Medical Marijuana and Organ Transplants

Could smoking medical marijuana take you off an organ transplant list? Yes.

Over the past few years, people who used medical marijuana and signed themselves up to be 
organ donors have found themselves removed from the lists. Even worse, people who were 
waiting on organs ALSO found themselves removed from the transplant list, due to the “added 
health risk” of medical marijuana. CNN has a larger article about it, and we wanted to discuss it 
here.

This has led to a bill in Maine that, if approved, would not allow hospitals to remove people 
from an organ transplant list solely based on medical marijuana use.

Obviously, we think this is a great initiative. Can you think of any other medical prescription 
which, if taken, disqualifies you from receiving an organ from an organ donor? The fact that 
medical marijuana was singled out for this is insane, and the fact that people weren’t told that 
this would happen to them is almost worse.

Several other bills are going out in other states, such as Delaware, each aiming to combat this 
unfair categorization. They are raising issues around who gets to determine whether or not people 
are allowed transplants, and particularly, why different states have their own criteria for this. In 
several instances, if these patients opted to get surgery in a different state, they wouldn’t have 
been taken off the transplant list.

We don’t have a solution to this problem (except for the obvious of supporting these bills) but we 
just wanted to bring to your attention some of the insidious ways people who use medical 
marijuana are still discriminated against.

Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on April 1, 2017.

Bacteria in Medical Marijuana?

With medical marijuana’s growing legalization, more and more tests are being done on it to figure out just what properties it has. This week, the University of California came out with an odd warning. When studying people with weakened immune systems, they discovered that they are at a greater risk of infection of fungi and bacteria found in medical marijuana.

How was this discovered? Well the head doctor of the study had been working with patients with depleted immune systems. While examining them, he noticed that those who had been prescribed medical marijuana to treat some of their pain relief often wound up with fungal infections.

The cause? The marijuana itself. Because it’s a natural product, it can contain bacteria and fungi that a user might not know about, and because it’s only just growing in legalization, the methods to weed it out (no pun intended) might not be sophisticated enough. And that’s most likely the case, seeing as how the doctor tested samples from 20 different dispensaries and found they all had fungi or bacteria.

Does this mean you should reconsider medical marijuana? No. In people with healthy immune systems, these are basically harmless. But for people undergoing immune weakening treatments such as chemotherapy, or anything that requires immunosuppressants, medical marijuana may not be the best treatment for their pain systems.

So bottom line, as with any medication, ask your doctor about potential side-effects before starting medical marijuana, and possibly investigate other options if you have a weakened immune system.

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Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on February 11, 2017.

Blind Faith? Considerations About Medical Marijuana & Glaucoma

Generally speaking we tout the potential of marijuana, advocating its medical advantages left, right, and center. We praise its benefits for pain reduction, epilepsy, nausea, autism, MS, anorexia, and countless other conditions – the list is positively exhaustive. And yet, we would not advocate for marijuana unequivocally. One case where we do not outright recommend marijuana’s medicinal properties is with glaucoma.

Glaucoma is a condition where increased pressure within the eyeball causes damage to the optic nerve, risking and often causing blindness, especially among the elderly. Several advocates of medicinal marijuana cite small-study or anecdotal evidence that cannabis can lower intraocular pressure (IOP) in people with glaucoma.  However, these products are less effective than safer prescription drugs. 

Side Effects

In order to produce a clinically-relevant pressure reduction on IOP, frequent inhalation is required because the effect only lasts a few hours. This means one would need to smoke a joint every 3 hours. The number of significant side effects generated by long-term oral use of marijuana or long-term inhalation of marijuana smoke can make it a poor choice in the treatment of glaucoma, a chronic disease requiring proven and effective treatment.

The only marijuana currently approved at the US-federal level for medical use is Marinol, a synthetic form of tetra hydrocannabinol (THC) – the most active component of marijuana and the one which produces the “high.”  Marinol was developed as an antiemetic (an agent that reduces nausea used in chemotherapy treatments), which can be taken orally in capsule form.

But it turns out that the effects of Marinol in general, and on glaucoma in particular, are not impressive compared to the real thing. Yet in terms of glaucoma, no studies have shown that marijuana or any of its approximately 400 chemical components can safely and effectively lower intraocular pressure better than the variety of drugs currently on the market. In addition, according to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, while marijuana might lower intraocular pressure, it also lowers blood pressure, which in turn could provide less blood to the optic nerve.

IOC pressure notwithstanding, the issue of pain still remains. That is to say, while medical marijuana might not help with curing glaucoma, it can provide a great sense of pain-relief comfort to glaucoma sufferers.  Part of the reason for legalizing marijuana is to allow adults to make the best choices. Glaucoma, it seems, is a prime example of such a dilemma, best discussed with your medical marijuana supportive care provider.

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Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com

Can Medical Marijuana Help People with Hep-C?

There is a growing list of diseases that medical marijuana can help with, and lately many people have been investigating if medical pot can help people suffering from Hepatitis-C. So, what are the details?

First, let’s discuss Hepatitis-C. Hep-C is an autoimmune disease that mainly affects the liver. If left untreated, it can be a fatal disease, slowly eroding the body’s ability to digest food properly. In order to combat Hep-C, you have to take a daily pill regimen to halt the progress of the disease. Unfortunately, these pills can have a large variety of unwanted, and very acute, side effects.

One of the side effects of these pills is extreme nausea, to the point where simply moving around can make your stomach feel like you’re trapped on a cruise ship. In order to deal with this (and to avoid adding more pills into the mix) many doctors are beginning to prescribe medical marijuana thanks to its ability to easily calm your stomach. This continues to be the common use for medical marijuana — to nullify the side effects of a prescription drug without forcing you to take other pharmaceuticals.

In terms of helping with the disease generally, medical marijuana is not particularly useful. While it can dull some of the symptoms, it cannot halt the disease, and is therefore only a supplement to a treatment regimen.

If you have Hep-C and are looking to alleviate some of the side-effects of your medications, talk to your doctor and see about possible medical marijuana options in your area.

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Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on December 5, 2016.

How Medical Marijuana Can Increase Your Metabolism

There’s always the stereotype–someone high on pot, going throughout their house, gobbling up any food they can find. And yes, one of the side effects of medical marijuana can be hunger. But surprisingly, marijuana has actually been found to increase your metabolism despite this stereotype.

How is that possible?

Recently, the University of Miami examined around 8,500 individuals, ranging from 20 to 59 years old, via the National Health and Nutrition Surveys. They found cannabis users on average:

• Had lower blood sugar levels
• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Less risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes
• Less abdominal fat
• Lower levels of bad cholesterol.

There have also been several other studies reconfirming this research. This led down another series of questioning, because how could a substance famous for making people eat more actually have an opposite effect on their bodies?

Well, it has to do with the chemicals that control hunger. In order to make us feel hungry, an endocannabinoid (yes, that is the actual term) called “anandamide” is released in our system. Anandamide is replaced by THC when we consume marijuana. This compound specifically activates the cell receptor known as the CB1 receptor, which increases appetite in your brain. But at the same time, other compounds in marijuana activate other cell receptors that encourage different urges to deactivate–for instance, the storage of fat from the food that you consume.

In effect, this cancels many of the effects from the added calories you may be consuming, as well as gives you the additional medical benefits associated with medical marijuana.

Does this mean you can use all the medical marijuana you want to not gain weight? Of course not. But it does show that Does this mean you can use all the medical marijuana you want to not gain weight? Of course not. But it does show that there continues to be more benefits to this substance than we fully understand yet, and we need to keep researching its health properties.

Does this mean you can use all the medical marijuana you want to not gain weight? Of course not. But it does show that there continues to be more benefits to this substance than we fully understand yet, and we need to keep researching its health properties.

Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on November 20, 2016.

Stop Feeling Sick to Your Stomach: Medical Marijuana and Crohn’s Disease

Every few months, as more research on the beneficial effects of Medical Marijuana is released, we find new diseases and ailments that it can help treat. One we haven’t talked about so far is Crohn’s disease, and how studies of shown that Medical Marijuana can help dull or eliminate the symptoms of this chronic condition.

First, a quick crash course in what Crohn’s disease is. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract, and affects the small intestine more than the large. It can be aggravated in many different ways, but it can lead to problems that include chronic diarrhea, rectal bleeding, and fissures in the digestive tract.

Most interestingly, it’s a disease that flares up from time to time, with patients often going long periods without experiencing a symptom before rearing it’s ugly head again. Because of this, many treatments involve taking steroids during the flare-ups in order to eliminate the symptoms and heal the intestine. However, because steroids can be habit-forming and many times are stronger than one needs, science has been trying to find a better solution to deal with this problem.

Which brings us to the Medical Marijuana study.

Original Published in the journal of  Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology and then reposted on Medical Daily, an experiment was conducted to see the effects of Medical Marijuana on patients with acute Crohn’s disease, and the results were pretty shocking. 10 out of the 11 patients not exposed the placebo were weaned off of the heavy steroids used to commonly treat their disease, with medical marijuana having the exact same effects with nowhere near the level of side-effects.

Those are some incredibly promising results, effectively showing that Medical Pot could be a much safer alternative to the current steroid use the disease demands. Over and over again, we see evidence of Medical Marijuana’s ability to relieve the symptoms of diseases and conditions with no known cures. The more science behind the restorative properties of Medical Pot, the faster it’s likely to be approved, so we’re all for science continuing to push the limits of what marijuana can do.

Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on October 28, 2016.

Medical Marijuana Decreases Painkiller Use in the U.S.

One of the more interesting effects that the legalization of marijuana has had is the decreased use of painkillers in states where legal pot is now an option.

This is an interesting — if not unsurprising — trend, and there are plenty of pundits trying to debate what this means. In general, this seems like a positive step in the right direction towards pain management. Medical marijuana is non-habit forming, which means that unlike many pharmacological painkillers, there is no risk of becoming addicted to it. Addiction to painkillers has become a hot button issue over the last several years as there have been more and more instances of fatal overdoses, or of people switching to hard drugs (like heroin and meth) when they can no longer get their prescription in order to achieve the same pain relief.

Obviously, that is not a good situation for anyone, so if medical marijuana is helping cut down on those tragedies, all the better. And it goes to show that when given the option, people will pick a natural way to relieve pain/other chronic conditions than a pill.

Unfortunately, this also means the battle for medical marijuana’s widespread legality and acceptance may become more difficult. While these results would naturally make it seem like we should be giving more and more people access to legal pot to treat their medical conditions, this also adds additional hurdles. Many people still have a stigma against marijuana and its medical uses, and there are major pharmaceutical players who are not eager to see profits fall from painkiller divisions. They will fight tooth and nail to keep medical marijuana’s legality from spreading.

But with these results, it’s only a matter of time before progress marches forward, as people are going to demand medical marijuana more heavily as they see their friends in other states experiencing its benefits with none of the downsides of prescription painkillers. Hopefully, that day comes sooner rather than later.

Originally published at www.medicalmarijuana.com on October 19, 2016.