It has been widely reported that you should not exercise prior to a drug test for cannabis to avoid burning fat and releasing THC into your bloodstream. Is there any scientific evidence for this?
Today I will examine a claim surrounding exercise and drug testing: You shouldn’t exercise prior to a drug test for cannabis or you will burn fat and release THC that will cause you to fail the test.
I have read recommendations ranging from not exercising immediately before the test all the way to stopping exercise a week before the test. Are any of these accurate?
Studies on Exercise and Drug Testing
Two scientific studies have looked at the effect of exercise on THC and metabolite levels. In fact, the first study has been widely cited as “proving” that you should not exercise immediately prior to a drug test.
Let’s see what conclusions the authors of the first study draw:
“Overall, these results suggest that exercise may elevate blood THC levels by releasing dormant THC from fat stores.”
Sounds promising, but let’s see what the authors of the second study conclude:
“We conclude that exercise…is unlikely to cause sufficient cannabinoid concentration changes to hamper correct interpretations in drug testing programmes.”
So it looks like there is a possible conflict in the results of the two studies. I guess we’ll have to look at the details and draw our own conclusions.
In the first study, 14 regular marijuana users performed moderately-intensity exercised for 35 minutes. In the second study, 6 regular marijuana users performed moderate-intensity exercise for 45 minutes.
Investigators took blood samples prior to exercise, immediately after exercise, and (in the first study only) 2 hours after exercise. THC and THC-COOH levels were measured in the blood samples.
At this point, it helps to understand that THC is not highly excreted into the urine and it is not detected by urine drug tests. Instead, it is THC metabolites that are eliminated into the urine and detected by tests. One of the major metabolites in this pathway is THC-COOH.
Effect of Exercise on Blood Levels of THC and THC-COOH
In the first study, THC levels in the blood increased an average of 12% after exercise (although they returned back to baseline levels within 2 hours). In the second study, blood THC levels increased by an average of 25% after exercise.
Given that a similar increase in blood THC levels was reported by two independent studies, I believe that this is real. However, does a small (and short-lived) increase in blood THC levels matter in the context of a urine drug test that measures metabolites of THC and not THC itself?
Prior to exercise, study subject’s blood levels of THC-COOH were 25 times times higher than THC. THC does not get into the urine for the most part except through the THC-COOH pathway. If levels of THC-COOH do not change with exercise, what happens to THC levels is not that important.
So what happened to blood levels of THC-COOH after exercise? Neither study showed any change in blood levels of THC-COOH after exercise. The lack of change of blood THC-COOH indicates that exercise will not have any immediate effect on a urine drug test.
Effect of Exercise on Urine Levels of THC-COOH
The blood results are pretty convincing, but it is even better to look directly at THC metabolites in the urine after exercise. Although the first study did not collect urine, the second study did collect urine before and after exercise. As is typical in many drug testing labs, they converted all THC-COO-glucuronide to THC-COOH prior to testing.
Urine THC-COOH levels were on average 23% lower after exercise. Given the small number of subjects in the study, the decrease could be by chance, but it does not seem likely that exercise is going to increase urine THC-COOH.
Myth Busted?
We can consider this myth busted. If you are taking a urine test for THC, exercising right before the test will likely not have any effect on whether you pass.
Although it is true that exercise will cause a small increase in blood THC levels (which lasts less than 2 hours), this does not lead to an increase in THC metabolite levels in either the blood or urine.
[Featured image credit: Flickr/ Nathan Rupert]