Medical cannabis has several uses. You may have heard about cannabis and cancer, but what about other diseases and disorders?
Some people take medical cannabis to treat depression and other mental health conditions. Depression is one of the most common mental health conditions in the US, and a lot of people successfully treat their depression with therapy and/or antidepressant medication. However, those medications don’t work for everybody, and those who have treatment-resistant depression are often forced to look for other options.
Why do some patients need alternative options? Depression has many causes and factors, both genetic and environmental. In many cases, depression comes from an imbalance in brain chemicals, especially serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Traditional antidepressants aim to balance these chemicals and provide relief. However, when other factors come into play, focusing on brain chemistry alone isn’t always enough. A lot of research connects depression to inflammation. When inflammation is one of the root causes of a person’s depression, that person won’t get relief without treating said inflammation. Cannabis is used to treat inflammation, thus addressing certain types of depression at the source.
People also use medical cannabis for chronic pain treatment. Cannabis has proven effective for pain management. Plus, it comes with fewer side effects and less risk of abuse than other pain medications. In an interview with Healthline, researcher Kevin Boehnke, PhD, said that “chronic pain is indeed the most common qualifying condition for which people obtained medical cannabis licenses. Given the context of the opioid epidemic…we now have a better sense of how widespread that practice and rationale may be.”
Next, doctors prescribe cannabis for epilepsy. Cannabis medications, especially those with a high concentration of CBD, have been proven effective for certain types of epilepsy. Cannabis is often used when patients can’t get their seizures under control through other medications and therapies.
These aren’t the only conditions that can be treated with cannabis. As cannabis slowly gains more acceptance and moves away from the stigma, researchers are increasingly able to study cannabis and its impact on different conditions.