur more quickly and last longer in women than men.
While more studies need to be done, current ones trend toward women being more sensitive to THC than men. Meaning they tend to have a bigger reaction to less. Very similar to alcohol.
One study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology found women who had consumed less of a cannabis, had lower levels of THC in blood, yet experienced the same acute effects as men. The key take-away is that women may need a lower dose of THC to get to the same degree of intoxication as men. Females tend to progress to tolerance and dependence faster than males after initiation of regular cannabis use.
One theory researchers posed is estrogen, a primarily female hormone, could influence the metabolism of THC. Levels of estrogen could account for the differences spotted in the study and for the reactions that women experience when consuming THC.
Most studies are based on male participants, so the data may not hold true in females.” Historically, subjects in animal and human studies. across all of science have been male. Researchers have claimed that it is too difficult to control for the fluctuating hormones in the female body. It is important for physicians and scientists to recognize past studies have excluded females, leaving our understanding of medicine with a bias towards men. With women representing 50% of the population, it is a critical data point.
