Millions of Americans use marijuana to sleep, but new study raises troubling questions
"These findings raise important questions about whether habitual marijuana use is a sustainable strategy for managing sleep problems," he added.
Key points
- (He was not involved with the new study.) "In other words, someone may believe marijuana is helping them sleep, while objective measurements suggest otherwise." Researchers considered multiple outside factors including age, race, sex, smoking frequency, alcohol consumption, physical activity and more.
- Even with these factors taken into account, the study found a consistent correlation between cannabis use and poorer objectively measured sleep.
- The findings of the study, which included 1,266 participants, showed that both lifetime and recent cannabis users objectively had worse sleep quality, although they did not report their sleep to be worse.
Marijuana may be making sleep quality worse, despite its widespread use as a sleep aid, a recent Northwestern Medicine study found.
AMERICA HITS MAJOR MARIJUANA MILESTONE AS DAILY WEED USE SURPASSES DAILY DRINKING In middle age, participants wore a sleep monitor on their wrist for a week and filled out surveys about their sleep quality.
Additional details
- A study of nearly 450,000 American adults, for instance, linked cannabis use to an increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.
- The study also found there was a much higher chance that recent cannabis users would sleep longer than eight hours per night.
- "Our data do not support the belief that cannabis is helpful as a sleep aid," said senior study author Mercedes R.
- "As cannabis becomes increasingly available and accepted, it's important to better understand its long-term associations with health behaviors such as sleep," Carnethon added.
- The study discusses the differences between objective and subjective reports of sleep quality.
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