A study funded by the National Institutes of Health that looked to develop an app to use exercise to reduce marijuana dependency in young adults ended Tuesday.
NIH, through its National Institute on Drug Abuse, awarded a $357,750 grant to State University of New York at Buffalo for the project “Use of Exercise to Reduce Young Adult Marijuana Use: There is an App for That.” The grant started on July 1, 2013, and ended June 30. The funds, which began to flow on July 1, 2014, also expired.
“Currently, marijuana is the most popular illicit drug, but there are few effective interventions to help young adults (age 18-25 years) to reduce their [marijuana] intake and avoid negative consequences, including dependence,” the grant reported.
The university’s study planned to use personalized feedback from teens about marijuana use with a smartphone app that promoted exercise in an effort to lower young adults’ dependence on marijuana.
The program’s first stage included a study to “develop and initially test an innovative intervention” for young adults who used marijuana more than three times a week. In 2012, the Partnership at Drugfree.org reported that one in 10 teens said they smoked marijuana more than 20 times a month.
The grant noted that “the intervention includes elements from the Marijuana Check-Up, a [motivational interviewing]-based brief intervention that has shown promise for reducing marijuana use.”
The Marijuana Check-Up allows users of the drug, who range from content to dissatisfied with their experience, to voluntarily take stock of their use. It is derived from “The Drinker’s Check-Up,” which proved beneficial to alcohol abusers.
The project also attempted to find ways to incorporate exercise into the programs. The program did so by creating an app that incorporated multiple workouts that a marijuana user could choose.
“Our research also has shown that short (i.e., 10-minute) bouts of moderate or intense exercise reduce craving/urges to use [marijuana]. Exercise interventions have successfully reduced use of illicit substances, such as tobacco and alcohol, but have not been adequately tested for [marijuana] use,” the grant stated.
Many people looking to kick their alcohol or drug addictions have found exercise an effective method for helping to maintain their abstinence from addictive substances. A National Institute on Drug Abuse study found that sedentary teens are more likely to use drugs than teens who exercise.
Studies also indicate that exercise is effective because of the chemicals that the human body releases with exertion — endorphins and endocannabinoids. Endorphins can act as a natural high and endocannabinoids behave like marijuana and enhance the high. Exercise also has the added benefit of reducing stress, which is known to increase cravings for cigarettes or alcohol.
The university’s agenda included “four, 60-minute, in-person sessions composed of MCU contest (e.g., personalized feedback) as well as a smartphone application that promotes exercise/physical activity as an alternative to [marijuana] use,” the grant said.
NIH notes that some long-term effects of marijuana range from a reduction of memory to affecting brain connections. The agency also says that teens who used marijuana heavily lose an average of eight IQ points between 13-38-years-old.
