Why could coffee be the opposite of cannabis?

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• The current study is based on an experiment in which 47 participants were given between 0-8 cups of coffee a day, after which their blood was analysed.
• Coffee and marijuana act on the body in areas where their effects overlap.

What does coffee have in common with cannabis? According to a new study, your morning cup causes a drop in the levels of certain substances that are linked to the body's system for responding to marijuana.

The amount of these substances – metabolites found in the endocannabinoid system – decreased in people who drink 4 to 8 cups of coffee a day, according to a study published on 15 March 2018 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.

Endocannabinoids are molecules that bind to cannabinoid receptors, which are found throughout the nervous system, as well as in immune and endocrine tissue. The body makes its own endocannabinoids, but it also responds to foreign cannabinoids, such as those found in the leaves of plants of the genus Cannabis.

Coffee suppresses the endocannabinoid chemicals that smoking marijuana increases, said Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the new research.

In theory, this could mean that coffee can produce the opposite effects to cannabis on the endocannabinoid system, Cornelis told Live Science.

Coffee in the blood

The research looked at the feelings and behaviour that coffee induces, in comparison with cannabis, based on the rise and fall of chemicals in the blood after drinking coffee. Endocannabinoids were just one group of chemicals – or metabolites – in which the researchers found some change.

The coffee blend changed 115 different metabolites in the blood. 34 of these metabolites do not even have a name or a known role in the body. Another 82 known metabolites play a role in 33 different biological processes.

Cornelis and her team focused on 5 of these specific biological processes, where numerous metabolites seemed to cluster. Two pathways were expected: one was xanthine metabolism – a set of processes that includes the metabolism of caffeine, which made sense, as the body naturally metabolises the caffeine in coffee after it is consumed. The second pathway was benzoate metabolism, which is involved in the breakdown of other compounds in coffee called polyphenols. The compounds are broken down by microbes that live in the gut, Cornelis says.

The gut microbiome is under increased scrutiny for its role in health, so the finding is an interesting one, she said.

But the real surprises were three other metabolic processes that had never been linked to coffee. Endocannabinoids were grouped in one of these processes.

"What we see here is that the systems affected by coffee and cannabis overlap," said Cornelis. "This could mean that drinking coffee in combination with marijuana in your system could create interacting effects.

Although the nature of these interactions is not yet clear. Typically, the endocannabinoids that decreased with coffee also decrease when the body is under stress. It is possible that the amount of coffee the participants drank (4-8 cups a day) caused stress, which led to a drop in endocannabinoid levels as a kind of protective measure.

Cornelis and her team also found that coffee consumption increases the concentration of steroid metabolites in the blood, possibly because coffee contains plant steroids called phytosterols. "In particular, the metabolites that increase are associated with the excretion of steroids, so it is possible that coffee could increase the breakdown of steroids in the body. (Greater breakdown of steroids would lead to greater excretion of steroids)".

What this finding means for human health remains a mystery. Some steroid processes have links to certain types of cancer, says Cornelis, and the link between coffee itself and cancer is blurred, so the steroid finding could provide new scope for understanding whether coffee consumption affects the likelihood of a person developing cancer.

"The final cluster of metabolites altered by coffee consumption consisted of acylcholine fatty acids, which may be linked to the endocannabinoid pathway. But the changes there are the most mysterious of all. It is a new set of metabolites that we really cannot explain," added Cornelis.

Coffee and health

It is no surprise that the study raises more questions than answers. Cornelis went into the research looking for new links between coffee and health. "A lot of research relates coffee drinking to health effects – so much so that headlines in magazines such as "Coffee is good for you / Coffee is bad for you" are almost a cliché.

"But these are just statistics. The aim of my research is to understand the causal reasons that link coffee to these outcomes."

The current study is based on a years-old clinical trial conducted in Finland, in which 47 people who regularly drank coffee were asked not to drink any coffee at all for one month, to drink 4 cups a day the next month, and to consume 8 cups a day in the final month of the study.

All the participants drank the same medium-roast arabica blend, which is also the most popular type of coffee in the United States. Cornelis and her team used the blood of these participants to test 733 metabolites.

The same people were also tested for changes in their lipid and protein levels, which Cornelis is studying further. She also hopes to use other data from large population studies that contain information on coffee consumption to find out whether the same metabolites change in the wider population.

"It would be interesting to find out whether any genetic differences play a role in the response to coffee," she said.

Sources: study, image: www.merryjane.com, www.GFarma.news