The question is not weird at all.
I've been doing research on
cannabinoids, and CBD combined with THC does appear to significantly reduce pain (think from 5 to 3), though the so-called
entourage effect. I live in California, so cannabis consumption is legal, and I've done some tests by going to the gym and straining my muscles, or by doing painful foam rolls:
- 5mg THC worked (pain reduction from ~4 to ~2 while weightlifting heavy), but got me a little high, and I'd prefer no psychoactive effects
- 10mg and 20mg THC worked very well to reduce pain during massage. I'm most hopeful about this during PT. The psychoative effects were quite strong though.
- 5, 10, 15 and even 20mg CBD have had no effect. After reading more about this, it makes sense - CBD helps with "spastic" types of pains, and muscle cramps. Why this isn't more widely known I'm not sure, but apparently there are three reasons: 1) individual differences among patients, and a wide array of conditions; 2) most articles about the pain relief properties of cannabis are intended to sell cannabis products indiscriminately; and 3) due to the ridiculous prohibitions against cannabis, there has been little proper research on it
Here's an account from a hiker who had an accident and
used cannabis to make his life much better after being on opiates:
Not so long ago, the aftermath of rotator-cuff surgery involved a short hospital stay and morphine. These days a patient gets sewn up and sent home straight away to heal up with prescription drugs. Percocet. Norco. Vicodin. Tramadol. [...] those pills are narcotics. Synthetic opiates. Pharmaceutical-grade heroin. And they all come with a long list of unpleasant side effects: lowered heartbeat, fainting, confusion, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, seizures, itching, loss of appetite, constipation, jaundice, depression, addiction. And sometimes death. I couldn’t sleep at night without them and I couldn’t sleep during the day because of them. My attention span was nonexistent. While it was true they killed the pain, they were also killing forward momentum. Percs had become a habit I had to break.
I began using more and more of the topical oil and smoking more and more of the shatter — in very tiny increments after my first learning experience — and swallowing fewer and fewer of the pills. You don’t just quit narcotics by stopping. There were still withdrawal symptoms as I tapered down. I had headaches. I got the chills. I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t an easy or short process, but eventually I weaned myself from the Percocets.
What I noticed most about switching to cannabis was that my desire to do things returned. I didn’t wake up feeling drugged, sluggish and sleepy, depressed and out of the loop. I didn’t want to just lie around in bed. Rather than just taking away the pain and making me stupidly high, the shatter was energizing. I felt as if my mind was functioning again. My forward momentum returned and I wanted to get back outdoors. I also slept better once off the painkillers.
Does cannabis really makes that big of a difference in pain management? I have to say, for me, yes. I could never tell if the patches or edibles worked. But the topicals and shatter did the trick and in good ways, in ways I hadn’t imagined.There are various mentions of research in the medical marijuana literature. I'm not going to cross-check them on PubMed because as I said before, proper research is scant, and due to individual variability, a particular strain that didn't work on sufficient patients may still work on me. With that said,
THC does help with symptoms similar to those during LL:
Research done at Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed that with the use of marijuana, patients were able to actually reduce their dosages of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs—known more commonly as NSAIDs. These are potentially harmful and can cause numerous side-effects, further complicating the problems associated with arthritis. [...] Bottom line is, researchers have found marijuana to be effective in both pain management and as an anti-inflammatory. It has also demonstrated effective analgesic effects that are the equivalent of morphine. Probably most impressive is the fact that it does these things with minimal side effects, and no addiction problems that are associated with many of the current drugs.
Tetra-hydracannibinol is also a primary component of marijuana. When the body ingests this, the body metabolizes it into a metabolite that aids both in pain relief and in reduction of swelling. Animal testing found a synthetic form as being effective against both acute and chronic inflammation. In addition it safeguarded joint tissue by preventing its destruction.
In addition to the benefits of systemically administered cannabidiol discussed above, cannabinoids, including cannabidiol, have been found to have localized benefits from topical administration. [...] alleviate pain and other conditions associated with deeper tissues, such as peripheral neuropathic pain, including but not limited to the peripheral neuropathic pain associated with diabetic neuropathy, ankylosing spondylitis, Reiter's syndrome, gout, chondrocalcinosis, [...] fibromyalgia, musculoskeletal pain, neuropathic-postoperative complications, [...], acute nonspecific tenosynovitis, bursitis, epicondylitis, post-traumatic osteoarthritis, synovitis, [...]. When cannabinoids are administered topically to treat pain and other conditions associated with deeper tissues, including peripheral neuropathic pain, it maybe useful to co-administer cannabinoids systemically.My research is ongoing - stay tuned. Along with
agmatine,
collagen and kratom, I'm going to test THC/CBD formulations and report back. Hopefully I'll discover how to make our CLL journeys less painful and more fun. (
Cannabis is far less addictive than opioids but if you become a stoner pothead, PT may not look kindly at you
)
