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Search Results: pain (860)

German Study: Cannabis-Based Medications Relieve Pain

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By on Medical, News

io9

Many Cannabis Patients Can Drive Motor Vehicles Safely While Medicated, According To Study

Cannabis-based medications have been demonstrated to relieve pain, and can be useful for patients whose symptoms aren’t adequately alleviated by conventional treatment, according to a paper in a peer-reviewed German medical journal.


The symptoms shown to have been alleviated by marijuana-based medicines include muscle spasms, nausea and vomiting resulting from chemotherapy, loss of appetite in HIV/AIDS patients, and neuropathic pain, according to the paper, published in Issue 29-30 of Deutsches Arzteblatt International, the German Medical Association’s official international peer-reviewed science journal, reports Science Daily.

“Medications based on cannabis have been used for therapeutic purposes in many cultures for centuries,” the paper notes. “In Europe, they were used at the end of the 19th century to treat pain, spasms, asthma, sleep disorders, depression, and loss of appetite.”
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Why Do Clinics Deny Painkillers To Medical Marijuana Patients?

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By on Medical

Personal Liberty Digest

Should health care facilities have the power to make lifestyle decisions for you — and punish you when your choices don’t measure up to their ideals? More and more hospitals are making exactly those kinds of decisions when it comes to people who choose to use marijuana — even legal patients in medical marijuana states. Apparently, these places don’t mind looking exactly as if they have more loyalty to their Big Pharma benefactors than they do to their own patients.

A new policy at one Alaska clinic — requiring patients taking painkilling medications to be marijuana free — serves to highlight the hypocrisy and cruelty of such rules, which are used at more and more health care facilities, particularly the big corporate chains (the clinic in question is a member of the Banner Health chain).

Tanana Valley Clinic, in Fairbanks, started handing out prepared statements to all chronic pain patients on Monday, said Corinne Leistikow, assistant medical director for family practice at TVC, reports Dorothy Chomicz at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

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Pain Boogeyman Scares Lawmakers, Leaves Cannabis Patients In The Cold

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By on Legislation, Medical

The Dangerous Servant

​By Bob Starrett
Of all the baloney that has come out of the various battles in medical marijuana states, the notion that “anyone” can get a medical marijuana recommendation from a doctor is the scariest to legislators who are considering medical marijuana bills in their states this year.
In 2012, 17 states have pending medical marijuana legislation. And you can be sure that this argument — that chronic pain is used as a catchall for doctors to hand out medical marijuana recommendations to “anyone” — will come into play as it has in Montana and New Jersey.
In an apparent attempt to prevent wholesale stoned-ness among the citizenry, New Jersey specifically excluded chronic pain as an eligible condition in their legislation.
Last year, the Montana Legislature, having failed in their attempts to repeal the state’s medical marijuana law entirely, made significant changes that included specific doctor rules for a chronic pain diagnosis. A recommending physician must have either x-rays or an MRI to back up the diagnosis. If they do not, a second physician must sign the “Physician Statement for a Chronic Pain Diagnosis.” It is a separate form.
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Study Finds Marijuana Could Increase Pain Relief With Opiates

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By on Medical, News

UCSF
Hector Vizoso, RN, left, and Donald Abrams, MD, prepare a cannabis vaporizer for inpatient use at San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center’s Clinical Research Center.

​A medical study suggests patients with chronic pain could experience more relief if their doctors added cannabinoids — the main ingredients in cannabis or medical marijuana — to an opiates-only treatment. The findings, from a small-scale study at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), also suggest that a combined therapy could result in reduced opiate dosages.

More than 76 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. That’s more people than have diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined, according to the National Centers for Health Statistics.
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Cannabis Increases Pain-Relieving Effects Of Opiates: Study

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By on Medical, News

MS News Channel

​Vaporized cannabis “significantly augments” the analgesic effects of opiates in patients with chronic pain, according to clinical trial data published online in the scientific journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco looked at the use of vaporized marijuana over a five-day period in 21 chronic pain patients who were on a regimen of twice-daily doses of morphine or oxycodone. Participants in the trial inhaled cannabis vapor on the evening of day 1 of the study, three times a day on days 2 through 4, and in the morning of day 5, reports the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
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Canadian Docs Won’t Authorize Cannabis, Leaving Patients In Pain

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By on Global, Medical

Cannabis Culture

​A full decade after Canada legalized medical marijuana, most doctors in the Great White North are still refusing to sign the forms that patients need to get access to cannabis — meaning patients in pain risk jail if they use what works best to help keep them functional.

Far from improving, the predicament seems likely to get worse because of proposed changes to how Health Canada regulates access to marijuana, reports Sharon Kirkey of Postmedia News.
To the casual observer, it may seem that the government is actually easing up on the strict rules for obtaining medicinal cannabis. Health Canada has proposed removing itself as the ultimate authority in approving or rejecting medical marijuana applications.
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CBD: Marijuana Compound Has No High, But Relieves Pain

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By on Medical, News

Philly.com

​Scientists at Temple University in Philadelphia who are exploring the medical benefits of cannabidiol (CBD), a marijuana compound that does not produce the high associated with THC, have found that it’s effective in helping prevent neuropathic pain.

CBD, the second major cannabinoid in pot after THC, has anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, but no psychoactive effects, according to the scientists, reports Tom Avril at Philly.com.
In a study using lab mice, CBD showed promise in preventing the kind of neuropathic pain that can result from the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (sold as the brand-name Taxol, among others).
Mice that were given paclitaxel and also received CBD were much less sensitive to pain than mice that receive only chemo.
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Marijuana Extract Helps Prevent Pain From Chemotherapy

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By on Medical, News

420 Magazine

​Cannabidiol, a medically useful extract from marijuana, is showing potential as a treatment to help prevent pain in patients getting the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel, according to researchers in Philadelphia.

According to UPI, Sara Jane Ward and her colleagues at the Temple University School of Pharmacy said cannabidiol (CBD) reduces pain and inflammation, while avoiding the psychoactive side effects of marijuana’s other cannabinoids — that is to say, the “high.”
CBD reduces paclitaxel-induced neuropathy in female mice, according to the study. Neuropathy is a potentially serious complication that can prevent patients from getting their full course of chemotherapy.
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New Study Shows Marijuana Effective In Reducing Pain

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By on Medical, News

Photo: Chris Jackson/Montreal Gazette

​Canadian Researchers Establish Scientific Basis For Medical Use Of Cannabis

There’s now more scientific evidence for what many patients have known for awhile: Smoking marijuana can ease chronic neuropathic pain and help patients sleep better, according to a team of researchers in Montreal.
The new study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that pain intensity among patients decreased with higher-potency marijuana, reports Caroline Alphonso of The Globe and Mail. The study represents an important scientific attempt to determine the medicinal benefits of cannabis.
“A single inhalation of 25 mg of 9.4 percent tetrahydrocannabinol herbal cannabis three times daily for five days reduced the intensity of pain, improved sleep and was well tolerated,” the study concludes. “Further long-term safety and efficacy studies are indicated.”
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GOP Senate Hopeful Attacks Marijuana Pain Research

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By on Medical, News

Photo: Examiner.com
GOP Senate candidate Dino Rossi captured in a rare moment without his head up his ass

​You’d expect a politician to promote medical research being done at local universities. But Republican Senatorial candidate Dino Rossi of Washington on Thursday tried to gain some traction in his political campaign by attacking a local research project which studies the use of marijuana cannabinoids to control pain.
Rossi thought it would make an easy target, after all: Talk about “wasteful” federal stimulus spending to rile up the Tea Party faithful, and then drag in a tired old stoner stereotype for good measure.
“This is one of those boondoggle projects that forces you to set aside the serious economic consequences of this so-called stimulus for a moment and just laugh at how out of touch Washington, D.C., really is,” Rossi said. “Washington state taxpayers are tired of their money going up in smoke. This bill isn’t going to stimulate anything other than sales of Cheetos.”
It’s time for a diversion, Rossi seems to believe, to distract voters from inconvenient little things like, well, the fact that he was recently named to a list of the 11 Most Crooked Candidates in the United States(!) by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
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