Chronic Pain: Does Marijuana Help?

Chronic Pain: Does Marijuana Help? When I was a substance abuse counselor many clients told me that they felt better after smoking a blunt. Of course that was against the law back then and it broke their treatment guidelines. It also made them NOT want to do any thing. Which I think is the worst side effect of smoking pot. You could seriously waist your life away just smoking all day every day. Feeling no pain but also barely existing (I'll save that for another post).

My story about Chronic Pain

Sadly I suffer from Chronic Pain. I have a lower back injury from High School days, some Arthritis starting up and fibromyalgia and I suffer from Migraine Headaches daily. So I know what it feels like on a daily bases to live with chronic pain.

In fact, I have done some videos and people have asked me why don't I have my eyes open? I thought I did until I look back at the videos and see that my eyes were slits because I did not want to much light to come in and cause me more of an headache. Yes, I live with pain all day every day! I can't remember when the last time was that I was not in pain.

Chronic Pain is a topic dear to my heart. That's why I wanted to do this post to educate people on what some of us have to go through daily. 

Below you'll find a video from Ted Talks and transcriptions of the video. It's about Chronic Pain and it's effect it has on the body and mind of it's victims.

http://www.ted.com We think of pain as a symptom, but there are cases where the nervous system develops feedback loops and pain becomes a terrifying disease in itself. Starting with the story of a girl whose sprained wrist turned into a nightmare, Elliot Krane talks about the complex mystery of chronic pain, and reviews the facts we're just learning about how it works and how to treat it.

WebMD describes Chronic Pain below:

What Does Chronic Pain Look Like?

How does persistent pain differ from everyday aches? What are the most common sources, and can you cure it?

Everyone gets aches and pains now and then. But when the pain lasts for six months or more, or is constantly reoccurring, it's considered chronic pain. Chronic pain is different from acute pain, which is your body's normal response to an injury or illness. You feel pain when special sensory nerve cells send signals to your spinal cord and brain.

Once the cause of an injury or illness is treated, the acute pain goes away. But chronic pain doesn't. With chronic pain, pain signals continue to fire in your nervous system for weeks, months, even years. Sometimes people suffer from chronic pain without any previous injury or illness.
If you have chronic pain, you're not alone. At least 100 million Americans experience some form of it. The most common sources are headaches, lower back pain, and arthritis. For many, chronic pain can be debilitating and affect day-to-day living. Talk to your doctor about treatment options, so you can enjoy life and keep the pain to a minimum.

An article written By R. Morgan Griffin

from WebMd says that Chronic Pain can be treated with a number of alternative treatments and one of them include Marijuana. I took away from the long article just the parts that have to deal with Marijuana and Chronic Pain.

I thought it interesting the number of problems mentioned by the doctors that Marijuana can help with.

Below is the excerpt from that article:

If you have chronic pain and are looking for alternatives to medication and surgery, you have a lot of options. Alternative pain treatments that doctors once scoffed at are now standard at many pain centers.

"That phrase 'alternative pain treatments' doesn't mean much to me," says Seddon R. Savage, MD, incoming president of the American Pain Society. "I think the line between them and mainstream treatment is pretty blurry now."

However, not all alternative pain treatments work. Some can even be risky. Some alternative treatments may help with pain from bad backs, osteoarthritis, and headaches, but have no effect on chronic pain from fibromyalgia or diabetic nerve damage.

"You have to do your homework when you're considering alternative treatments for pain," warns Anne Louise Oaklander, MD, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Nerve Injury Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston."Make sure that you're trying a treatment that is likely to work in your case." And always discuss any alternative pain treatments you want to try with your regular doctor.

Here's a rundown of the most commonly used alternative treatments for chronic pain.

• Marijuana. Setting aside the controversy, marijuana has been shown to have medicinal properties and can help with some types of chronic pain.

• There's strong evidence that marijuana has a modest effect on certain types of nerve pain -- particularly pain caused by MS and HIV, says Steven P. Cohen, MD, associate professor in the division of pain medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Since it also relieves nausea, marijuana can help people who are suffering side effects from chemotherapy.

• However, marijuana does have risks. For some people, Cohen says, those risks can be serious, including addiction and psychosis. Because of the dangers and the obvious potential for abuse, experts generally only turn to marijuana when all other treatments have failed.

• On a practical level, you also need to be aware of the laws regarding the use of medical marijuana in your state. Could you be arrested for smoking marijuana for medical reasons? Talk to your doctor. There are also two prescription drugs, called pharmaceutical cannabinoids, that are derived from the active ingredient of marijuana. They are sometimes used for pain, although they are only FDA-approved for nausea caused by chemotherapy and HIV-related weight loss.

Now it's clear that there are still states that have not given the okay for medical Marijuana usage. But there are NO states that have turned down the CBD usage of the plant which is the part that actually provides the relieve of Chronic Pain. CBD comes in a few forms. There is oils, Pills, E-Smokes and Capsules. Your personal preference is the only thing that makes the difference.

Check each of them out for your self and pick the one that's best for you.

Oils, Pills, E-Smokes, or Capsules.