Marijuana can have various effects on your body. But what is it about weed that makes you so hungry? Following is a transcript of the video.

Alex Kuzoian: Marijuana is very popular and very controversial. It can have a ton of effects on your body from making you feel relaxed and euphoric to giving you dry mouth and red eyes.

One of its more interesting effects is making you feel really hungry. But what exactly does weed do to your brain and body that makes you just want to keep eating? The active ingredient in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol, or commonly known as THC.

Once in your blood, it takes just seconds for the chemical to reach your brain. Our brains process information when out neurons pass signals to one another through chemicals called neurotransmitters. THC resembles a natural transmitter called anandamide. And both of these chemicals are in the same class of compounds referred to as cannabinoids.

A Yale study conducted on mice found that cannibinoids seem to interfere with the a special group of cells called POMC neurons. Found in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that helps regulate many of the body's key processes like heart rate and temperature. These neurons usually send out a chemical signal to tell your brain that you're full.

In the mice, the THC turned off adjacent cells that are supposed to tell the POMC neurons to slow down. So activity of these neurons actually increased. So if an appetite suppressing neuron is sending out more signals than normal you'd think your appetite would be suppressed, right? Well, not quite.

The THC also activated a receptor inside the POMC neuron, causing the cell to start producing endorphins, which actually increase appetite. So the mice ended up eating more, not less. So basically, cannibinoids just completely confuse this function of your hypothalamus. They ramp up activity of POMC neurons while completely flipping their functionality. And while not every scientist agrees with this explanation, most people would agree that smoking pot definitely makes you hungry.

Alex Kuzoian produced this video.

Editor's Note: This video was first published on May 12, 2015.