Informing Doctors and Patients on Cannabis Use for Pain

Paper Title: Cannabis and Pain: A Clinical Review

Although results from many bench-scientific and preclinical animal trials support the use of medical cannabis for pain management, there is not yet an equal body of evidence in human clinical trials. However, this is, in part, due to the fact that, despite millennia of accounts supporting the use of cannabis to treat a large number of medical concerns, in the shorter history of cannabis research, the number of controlled, double-blind, placebo studies are limited, and to some points of view, may not even be possible. Additionally, in an era where increasingly more patients request cannabis therapy from their clinicians, health professionals are catastrophically undereducated on the topic. Furthermore, given the status of the modern opioid crisis, there is a growing need for alternative pain management strategies: states with medical marijuana laws experience significantly fewer opioid-related deaths than states lacking them. Additional research could reduce these deaths further and provide viable alternatives for patients seeking pain management when other therapies have failed. 

Below are interesting clippings from this article, points that are either described eloquently or bring a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion:


From this review, a curious problem with the current definitions of Cannabis Use Disorder:



A brief overview of endocannabinoids from this paper:



A model to understand the tolerance effects of opioids, and a major difference from cannabinoids



A summary overview of substances commonly used for pain relief:


View this review (yellow link) or download:

This paper is also stored here:    http://bit.ly/305iPtt     inside the CED Foundation Archive

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Tweet: Increasing patient interest in medical #cannabis and the bleak status of the #opioid crisis demands further research into pain management applications of cannabis. Learn more at http://bit.ly/2EVF0pv

Benjamin Caplan, MDInforming Doctors and Patients on Cannabis Use for Pain

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