Alternative Medicines Proving Positive For Various Types of Pain

October 15th, 2009 by Dr. Julian Reindhurst

For thousands of years, marijuana has been used for medical reasons ranging from a reliever for earaches, child pains as well as stress. It can be traced all throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

For past 10 years, recent studies have shown marijuana’s effects on various types of pains. They range from diabetic treatment, spinal chord injuries, and damaged nerves in people with HIV–Patients with cancer and Multiple sclerosis are also showing promise with marijuana related studies.

Medical marijuana has been theorized to help with nausea related to symptoms induced by chemotherapy, and with severe loss of appetite as with patients with AIDS wasting syndrome.

THC is an ingredient in marijuana that mimics the action of chemicals that naturally occur in the brain. The tetrahydro cannabinol (THC) activates receptors in the body’s nerves that trigger physiological responses in the brain.

A legal prescription form of THC (Marinol) exists, yet researchers say it’s far from a perfect drug. Taken orally, its absorption is highly variable and unpredictable and often delayed, says Dr. Igor Grant, a UC San Diego psychiatrist who directs the university’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. “Smoking is a very efficient way to deliver THC,” he says.

As a result of its federally illegal status, medicinal use of marijuana is restricted to carefully vetted clinical research studies or to patients in states such as California that have passed laws to allow for personal medical use.

Currently, the only research available is provided by the government that issues various potency of marijuana cigarettes that they supply to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research in San Diego helps coordinate clinical studies to investigate the safety and effectiveness of marijuana and they’ve discovered in their studies related to neuropathic pain, Multiple sclerosis, and nausea.

For more than thirty years, Dr. Julian Reindhurst has studies the medicinal powers of marijuana. He has a blog that gives the perspective of how marijuana seeds benefited other civilizations. He also authors a website site that looks into the medicinal positives of the marijuana seed.

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