- Cancer
- Epilepsy
- Diabetes
- Fibromyalgia
- Glaucoma
- HIV/AIDS
- Hepatitis C
- Pain
- Lupus
- Lyme Disease
- Muscular Dystrophy
- Crohn’s disease
- Parkinson’s disease
- Multiple sclerosis (MS)
- Medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those above
- Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD)
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- A terminal condition diagnosed by a physician other than the qualified physician issuing the physician certification
- Chronic nonmalignant pain caused by a qualifying medical condition or that originates from a qualifying medical condition.
Can You Treat Muscle Spasms With Medical Marijuana?
Muscle spasms are involuntary contractions of a muscle or sometimes more than one muscle that cause the painful symptom of muscle cramps. Cramping muscles feel tight, painful, and hard.
Everyone has occasional muscle spasms, but chronic muscle spasms are a symptom of many conditions. Many things can increase your likelihood of suffering from muscle cramps, including:
- Being active during hot temperatures
- Certain medications
- Dehydration
- Inadequate blood circulation, especially in the legs
Inadequate stretching before or after exercising - Magnesium deficiency
- Muscle fatigue
- Pinched nerves
- Potassium deficiency
- Working muscles too hard when exercising
You can help prevent muscle spasms by staying adequately hydrated, eating a diet with enough calcium, magnesium, and vitamins, and stretching properly before and after you exercise. In some cases, however, muscle spasms and cramps can’t be controlled by these everyday measures, and a health care provider may recommend medical marijuana and other treatments.
What Can Medical Cannabis Do For Muscle Spasms?
Evidence suggests that medical cannabis, or marijuana, makes muscle spasms less painful. In people with multiple sclerosis (MS), marijuana and cannabinoids (chemical compounds derived from marijuana) have been shown to help relax the muscle rigidity associated with this condition in clinical studies. Medical marijuana and ingredients derived from it have also been shown to reduce the chronic pain of MS. In other countries, the prescription medication Sativex, made with cannabinoids, is used as a treatment for MS. This medication has not been approved for use in the U.S.
Spinal cord injuries are another class of conditions in which patients often have uncontrolled muscle spasms. Clinical studies by marijuana doctors near me have suggested that medical marijuana can help relieve the symptoms of muscle spasticity, pain, and insomnia associated with spinal cord injury.
Because the U.S. government has classified marijuana as a drug with “no medicinal value” since 1970, not as much research has been done as some doctors and health care researchers would like to see done. Researchers in the U.S. who wish to do clinical trials on medical marijuana have to get federal approval, obtain funding, and obtain the marijuana used in the study through the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Until these research hurdles can be reduced or eliminated through re-classifying marijuana at the federal level, scientists won’t be able to study the medicinal uses of marijuana in the same way as other prescription medicines are studied.
With marijuana now more accessible than ever, more researchers are weighing in on its health effects. But that doesn’t mean we fully understand the plant or its impacts. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a massive report in January that gives one of the most comprehensive looks and certainly the most up-to-date — at exactly what we know about the science of cannabis. The committee behind the report, representing top universities around the country, considered more than 10,000 studies for its analysis and drew nearly 100 conclusions. Many of those findings are summarized below. Within a few minutes of inhaling marijuana, your heart rate can increase by between 20 and 50 beats a minute. This can last anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The report from the National Academies found insufficient evidence to support or refute the idea that cannabis might increase the overall risk of a heart attack. The same report, however, also found some limited evidence that smoking could be a trigger for a heart attack. In August, a study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology appeared to suggest that marijuana smokers face a threefold higher risk of dying from high blood pressure than people who have never smoked. Research suggests this is a poor assumption — and one that could have interfered with the study’s results. According to a recent survey, about 52% of Americans have tried cannabis at some point, yet only 14% used the drug at least once a month. Other studies have come to the opposite conclusion. According to the Mayo Clinic, using cannabis could result in decreased— not increased — blood pressure. So while there’s probably a link between smoking marijuana and high blood pressure, there’s not enough research yet to say that one leads to the other. Marijuana contains cannabidiol, or CBD, a chemical that is not responsible for getting you high but is thought to be responsible for many of marijuana’s therapeutic effects. Those benefits can include pain relief or potential treatment for certain kinds of childhood epilepsy. The report from the National Academies also found conclusive or substantial evidence the most definitive levels — that cannabis can be an effective treatment for chronic pain, which could have to do with both CBD and THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Pain is “by far the most common” reason people request medical marijuana, according to the report. In September, a study published in the Journal of American Medical Directors Association seemed to suggest that marijuana might actually prevent people from graduating to hard drugs. The five-year-long study involved 125 participants, all of whom endured chronic pain. Researchers found that one-third of participants who used marijuana to treat their chronic pain stopped taking prescribed medications. They suggested that legal access to cannabis might lower the use of dangerous prescription medications in certain patient populations. A study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology suggested that pot smokers could have a greatly reduced risk of stroke. Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas found chronic cannabis users have higher blood flow to the brain and extract more oxygen from cerebral blood flow than nonusers. THC is known to relax blood vessels. A drug called Epidiolex, which contains CBD, may be on its way to becoming the first of its kind to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of childhood epilepsy that is now being used by many florida marijuana doctors. The company that makes it, GW Pharma, is exploring CBD for its potential use in people with Dravet syndrome, a rare, lifelong form of epilepsy that begins in infancy. Marijuana can mess with your memory by changing the way your brain processes information, but scientists still aren’t sure exactly how this happens. Still, several studies suggest that weed interferes with short-term memory, and researchers tend to see more of these effects in inexperienced or infrequent users than in heavy, frequent users. Unsurprisingly, these effects are most evident in the acute sense — immediately after use, when people are high. Scientists can’t say for sure whether marijuana causes depression, or depressed people are simply more likely to smoke says Florida marijuana doctors. But a 2011 study from the Netherlands suggested that smoking marijuana could raise the risk of depression for young people who already have a special serotonin gene that could make them more vulnerable to depression. The new report from the National Academies bolstered those findings. It found moderate evidence that cannabis use was linked to a small increased risk of depression. The new report from the National Academies also found substantial evidence of an increased risk among frequent marijuana users of developing schizophrenia something that studies have shown is a particular concern for people at risk for schizophrenia in the first place. Another study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine showed that people who regularly use marijuana have more sex than abstainers.