Can you think of an overweight person who smokes marijuana on a regular basis? Chances are you can’t. Why? Graduate students from Michigan State University just completed a study that shows that people who smoke marijuana regularly are far less likely to gain weight despite of the munchies after smoking.
“Over a three-year period, all participants showed a weight increase, but interestingly, those who used marijuana had less of an increase compared to those that never used,” study co-author Dr. Omayma Alshaarawy, assistant professor of family medicine at Michigan State University, said in a statement. “Our study builds on mounting evidence that this opposite effect occurs.”
The study had 33,000 participants, and found that marijuana users measured a smaller average weight of two pounds compared to non-users. The difference held true across nearly the entire study group.
“An average two-pound difference doesn’t seem like much, but we found it in more than 30,000 people with all different kinds of behaviors and still got this result,” said Alshaarawy.
The fact that marijuana users are less likely to be obese also means that they are less likely to suffer from the diseases that usually derive from obesity such as diabetes and heart disease.
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