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According to the results of a new study conducted by researchers from the University and CHU of Bordeaux and Inserm, cannabis would have harmful effects on the sleep of students. The explanations of an author of the study, Dr. Julien Coelho.
Cannabis is a drug widely used by young people, with 14% of 18-25 year olds reporting taking it monthly. This is why a research team from Inserm, the University and the University Hospital of Bordeaux looked at the consequences of this consumption on the sleep of students, who are already very exposed to sleep disorders. In fact, 55% of students have sleep disturbances, and 19% of them suffer from insomnia.
Data taken from an online self-questionnaire
For this work, the researchers conducted an in-depth analysis of the association between cannabis use and sleep disorders in a large sample of university students of 14,787 people. All are part of the i-Share cohort which focuses on the general health of students, led by Christophe Tzourio, the study’s last author.
The students answered an online self-questionnaire on the frequency of their cannabis consumption over the past year on the one hand (daily, weekly, monthly or more rarely/never), as well as on the quality of their sleep the last three months on the other hand, with a specific question on insomnia. Other questions related to their lifestyle, such as their consumption of alcohol or tobacco, or their mental health in order to refine the analysis.
Existence of an association between cannabis and sleep disorders
Results: there is indeed an association between cannabis use and sleep disorders, in particular insomnia, among students. According to the researchers, the probability of suffering from insomnia would be 45% higher among cannabis users compared to non-consumers. Twice as likely among daily cannabis users compared to occasional or infrequent users.
For Dr Julien Coelho, public health doctor, working in the sleep department at the Bordeaux University Hospital, who participated in this work, “having studied the student population with such a large cohort was particularly interesting, because these are people who are more particularly exposed both to problems related to sleep disorders and to the various experiments in terms of drugs“. According to him, this work allows both to question the idea that cannabis “would put to sleep” and this opens up the field of prevention, which “should warn about the association between degraded sleep and cannabis use, because both are linked“concludes the medical researcher.