What is the importance of medical marijuana?
Legislative documents work depending on where you live. Medical experts have been claiming for years that medical marijuana helps in the fight against serious diseases. Naturally, no one claims that it will completely cure, for example, Parkinson’s disease or quickly relieve stress disorder, but at least facilitate the course of the disease.
Thousands of Americans already use special medical cards. For example, MMJ in Florida is a fairly standard way to deal with an illness.
Who can get help?
There is not much scientific evidence as to how effective cannabis can be for medical purposes and in what diseases.
First of all, because the ban on the use of cannabis often slows down the learning process. However, there are already quite a few studies confirming the medical potential of marijuana to relieve:
- chronic pain;
- nausea and loss of appetite (for example, due to chemotherapy);
- Parkinson’s disease;
- intestinal inflammation;
- post-traumatic stress disorder;
- epilepsy;
- multiple sclerosis.
Another prominent example is the use of medical marijuana against a severe form of childhood epilepsy that leads to disability – Dravet Syndrome. The disease is poorly controlled by traditional medicines, but it is affected by cannabis.
Despite being addictive, cannabis is much safer than opioids, which are traditionally prescribed to treat chronic pain and are a classic example of physical addiction. Experts note that opiate receptors in the brain are rapidly depleted. A person needs an increasingly higher dose for the desired result. When a patient tries to stop taking the drug, he may experience classic withdrawal or withdrawal syndrome.
Cannabis does not bring the above-mentioned problems. When a person tries to stop using marijuana, most often they will experience temporary insomnia. Also, quitting marijuana can lead to changes in mood, anxiety, and irritability.
However, you need to understand that we are not talking about simple marijuana that grows on unknown plantations. Growing medical marijuana is a very sensitive and time-consuming process, which is strictly regulated by law. There are special laboratories where marijuana of a certain variety grows under the supervision of specialists. Under such conditions, an optimal temperature and humidity are created, which will allow the plant to be used for the desired purpose.
Does medical marijuana really heal?
Interestingly, our body also produces our own cannabinoids. These substances play an important role in the normal functioning of the brain.
Side effects of marijuana are associated with the fact that brain receptors sensitive to their own cannabinoids also respond to special cannabinoid responders.
In total, cannabis includes more than 200 active ingredients. One of the important substances has almost no psychoactive effect on the brain, but studies say that preparations with it help with sleep disorders, anxiety, muscle spasms and epilepsy. Some medical professionals and researchers in the field of medical cannabis note that, first of all, when talking about pain relief with drugs of this type, doctors mean patients suffering from extremely serious illnesses, more often in the terminal stage, when the pain becomes unbearable. Cannabis affects two levels of pain.
In the brain, it suppresses pain impulses, thereby relieving pain syndrome, and also acts on the receptors of the cells of the immune system, suppressing the inflammatory response. In addition, marijuana is able to suppress nausea, which is important for patients undergoing chemotherapy.
When it comes to the legalization of medical cannabis, it is not free trade in this substance. It indicates the possibility of creating safe and convenient forms of the drug, as well as controlling this process.
There is a growing body of research that cannabis can alleviate the ailments that often accompany old age, such as glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease.
Here, tetrahydrocannabinol plays the main role. One 5-year-old study showed that it inhibited the formation of new amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s patients.
Marijuana affects more than just the brain. Now scientists are wondering what effect cannabis has on male fertility.
One of the largest studies showed that men who smoke marijuana more than once a week had a lower percentage of mobile and healthy sperm. But it’s worth mentioning here that 11% of the men who participated in the experiment answered that they used other drugs besides cannabis.
For the development of the whole industry, it is necessary to create clear protocols for the use, storage and transportation of a substance throughout the country. Standardization and quality control is what distinguishes a medicinal product from traditional medicine. Therefore, medical marijuana is developing in some states, and specialist medical clinics help people get counseling by making an appointment. After that, the doctor will prescribe a course of treatment and tell you about further actions that are necessary for the patient’s recovery.
