Does Medical Marijuana Help With Spasticity And Pain?
Does Medical Marijuana Help With Spasticity And Pain?
In the mornings my muscles especially my calf muscles are very tight and sore i was told medical Marijuana (indica) would help this problem alot. Has anyone tried it?
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The UK's GW Pharmaceuticals makes a medicine called Sativex (https://www.gwpharm.com/healthcare-professional...) which is *proven* scientifically to help with MS spasticity. It's passed FDA-like medical checks in countries like the UK and Canada and is a prescription drug sold by prescription.
But it cannot be imported into the US because our out-of-touch, non-representative gov't claims "marijuana has no medicinal value."
Sativex is a clear spray that you spray underneath your tongue -- no smoking involved. (Smoking is especially bad for MSers.) Sativex is a "whole plant" extract so it uses the full range of cannabinoids (GW tried chemically-extracted CBD only but it was not as effective). As such, if you spray enough Sativex under your tongue and not follow the drug's directions, you will get high.
Every state that I know of that has medical marijuana has MS as a listed medical problem and we can get/buy "legal weed."
Many southern states have their heads up their butts and restrict THC -- Florida is one of those states. But you can get CBD products.
A study with MSers smoking cigarettes showed that smoking speeds up MS progression BY 50% -- yikes! Logic follows that smoking weed would not be good for us, even if we're smoking much less.
But marijuana can be consumed by wiping oils under your tongue, by mixing powders in drinks, by "vaping" just the cannabinoids (not burning the leaves or buds), and by a wide range of edibles -- candies, breath mints, cookies, etc.
You can even get CBD creams that you can rub on your calves and absorb the drug through your skin and moisturize at the same time!
I do the marijuana edibles. I can't say 100% that they help with spasticity because I also take Baclofen for that. I do think the marijuana helps me get some much needed sleep. I guess it kinda relaxes the muscles. I've only been using it about 6 months. So it's still fairly new to me.
I would much rather consume weed in a brownie/cookie any day. Edibles are the way to go 🍭
Damn! Long post -- I broke the site's 3000 character comment limit so I'll break this into 2 posts.
I've been using medical marijuana for MS symptoms since the 1980s, long before the medical marijuana legalization movement got started.
A weed primer:
The active ingredients in marijuana (or cannabis or weed or pot or whatever) are called "cannabinoids" -- that's what interacts with our bodies. There are 100+ cannabinoids and they're discovering more.
By "volume" (quantity) of cannabinoids, the overwhelming vast majority tend to be either the THC or CBD cannabinoids. All the others are tiny amounts in comparison.
The current US gov't official position is that marijuana has "no medicinal value."
That's a ridiculous position proven wrong by science.
Hell, *thousands* of years ago traditional Chinese medicine was documenting using cannabis as medicine. It was used that way in the US early in our republic. Today modern medical science has *proven* that CBD helps with MS spasticity -- it could help with *your* legs!
CBD relaxes muscles and can make you sleepy. MSers with insomnia will use some before bedtime. CBD works *wonders* (for some reason) for some forms of epilepsy -- reducing seizures in some cases from a dozen-plus a day to 0 or 1 or 2.
THC, the cannabinoid that "gets you high," is good for MS pain and some other symptoms -- but this is not recognized because the US gov't makes it very difficult to do research on marijuana.
Biden could change the "no medicinal use" thing with a stroke of his pen, but he won't. He's an old tough-on-crime Drug Warrior and "supports" cops. When traitor Trump was in office he promised to change that to get votes but never followed through.
And there's been next to *no* research done on the impacts of the 100+ cannabinoids in combinations -- only minimal research on THC and CBD.
(continued...)
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