Aging Can Be a Pain, Right?

Healthy Aging

Turning down the ache

The endocannabinoid system (aka, the ECS) may very well be the most important system in your body for establishing and maintaining your health. This series of Science Says covers the ECS and all the great things it does. Healthy brain, good mood, less pain, and better sleep? Yes, please. For the last of our ECS education series, let’s talk about how the ECS can help us as we age, including improving joint comfort.

Aging is a pain in the neck, and knees, and hips…

You might not remember exactly when your first joint started aching, but for most of us, creaking joints kick in during our early 50s. If you played sports, perhaps it was your 40s. Saxena and Batra describe in Aging how our joints – including our synovial tissue, cartilage, and bones – degrade with age. Because these changes are caused by underlying chronic oxidative stress and inflammation, they propose targeting these two culprits to find novel strategies ‘to get rid of the curse of senescence.’

How the ECS may help our joints

Over the last couple of weeks, we talked about the two key receptors involved in the ECS: CB1 and CB2. These receptors are found throughout our body and brain, including our bone and synovial tissues. In Frontiers in Pharmacology, Xin et al. review how activating the ECS can do the following in models of joint conditions:

• Slow the development of joint inflammation
• Prevent osteoporosis
• Reduce bone pain
• Improve healing

Sounds promising, right? In fact, activation of the ECS has long been used to control inflammation and pain, primarily through the use of cannabis.

Yes, the “C” in ECS stands for cannabinoid, derived from the word cannabis.

It ends up, as part of our endocannabinoid system, our bone cells can make their own version of cannabis to bring comfort and healing to our joints – without the psychotropic and Cheeto-seeking effects of cannabis.

Our body-derived “cannabis” compounds are called endocannabinoids. The two most commonly known endocannabinoids are AEA and 2-AG. The latter, 2-AG, is a super-duper star because it fully activates both CB1 and CB2 receptors.

While this whole ECS world of healing is present in our bones and joints (and pretty much everywhere else in our body and brain), this important support system starts to falter as we age.

Tuning up our ECS to control the pains of aging

In Molecular Aspects of Medicine, Watkins summarizes how endocannabinoids help not only by addressing underlying drivers of physical discomfort (like inflammation) but also by boosting our brain’s general sense of comfort. It is now understood that part of the “runner’s high” is caused by increased endocannabinoid production and activation of our ECS. Today, there are many ongoing studies to better understand how we can leverage endocannabinoids to turn up our ECS to deliver whole body and mind comfort, without needing cannabis or having to run a marathon.