Research Shows That High Doses Of Cocaine Can Cause The Brain To Literally Eat Itself!

Cocaine is bad news, and here¡¯s why. It¡¯s common knowledge that drugs are harmful to the brain because they kill brain cells, but a new study has found that high doses of cocaine cause the brain to eat itself. Here¡¯s how it happens.

via The-Scientist

The human body performs a normal process called autophagy, which is a sort of internal clean-up.

Autophagy is a very important process through which the human body cleans itself out internally. As a part of autophagy, unwanted debris is dissolved by certain acids in cell pockets known as vacuoles. Lead researcher Dr. Prasun Guha, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US, said ''A cell is like a household that is constantly generating trash. Autophagy is the housekeeper that takes out the trash - it's usually a good thing.¡±

via Tumblr/Neuroscience Stuff

High doses of cocaine cause autophagy to spin out of control, destroying required components as well.

The researchers found that high doses of cocaine cause autophagy to accelerate and spin out of control, to the extent that it begins to destroy parts of the cell that are required by the body. ¡°Cocaine makes the housekeeper throw away really important things, like mitochondria, which produce energy for the cell,'' explains Guha.

via The Sun

The result is a self-cannibalisation effect.

As autophagy accelerates, brain cells begin to destroy valuable components within themselves that eventually lead to the death of the cell. The result is a kind of self-cannibalisation or cell suicide that leads to brain damage.