A new study from Oregon State University suggests frequent cannabis users may wake up with elevated stress hormones already circulating in their bodies, challenging the common belief that weed helps people relax.
Researchers at the Corvallis, Oregon, school examined the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the body’s central stress-response system, and found a potential “dysregulation” in cortisol among regular marijuana users. The findings were published in the journal Cannabis.
Associate Professor Anita Cservenka, 47, of OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, led the investigation. She explained that the team focused on the cortisol awakening response, or CAR, which measures how the body primes itself for daily stress.
“CAR is the cortisol rise that all people experience in the morning, peaking around 30 minutes after they wake up,” Cservenka said.
The measurement works by comparing cortisol levels immediately upon waking against levels taken roughly 30 minutes later. That difference reveals how aggressively the body mobilizes for anticipated stress.
The OSU team found that cannabis users started with higher baseline cortisol numbers right after waking. However, the actual increase between the two measurements remained similar between users and non-users.
“Our research suggests cortisol levels upon awakening may serve as a neurobiological marker of problematic cannabis use, and that connection needs to be investigated further,” Cservenka said.
She noted that earlier research by other scientists had found a blunted CAR in frequent cannabis users, but her team failed to replicate that result. “Earlier studies by other researchers found CAR to be blunted in frequent cannabis users, but we didn’t replicate that finding, which suggests there is a lot of nuance that could be related to analytic strategies and sample characteristics,” she said.
The discrepancy points to complex variables in how marijuana interacts with individual biology and how studies are designed.
Cservenka was careful to limit the conclusions that can be drawn from the current data. “We would need to study the same groups of people over a longer period of time to understand any cause and effect relationship, but we think this provides an important starting point,” she said.
Still, she outlined a troubling possibility for people who reach for cannabis to manage tension. “It’s reasonable to think that individuals who use cannabis often may have impairments in their daily stress rhythms – and that a dysregulated stress system could in turn lead individuals into a cycle of more cannabis use,” she added.
The cycle she describes would mean users smoke to feel better, potentially throw off their natural stress regulation, then feel compelled to smoke more to cope with the resulting imbalance.
The study arrives as marijuana consumption climbs nationally. Federal data shows 29 percent of Americans aged 19 to 30 had used cannabis within the last 30 days, a figure that continues trending upward.