Even though some medical benefits of smoking pot may be overstated by advocates of marijuana legalization, recent research has demonstrated that there are legitimate medical uses for marijuana and strong reasons to continue studying the drug’s medicinal uses.
Even the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse lists medical uses for cannabis. There are at least two active chemicals in marijuana that researchers think have medicinal applications. Those are cannabidiol (CBD) — which seems to impact the brain without a high— and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — which has pain relieving properties and is largely responsible for the high. The 2006 study, published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, found that THC (the active chemical in marijuana) slows the formation of amyloid plaques by blocking the enzyme in the brain that makes them. These plaques kill brain cells and are associated with Alzheimer’s. A synthetic mixture of CBD and THC seems to preserve memory in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Another study suggested that a THC-based prescription drug called dronabinol was able to reduce behavioral disturbances in dementia patients. All these studies are in very early stages, though, so more research is needed. But scientists say that limitations on marijuana research mean we still have big questions about its medicinal properties. In addition to CBD and THC, there are another 400 or so chemical compounds, more than 60 of which are cannabinoids. Many of these could have medical uses. But without more research, we won’t know how to best make use of those compounds. More research would also shed light on the risks of marijuana. Even if there are legitimate uses for medicinal marijuana, that doesn’t mean all use is harmless. Some research indicates that chronic, heavy users may have impaired memory, learning, and processing speed, especially if they started regularly using marijuana before age 16 or 17. For some of the following medical benefits, there’s good evidence. For others, there’s reason to continue conducting research. There’s a fair amount of evidence that marijuana does no harm to the lungs, unless you also smoke tobacco. One study published in Journal of the American Medical Association found that not only does marijuana not impair lung function, it may even increase lung capacity.
On the one hand, nearly half of cannabis users say that their goal is to relax. Yet many people are also familiar with the marijuana freak-out, or have seen a paranoid friend disappear from a party because they “just can’t handle it, it’s too much, man.”
So what gives? The simple answer is that feelings of panic probably mean someone has had too much — especially if they pulled and ate an edible without knowing what they were getting into.
Knowing how much is too much can be hard said many Florida Marijuana Doctors, and a new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence shows just how easy it is to overshoot the target. The study investigates the amount of cannabis that can push someone from relaxed to anxious, and suggests that the quantity that helps people relax is actually pretty small.
Marijuana is dose dependent — the more someone uses, the stronger the effects. To figure out the ideal quantity for promoting relaxation, the researchers selected 42 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 40, all of whom were familiar with cannabis but not daily users. They split them into three groups, giving either a low dose (7.5 milligrams of THC, the cannabinoid in marijuana that’s mostly responsible for the high), high dose (12.5 mg), or placebo dose.
We found that THC at low doses reduced stress, while higher doses had the opposite effect, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University and an author of the study, said in a press release.
People on the low dose reported being more relaxed than those on the placebo, and their stress levels dissipated more quickly after the tasks. But people on the high doses paused more in the job interview and reported the tasks to be stressful, challenging, and threatening.
Those differences, however, were just in how people perceived the events. Physical stress markers like heart rate, blood pressure, and hormone levels were equal for all groups.
“The doses used in the study produce effects that are equivalent to only a few puffs of a cannabis cigarette. In other words, a few hits of a joint or bowl is enough to hit the low dose. And just a few more hits could easily bring THC levels in line with the “high” dose.
As a writer of the Post notes, The Cannabist has calculated the amount of THC people get from an average joint. According to one Fort Lauderdale Marijuana Doctors – Lakeland Florida Marijuana Doctors – Sarasota Marijuana Doctors amongst a study cited in their analysis, an average joint weighs about .32 grams. They say that smoking half of that would give users 9 to 11 mg of THC, assuming that about the same amount of THC would just burn off. That’s right in between the “low” and “high” doses used in the study.
The Cannabist’s formula multiples the weight of the joint by the THC potency of marijuana to tell you how much THC you’d ingest. So in a .32 g joint with a 13% potency, you’ve got about 42 mg of THC. The low 7.5 mg dose from the study would therefore be 18% of that joint, and the high 12.5 mg dose would be about 30% of it. (It’s worth noting, however, that exact calculations are hard since some will always burn off. Plus, some joints are a lot bigger, with another commonly cited average being about .75 grams.)
There’s a long list of caveats to the results of this study, however.
First, the sample size was relatively small and therefore not representative of how everyone might react. People with more experience are more likely to tolerate a higher dose without getting nervous, and we also know that the mode of marijuana ingestion affects the high. (An edible high isn’t the same as a smoked or vaporized high.)
Differences between marijuana plants further complicate things, since samples can vary dramatically and the stuff sold legally in state stores is usually far stronger than anything used in research studies.
Additionally, the tasks that the study participants were doing may have been particularly anxiety-provoking — so using cannabis in an easier setting may mean a stronger dose would be associated with less anxiety.
And finally, the study evaluated the effects of pure THC, but this may not give a full picture of how marijuana affects users. Other cannabinoids, particularly cannabidiol (CBD), may have soothing effects that reduce anxiety and may assuage some of effects of pure THC.
Lingering questions aside, this research does demonstrate a couple of things. For one, it’s easy to cross the line from the relaxing amount of marijuana to too much. And two, a lot more research on marijuana’s anxiety-reducing effects is needed (something that scientists who study marijuana frequently point out).
“Studies like these — examining the effects of cannabis and its pharmacological constituents under controlled conditions — are extremely important, considering the widespread use of cannabis for both medical and non-medical purposes. Unfortunately, significant regulatory obstacles make it extremely difficult to conduct this type of research.”
Despite the fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency categorizes marijuana as a schedule I drug, one that has no accepted medical use, a majority of Americans have thought medical pot should be legal since the late 1990s — and a majority now support recreational legalization as well.
Washington D.C. and 23 states have legalized medical marijuana (that number is 35 states if we count laws with very limited access).
Even the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse lists medical uses for cannabis.
But even though researchers have identified some fascinating potential benefits of medical marijuana so far, it’s something that’s still hard to study, making conclusive results tough to come by. The schedule I classification means it’s hard for researchers to get their hands on pot grown to the exacting standards that are necessary for medical research, even in states where it’s legal. Plus, no researcher can even try to make an FDA-approved cannabis product while it has that DEA classification, which removes some motivation to study the plant.
More research would identify health benefits more clearly and would also help clarify potential dangers — like with any psychoactive substance, there are risks associated with abuse, including dependency and emotional issues. And many doctors want to understand marijuana’s effects better before deciding whether to recommend it or not.
With that caveat about research in mind, here are 21 of the medical benefits or potential benefits of marijuana.
Marijuana use can be used to treat the eye disease glaucoma, which increases pressure in the eyeball, damaging the optic nerve and causing loss of vision.
Marijuana decreases the pressure inside the eye, according to the National Eye Institute: “Studies in the early 1970s showed that marijuana, when smoked, lowered intraocular pressure (IOP) in people with normal pressure and those with glaucoma” — though they still said that pharmaceutical drugs were more effective. These effects of the drug may slow the progression of the disease, preventing blindness.
There’s a fair amount of evidence that marijuana does no harm to the lungs, unless you also smoke tobacco, and one study published in Journal of the American Medical Association found that marijuana not only doesn’t impair lung function, it may even increase lung capacity.
Researchers looking for risk factors of heart disease tested the lung function of 5,115 young adults over the course of 20 years. Tobacco smokers lost lung function over time, but pot users actually showed an increase in lung capacity.
It’s possible that the increased lung capacity may be due to taking a deep breaths while inhaling the drug and not from a therapeutic chemical in the drug.
Those smokers only toked up a few times a month, but a more recent survey of people who smoked pot daily for up to 20 years found no evidence that smoking pot harmed their lungs.
Marijuana use can prevent epileptic seizures in rats, a 2003 study showed.
Robert J. DeLorenzo, of Virginia Commonwealth University, gave marijuana extract and synthetic marijuana to epileptic rats. The drugs rid the rats of the seizures for about 10 hours. Cannabinoids like the active ingredients in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (also known as THC), control seizures by binding to the brain cells responsible for controlling excitability and regulating relaxation.
The findings were published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
During the research for his documentary “Weed,” Sanjay Gupta interviewed the Figi family, who treats their 5-year-old daughter using a medical marijuana strain high in cannabidiol and low in THC.
There are at least two major active chemicals in marijuana that researchers think have medicinal applications (there are up to 79 known active compounds). Those two are cannabidiol (CBD) — which seems to impact the brain mostly without a high— and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — which has pain relieving (and other) properties.
The Figi family’s daughter, Charlotte, has Dravet Syndrome, which causes seizures and severe developmental delays.
According to the film, the drug has decreased her seizures from 300 a week to just one every seven days. Forty other children in the state are using the same strain of marijuana (which is high in CBD and low in THC) to treat their seizures — and it seems to be working.
The doctors who recommended this treatment say that the cannabidiol in the plant interacts with the brain cells to quiet the excessive activity in the brain that causes these seizures.
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The THC in the pot binds to receptors in the nerves and muscles to relieve pain. Other studies by Florida marijuana doctors suggest that the chemical also helps control the muscle spasms. Other types of muscle spasms respond to marijuana as well. Gupta also found a teenager named Chaz who was using medical marijuana to treat diaphragm spasms that were untreatable by other, prescribed and very strong, medications.
As Gutpa notes, a Florida hospital that specializes in the disorder, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Drug Enforcement agency don’t endorse marijuana as a treatment for Dravet or other seizure disorders.
CBD may also help prevent cancer from spreading, researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco reported in 2007.
Cannabidiol stops cancer by turning off a gene called Id-1, the study, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, found. Cancer cells make more copies of this gene than non-cancerous cells, and it helps them spread through the body.
The researchers studied breast cancer cells in the lab that had high expression levels of Id-1 and treated them with cannabidiol. After treatment the cells had decreased Id-1 expression and were less aggressive spreaders. But beware: these are studies on cancer cells in the lab, not on cancer patients.
Other very preliminary studies on aggressive brain tumors in mice or cell cultures have shown that THC and CBD can slow or shrink tumors at the right dose, which is a great reason to do more research into figuring out that dose.
One 2014 study found that marijuana can significantly show the growth of the type of brain tumor associated with 80% of malignant brain cancer in people.
Gupta also mentioned a few studies in the U.S., Spain, and Israel that suggest the compounds in cannabis could even kill cancer cells.
Medical marijuana users claim the drug helps relieve pain and suppress nausea — the two main reasons it’s often used to relieve the side effects of chemotherapy.
In 2010, researchers at Harvard Medical School suggested that that some of the drug’s benefits may actually be from reduced anxiety, which would improve the smoker’s mood and act as a sedative in low doses.
Beware, though, higher doses can increase anxiety and make you paranoid.
Marijuana may be able to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, a study led by Kim Janda of the Scripps Research Institute suggests.
The 2006 study, published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, found that THC, the active chemical in marijuana, slows the formation of amyloid plaques by blocking the enzyme in the brain that makes them. These plaques seem to be what kill brain cells and potentially cause Alzheimer’s.
A synthetic mixture of CBD and THC seem to preserve memory in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Another study suggested that in population-based studies, a THC-based prescription drug called dronabinol was able to reduce behavioral disturbances in dementia patients.
Marijuana may ease painful symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in May suggests. While online and searching for Florida Marijuana Doctors Near Me, we came across a very helpful and reliable option for cannabis. certifications
Jody Corey-Bloom studied 30 multiple sclerosis patients with painful contractions in their muscles. These patients didn’t respond to other treatments, but after smoking marijuana for a few days they reported that they were in less pain. His condition is called myoclonus diaphragmatic flutter (also known as Leeuwenhoek’s Disease) and causes non stop spasming in the abdominal muscles which are not only painful, but interfere with breathing and speaking. Smoking marijuana was able to calm the attacks almost immediately, at least it seemed to in this patient. 
Treatment for hepatitis C infection is harsh — negative side effects include fatigue, nausea, muscle aches, loss of appetite, and depression — and lasts for months. Many people aren’t able to finish their treatment course because of the side effects.
But, pot to the rescue: A study in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that 86% of patients using marijuana successfully completed their Hep C therapy, while only 29% of non-smokers completed their treatment, possibly because the marijuana helps lessens the treatments side effects. Marijuana also seems to improve the treatment’s effectiveness: 54% of hep C patients smoking marijuana got their viral levels low and kept them low, in comparison to only 8% of nonsmokers.
Patients with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis could benefit from marijuana use, studies suggest.
University of Nottingham researchers found in 2010 that chemicals in marijuana, including THC and cannabidiol, interact with cells in the body that play an important role in gut function and immune responses. The study was published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
THC-like compounds made by the body increase the permeability of the intestines, allowing bacteria in. The plant-derived cannabinoids in marijuana block these body-cannabinoids, preventing this permeability and making the intestinal cells bond together tighter.
One study in Israel showed that smoking a joint significantly reduced Crohn’s disease symptoms in 10 out of 11 patients compared to a placebo and without side effects.
That’s a small study, but other research has shown similar effects. Even more research finds that people with Crohn’s and other inflammatory bowel disorders use cannabis to help deal with their symptoms, even if there are questions about how much marijuana can or can’t help.