Marijuana and Pregnancy

Marijuana and the Baby

Is it OK for a woman to take marijuana if she’s pregnant?

Please remember that marijuana crosses the placenta. The placenta is a network of blood vessels the baby uses to connect with the mother’s blood stream to nourish itself. That means when a mother get stoned while she’s pregnant, her baby does, too.

Marijuana and the Developing Fetus

Is it OK for a baby to get stoned while it's developing inside of the uterus? This is the time a child is creating its body. If the foundations of its body get influenced in this way while the baby’s still inside the womb, the root of all its body systems will get influenced by the cannabis and possibly get damaged from the beginning of its life.

There’s now direct evidence that marijuana causes actual chromosome damage. Using marijuana while pregnant can give a child developmental damage on both mental and physical levels. Studies have shown that if a woman uses marijuana during her pregnancy her baby may be smaller than if she didn’t. Smaller babies develop more health problems in general.

The most recent research shows that marijuana, especially new-strain marijuana and products that contain synthetic THC can create measurable effects on brain development even before the placenta forms.

And it is now known that using cannabis during pregnancy creates a reduction in neural cell adhesion molecules (NCAM), a protein important for maintaining proper neural connection and synaptic strength in the baby's developing brain...

Pregnant women who use cannabis may slightly increase the risk their unborn child will develop psychosis later in life...

Marijuana Can Take Away What the Baby Needs

From the viewpoint of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the presence of marijuana during pregnancy creates heat and poison that can irritate the baby. Since marijuana influences the kidney and Jing sexual essence systems in such profound ways, it can do two things to a child as it develops:

1) It may compromise the mother’s energy and the quality of the material that she can give to her child during this time.

2) It can aggravate and distort the development of the child’s brain, nervous and organ systems because of the heat and confusion of energy that the marijuana causes.

Regular cannabis exposure in rats during pregnancy can cause their offspring to have long-term cognitive deficiencies, asocial behavior, anxiety in the neonatal period and later in adulthood...

And speaking of rats and cannabis, this research may explain why some mothers strongly believe that cannabis use helps their babies instead of harming them...

Marijuana and Morning Sickness

I want to add that even though people use marijuana as a potent anti-nausea medication, it is not a good idea to use marijuana to treat the symptoms of morning sickness. This is because the earlier the child is in its development, the more potent the above effects may happen.

In short, with very few exceptions, there’s no good reason to take marijuana while pregnant, and every good reason not to.

This article was some of the original material that went on to become
Marijuana Syndromes
How to Balance and Optimize
the Effects of Cannabis
With Traditional Chinese Medicine

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Cannabis use during pregnancy is linked to increased fat mass percentage and fasting glucose levels in 5-year-old children...

Girls who use marijuana in their teens are more likely to give birth to premature babies-even years after they've stopped using it...

Use marijuana while pregnant, and your child is more likely to suffer sleep problems as much as a decade later...

As the use of marijuana is legalized in an increasing number of U.S. states, the number of people who use the drug daily is on the rise. This upward trend also holds up in women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, despite evidence that using marijuana could harm their babies...

Prenatal exposure to THC makes the brain's dopamine neurons hyperactive and increases sensitivity to the behavioral effects of THC during pre-adolescence...

More women are using cannabis both before and during pregnancy...

Up to 1/3 of pregnant women do not think that using cannabis can be harmful to their child...

Prenatal exposure to cannabis may cause meaningful changes in brain development that can negatively impact cognitive functioning into adulthood...

Marijuana exposure in the womb or during adolescence may disrupt learning and memory, damage communication between brain regions, and disturb levels of key neurotransmitters and metabolites in the brain...

Cannabis can continue to transfer into breast milk for up to six days after the mother uses cannabis...

University of Washington’s views on the use of marijuana during pregnancy and breastfeeding

A very important article on how smoking marijuana may affect the fetal brain

Exposure to exocannabinoids in teens may affect tendencies for drug use in their children, even if the exposure comes before they get pregnant...

Psychoyos and Vinod have recently shown that cannabis use and especially the new forms of cannabis can interfere with the first stages in the formation of the brain of the fetus even earlier than the first signs of pregnancy appear. This means that women may be harming their unborn children before they know they are pregnant...

Yes, I know about the work of Dr. Melanie Dreyer. This is my commentary on her famous Jamaica Study and how it has been misunderstood, misapplied and abused.

Now if you really want to get confused, read these articles on cannabis and pregnancy . Note in the commentaries how they skirt around the specific points that I have brought up here. I find the comment on ‘what a mellow baby’ to be very revealing. On the other hand, the woman’s story about her crippling morning sickness threatening the life of her unborn child compels us to consider under what extreme conditions cannabis might become a viable treatment option. Practitioners must compare benefits versus drawbacks with cannabis as they would with any medicine...

This new research demonstrates how exocannabinoids that come from ingested cannabis can negatively impact the formation and attachment of the placenta ...

“Consuming cannabis during pregnancy clearly results in defective development of nerve cells of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that orchestrates higher cognitive functions and drives memory formation...”

And yet, recent research has found that global motion perception is impaired by prenatal exposure to alcohol and improved significantly by exposure to marijuana ... (yes, you saw it here first)...

Infants exposed to cannabis in the womb were 77% more likely to be under weight at birth...

Marijuana abuse is associated with larger placental weight...


Cannabis exposure during pregnancy influences the development of the prefrontal cortex in the brain of the child...

and marijuana use is increasing in women of reproductive age...

If mothers use marijuana during the first 12 years of their child's life, if their children wind up using cannabis, they are more likely to start at an earlier age than children of non-using mothers...

For extensive details on how to balance and optimize the effects of cannabis using Traditional Chinese Medicine, please refer to

Marijuana Syndromes
How to Balance and Optimize
the Effects of Cannabis
With Traditional Chinese Medicine


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