10 illnesses helped by cannabis

10 illnesses helped by cannabis

DEPRESSION

Pharm Choice: Antidepressants like Zoloft and Prozac increase levels of the vital neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain

Side Effects: Decreased libido, birth defects, increased suicide in those under 25. Can trigger potentially fatal “Serotonin Syndrome.”

Why Pot’s Better: Provides safe, controlled euphoria. Those switching from Zoloft to pot report improved outlook.

Pot’s Drawbacks: Improved outlook makes repeats of Friends actually seem funny…

18 thoughts on “10 illnesses helped by cannabis”

  1. Reblogged this on effingfibro and commented:
    I only wish it was legal here in the UK……can’t even get MM for cancer pain, never mind all the issues that fibro throws up on top. Apparently, or so my old GP told me, it’s only available here on prescription if you have
    MS. Nothing else justifies it. Probably because Big Pharma can’t make any money out of it. Makes me livid, the hold Big Pharma has on our health care system. It decries all natural medicine because it can’t make money from naturally occurring substances, then makes fake chemical versions of natural substances which it CAN make money from via patenting (lasts 20 years before others can copy their “original” drug, hence Valium became available as generic diazepam since I don’t know when the 90’s or possibly earlier, I really don’t know. But that’s where they make their money, the first 20 years of a patented product. The data is always skewed to showcase whichever new drug they’ve invented – nicked from the natural world – with no regard for side-effects. Big Pharma LOVES side-effects – more drugs needed to subdue the side-effects of the first, still more for the side-effects of the second…….and on you go. Don’t misunderstand me, there are some drugs which I personally couldn’t be without – literally in a couple of cases, because without them I’d die, but the majority of the UK’s health system is dictated to by the drug companies recommendations, so currently all the qualifying numbers from blood tests for type 2 diabetes and cholesterol levels have, in the past year alone, been lowered so that they can insist on patients being shoved onto metformin and statins sooner! The side-effects of BOTH those drugs are awful, extremely deleterious to human health……which then creates further need for extra drugs to manage the side-effects. I did a lot of research into all of this earlier this year, when my previously normal numbers suddenly put me into metformin territory and I refused point blank to take it. My cholesterol numbers were suddenly deemed “High” too, and I wasn’t about to take statins, either. They were actually already lower than they’d been for two years, the only negative change was in the definition of the numbers, not the numbers themselves. I’ve been able to massively reduce my “Bad” cholesterol (cholesterol is a much-misunderstood subject anyway) through taking very specific supplements, none of which are claiming to be cholesterol reducing products, I just looked at studies that had been done, decided what I knew about cholesterol fitted in with what the studies were saying, and built my own programme to combat it. No way was I going on statins! And my figures last month were too low to qualify for even these ridiculous new qualifying numbers they’ve come up with, so Ha! Likewise, I am still reversing my type 2 diabetes, all with natural medicine supplements – herbs, nutritional things, so things like Gymnema, B3, biotin, GTF chromium, and others. I will NOT be scaremongered into taking yet MORE drugs. I need a sodding flat-bed truck to collect my monthly repeats as it is, thanks.
    I’m sure if Big Pharma could somehow reinvent dope, iMM would suddenly be recommended for a trillion different conditions. Likewise, the recent revelations about Vitamin D led Big Pharma to start “inventing” their own nasty synthetic chemical analogues. Befire Big Pharma got wind about D3, the figures were – 75-200 nmol/l = sufficient. 50-75nmol = insufficient. Below 50 was deficient. Once Big Pharma saw how many people were taking way more than the recommended “maximum safe” dose of 400IU a day (bear in mind you’d make around 30,000IU in a sunny afternoon at the beach), they lowered ALL of those figures so that now you have to be less than 20nmol/l to be deficient, and anything from 60nmol is now deemed sufficient. The upper reference range of 200nmol seems to have come down to half that. All this is because a lot of the pharmaceuticals are still waiting for their horrid analogues to be approved. Once they are, I expect the reference ranges will go back up again. Even the Vitamin D Council seems to me to have been got at by Big Pharma, because in Feb 2013, they recommended 10,000IU a day, but by the June that same year, they’d changed it to 5,000IU instead. I wrote to them, telling them I was taking 20,000Iu /day, and was finding it helpful with a lot of previously intractable symptoms, and asking them why they’d lowered their earlier recommendation. I expected some support for what I was doing, but instead got the most unpleasant mouthful back on email, basically telling me what umpteen doctors had told me – I was going to kill myself doing that. Well, I didn’t, because I know what else to take it with to prevent high blood calcium, which is the risk attached to taking too much D3. I have my bloods checked monthly, and even when my D3 has been up in the 800’s, my calcium is still very normal. I reduced to 5,000IU/d recently, and my last bloods showed a huge drop in levels – I went from 542nmol/l to just 132nmol/l, which explains why I’ve been more ill than normal lately. So I’ve upped my dose again.
    Without high dose D3, I would certainly be on metformin AND statins by now, and be having to deal with a whole new batch of shitty, painful, horrible side-effects from them.
    I just wish I could get dope over here, because then I probably wouldn’t get as much nausea, anxiety, muscle and bone pain, poor quality sleep, rubbish appetite, IBS, or depression. I know it helps with all those things.
    Think I might need to convert this “comment” into a post – I appear to have gone off in Rant Mode! Sorry Jo!
    L. X

    Liked by 2 people

    • I’m just glad you were able to fit all of that within my comment section. 🙂

      The thing about Big Pharma’s versions of cannabis (Nabiximols like Sativex) is that they don’t provide the entourage effect of all the CBDs you get from the plant. Big Pharma siphons out two CBDs and expects the same successful results that cannabis has. “Each spray delivers a near 1:1 ratio of CBD to THC, with a fixed dose of 2.7 mg THC and 2.5 mg CBD.”

      With such a low dose of THC, you wouldn’t get much pain relief anyway. But combine that small amount of THC with such a high dose of CBD and it almost negates the effect of the THC.

      I took the legal version of cannabis in the U.S. (Marinol), and it wasn’t even strong enough to help my nausea. In other words, it didn’t do anything. Just a waste of money.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Well, Jo, that figures! That’s the problem with Big Pharma trying to copy natural products – they always isolate bits because they’re too lazy, too greedy and or too stupid to recognise that nature puts things together in one plant for a reason. The reason is always about efficacy. For instance, bioflavanoids help the body pick up and use Vitamin C, so nature puts them in the pith of citrus fruits. What does man do? Religiously scrapes all the pith off before eating, or produces juice with no pith.

        I think this is the fundamental problem with drugs. Some things are not meant to be isolated in use. They need, as you so eloquently put it, the whole entourage.

        That’s a shame about the MM. I’d thought it was ordinary dope, I didn’t realise they’d already made a stupid copy. I should be so naive! (Shakes head) But I’ve never heard of the drugs you’ve mentioned – am now going to check them in my BNF! You never know, sometimes things work for one person and not for another 🙂 I live in hope!

        I did know someone here who said he got a quarter of hash a month on script because he had a benign brain tumour, but I was very young and knew nothing from nothing then, so I don’t now know if that was true. X

        PS Yeah, I did it away from your page, under the little comments notification bit. Means I can only see three lines at a time, and scrolling back to edit is nigh on impossible, but at least the post button doesn’t vanish like it does on your post pages!

        Liked by 1 person

        • I can’t claim credit for the phrase “the entourage effect.” Actually, that was coined by Raphael Mechoulam from Israel:

          http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/health/gupta-marijuana-entourage/

          It was halfway through our long afternoon discussion that Mechoulam, now 83, pulled out a paper he had written in 1999, describing something known as “the entourage effect.”

          Think of it like this: There are more than 480 natural components found within the cannabis plant, of which 66 have been classified as “cannabinoids.” Those are chemicals unique to the plant, including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiols. There are, however, many more, including…

          Liked by 1 person

    • Yes, New Mexico, but this program is very expensive. There’s only a small number of dispensaries and their products aren’t that great. During the year I was a member of the program, 80% of what I purchased wasn’t strong enough to treat chronic pain.

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      • That must have been extremely frustrating. Like when they swapped me from 100mg Imigran (patented sumatriptan) to 50mg instead, without telling me. They didn’t believe it didn’t have any impact at all on my migraines. Not exactly the same as you getting legal dope and it being too weak for effect, but same sort of thing. I think I’d be gutted if I finally got some legal stuff and then it didn’t work. 😦

        Liked by 1 person

        • Lol! And call it what instead? Have to say the only negative connotation observed in that piece was being considered to be talking like your parents, there wasn’t even a mention of “dopey” or otherwise drugged up to point of drooling. Does dope have a meaning over there that I am blissfully ignorant of?
          Oh, and my new favourite word….anandamides. Sigh. X

          Liked by 1 person

        • Great new favorite word… but can you pronounce it? 🙂 Dope just has different meanings now:

          Urban Dictionary:

          People who do not do drugs call Marijuana Dope.
          People who do Marijuana call Heroin Dope.
          Word has also been used to describe how good something is.

          Don’t you be smokin’ dope! (AKA Marijuana)

          OMG, I smoke the green but I don’t do dope (AKA Heroin)

          Man that car is dope!

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        • I got that 🙂 Rick on here is in Arizona, I think (who knows, the way my brain’s been acting up lately) and he gets all his legally, and he says it’s good stuff. Is Arizona any more doable for you than Colorado? – I haven’t got much of a mental map of the states, I’m afraid. I know where New York is, LA and Vegas, Texas (ish) and Florida. Oh, and SF. That’s about the extent of my abysmal ignorance!

          Liked by 1 person

        • Arizona is great, but climate wise, it’s a hell hole. Very, very hot. Colorado is a mecca compared to Arizona, plus cannabis has been legalized for everyone in Colorado. There are more dispensaries in Colorado than anywhere else (except maybe California, where there are lots of earthquakes).

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