"The Use of Cannabis for Headache & Migraine"

Headache disorders are common, debilitating, and, in many cases, inadequately managed by existing treatments. Each year, 47% of the population experience headache, including migraine and some preclinical trials of cannabis for neuropathic pain have shown promising results, specifically for headache disorders. 


A sexual dimorphism exists for headache disorders, with women 2–3 times more likely to experience migraine and 1.25 times more likely to experience tension-type headache than men.

Historical reports, though not ideal forms of evidence, are important resources for understanding the potential use of cannabis in the treatment of headache disorders. Clinical publications between 1839 and 1937 provide valuable insights into the most effective practices, challenges, and benefits during an era when cannabis was commonly used to treat headache.

Currently, there is not enough evidence from well-designed clinical trials to support the use of cannabis for headache, but there are sufficient anecdotal and preliminary results...

Can Medical Marijuana’s Chemicals May Protect Cells???

As more countries legalize Cannabis treatment, scientists are learning how the plant's chemicals may help conditions ranging from brain injuries to cancer.

They might protect the brain from the effects of trauma, ease the spasms of multiple sclerosis and reduce epileptic seizures. 




Further preliminary work indicates that the chemicals may slow the growth of tumors and reduce brain damage in Alzheimer's disease.

-After inducing human breast cancer tumors in mice, researchers in the U.K. found they could shrink the tumors by administering THC. The chemical may disrupt cancer cell growth as it binds to CB2 receptors, which are much more abundant on cancer cells than on healthy ones. 

-Taken together, CBD & THC are promising agents for inhibiting breast cancer progression.By influencing the tumor microenvironment and the immune system,they are able to reduce inflammation, inhibit tumor cell growth, induce apoptosis, and cause autophagy

-At the University of South Carolina, a team discovered that THC could reduce the inflammation associated with autoimmune diseases by suppressing the activity of certain genes involved in the immune response.

-And at the University of South Florida, researchers working with cells in a lab showed that extremely low concentrations of THC could reduce production of beta amyloid, the protein that forms the plaque abundant in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. 

(This article was originally published with the title "Marijuana's Medical Future" in Scientific American 312, 2, 32-34 (February 2015)

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0215-32)

Sources: https://www.scientificamerican.com
             https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Doctor’s 25 years of research shows cancer patients live 4X longer by refusing chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is one of the most expensive medical treatments in the world today, but is it actually…effective? Thanks to alternative media and documentaries like the ‘Truth About Cancer’ series, more and more people are beginning to question not only its efficacy, but also whether it actually does more harm than good.

Believe it or not that questioned may have been answered more than 40 years ago, when a shocking study was released that could have ended the chemo experiment — if anyone had been paying attention.

Dr. Hardin B. Jones, a former Professor of Medical Physics and Physiology at Berkeley, California, concluded after over 25 years of research not only that chemotherapy, radiation and surgery do not work and do not prolong a cancer patient’s life, but patients receiving these types of oncological treatments in many cases die much sooner than those who choose to be untreated. Treated patients also die a much more painful death.

“People who refused chemotherapy treatment live an average of 12 and a half years longer than the people who are receiving chemotherapy,” wrote Dr. Jones in the journal of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Medical Cannabis Effects on Opioid and Benzodiazepine Requirements for Pain Control.

There is currently little evidence regarding the use of medical cannabis for the treatment of intractable pain. 

Literature published on the subject to date has yielded mixed results concerning the efficacy of medical cannabis and has been limited by study design and regulatory issues. 

The objective of this study that was published on 25 March 2019 in PubMed was to determine if the use of medical cannabis affects the amount of opioids and benzodiazepines used by patients on a daily basis. 

Methods:

This single-center, retrospective cohort study evaluated opioid and benzodiazepine doses over a 6-month time period for patients certified to use medical cannabis for intractable pain. All available daily milligram morphine equivalents (MMEs) and daily diazepam equivalents (DEs) were calculated at baseline and at 3 and 6 months.

"CBDA for Psoriasis, Arthritis and Anxiety...???"

Cannabis research pioneer hopes latest discovery is not overlooked again...

Raphael Mechoulam, an Israeli organic chemist and professor of medicinal chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, remembers the letdown after his groundbreaking discoveries surrounding the structure of the cannabis compounds CBD and THC in 1963 and 1964, followed by clinical tests with CBD published in 1980.




In a 2018 British Journal of Pharmacology study, Mechoulam and his co-authors wrote that their synthetic compound, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) methyl ester (HU-580) could be more effective than existing CBD remedies, making it “a potential medicine for treating some nausea and anxiety disorders.” Those initial clinical tests found the acids have yielded results on par, and even exceeding, existing treatments, without the side effects.

The naturally occurring but unstable CBD acid (CBDA) is a thousand times more potent than CBD in binding to a particular serotonin receptor thought to be responsible for alleviating nausea and anxiety.

“It’s an interesting molecule that potentially doesn’t have side effects,” said Dan Peer, managing director of the Center for Translational Medicine and head of the Cancer Biology Research Center at Tel Aviv University.