Although many marijuana doctors and users believe smoking pot has no negative effects, scientific research indicates that marijuana use can cause many different medical problems.

Marijuana is one of the most commonly used drugs in the U.S. When you smoke it, it begins to affect users within 30-60 seconds and can last for 1–2 hours. When it is administered orally, such as capsules, edibles or tincture the effects take longer to begin, but usually last longer. Click here for more information on the necessary steps to get your medical marijuana card in Florida.

The active ingredient in cannabis is delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol or THC which acts on cannabinoid receptors on nerve cells and influences the activity of those cells. Some brain areas have many cannabinoid receptors, but other areas of the brain have few or none at all. Many cannabinoid receptors are found in the parts of the brain that influence pleasure, memory, thought, concentration, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement. There are many different marijuana plant strains you can use to treat a variety of medical conditions using medical cannabis. We recommend you check with a licensed medical marijuana doctor who can assist you.

Marijuana can be administered in a variety of way as discussed earlier. This can again be done with CBD and or THC and applied orally, using inhalation, creams, patches, suppository form and more. It can also be added to liquids such as a drink or apply directly to your hot bath water. Get your medical marijuana card today!

SHORT-TERM EFFECTS

• Short-term memory problems
• Severe anxiety, including fear that one is being watched or followed (paranoia)
• Very strange behavior, seeing, hearing or smelling things that aren’t there, not being able to tell imagination from reality (psychosis)
• Panic
• Hallucinations
• Loss of sense of personal identity
• Lowered reaction time
• Increased heart rate (risk of heart attack)
• Increased risk of stroke
• Problems with coordination (impairing safe driving or playing sports)
• Sexual problems (for males)
• Up to seven times more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections than non-users (for females)

LONG-TERM EFFECTS

• Decline in IQ (up to 8 points if prolonged use started in adolescent age)
• Poor school performance and higher chance of dropping out
• Impaired thinking and ability to learn and perform complex tasks
• Lower life satisfaction
• Addiction (about 9% of adults and 17% of people who started smoking as teens)
• Potential development of opiate abuse
• Relationship problems, intimate partner violence
• Antisocial behavior including stealing money or lying
• Financial difficulties
• Increased welfare dependence
• Greater chances of being unemployed or not getting good jobs.

  Depending on the quality and amount consumed as well as route of administration, marijuana can produce a feeling of euphoria by stimulating brain cells to release the chemical dopamine. When smoked or vaped, the feeling of euphoria can happen within 30 seconds or so. When ingested orally, it takes much longer, even hours, for the drug to signal the brain to release the dopamine according to recent study and research.  

1. All Natural MD opens a medical marijuana clinic in Lakeland
2. All Natural MD now seeing patient in Lakeland Florida
3. All Natural MD marijuana doctors now open in Lakeland
4. Medical Marijuana is now legal in Florida

States around the country including Florida have legalized medical marijuana. The American public largely supports the legalization of medical marijuana. At large percentage of the public believes the drug should be legal for medical uses, and recreational pot usage is less controversial than ever, with at least 60 plus percent of Americans in support. 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. 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.

 

Please visit our website to learn more or contact All Natural MD today to get started today! We have locations all over the State of Florida to assist you with your medical marijuana doctor certification and ID card. These locations include Sarasota and Bradenton located at:

 

Of course, the study couldn’t determine whether the users were like this to begin with or if these characteristics were somehow related to their smoking. Marijuana is safer than alcohol. That’s not to say it’s risk-free, but cannabis is much less addictive than alcohol and doesn’t cause nearly as much physical damage. Disorders like alcoholism involve disruptions in the endocannabinoid system. Because of that, some people think cannabis might help patients struggling with those disorders. Research published in the HRJ found that some people use marijuana as a less harmful substitute for alcohol, prescription drugs, and other illegal drugs. Some of the most common reasons patients make that substitution are that marijuana has less negative side effects and is less likely to cause withdrawal problems. Some people do become psychologically dependent on marijuana, and it is not a cure for substance abuse problems. But from a harm-reduction standpoint, it can help. Still, it’s worth noting that combining marijuana and alcohol can be dangerous, and some researchers are concerned that this scenario is more likely than one in which users substitute a toke for a drink.

 

Qualifying Medical Conditions for Marijuana Card in Florida:

• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease)
• Anxiety
• Anorexia
• Arthritis
• Back Pain
• Cachexia
• Cancer
• Chronic Pain/Severe Pain
• Crohn’s disease
• Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Glaucoma
• Hepatitis C
• HIV/AIDS
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Lyme Disease
• Migraines
• Multiple sclerosis
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Muscle Spasms/Chronic Muscle Spasms
• Parkinson’s disease
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Seizures
• Severe Nausea
• Sickle Cell Anemia
• Spasticity
• Any other ailment/condition of the same severity/symptoms, when determined by a physician’s opinion that the medical use of marijuana would surpass any potential health risks a terminal condition/terminal illness

 

Please visit our website to learn more or contact All Natural MD today to get started today! We have locations all over the State of Florida to assist you with your medical marijuana doctor certification and ID card. These locations include Sarasota and Bradenton located at:

There are now close to 600,000 patients in the Florida medical marijuana registry. With over 4,000 medical marijuana doctors in Florida including All Natural MD, you can easily find a medical marijuana card for yourself or a loved one.

 

With that said, marijuana’s official designation in the US as a Schedule 1 drug something with “no currently accepted medical use” means it has been pretty tough to study. Despite that, a growing body of research and numerous anecdotal reports link cannabis with several health benefits, including pain relief and the potential to help with certain forms of epilepsy. In addition, researchers say there are many other ways marijuana might affect health that they want to better understand.

 

All Natural MD – Lakeland

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One of weed’s active ingredients, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, interacts with the brain’s reward system, the part primed to respond to things that make us feel good, like eating and sex.

 

When overexcited by drugs, the reward system creates feelings of euphoria. This is also why some studies have suggested that excessive marijuana use can be a problem for some people, the more often you trigger that euphoria, the less you may feel during other rewarding experiences.

 

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.

 

Research suggests this is a poor assumption and one that could have interfered with the study’s results. According to a recent survey, about 50% of Americans have tried cannabis at some point, yet only 15% used the drug at least once a month. Other studies have also come to the opposite conclusion of the present study.

 

 

So while there’s probably a link between smoking marijuana and high blood pressure as there’s not enough research yet to say that one leads to the other.

 

Pot 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 new report 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. Pain is also “by far the most common” reason patients request medical marijuana cards in Florida and other states, according to the report.

 

 

One of the ways scientists think marijuana may help with pain is by reducing inflammation, a component of illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis.

 

Other studies testing other cannabinoid products and inhaled marijuana have shown similar pain-relieving effects, according to the report.

 

A 2014 paper, for example, describes two studies of people with chronic Crohn’s. Half were given the drug and half got a placebo. That study showed a decrease in symptoms in 10 of 11 subjects using cannabis, compared with just four of 10 on the placebo. But when the researchers did a follow-up study using low-dose CBD, they saw no effect in the patients.

 

Marijuana may throw off your balance, as it influences activity in the cerebellum and basal ganglia, two brain areas that help regulate balance, coordination, reaction time, and posture.

 

 

Feeling as if time is sped up or slowed down is one of the most commonly reported effects of using marijuana. A 2012 paper sought to draw some solid conclusions from studies on those anecdotal reports, but it was unable to do so.

 

“Even though 70% of time estimation studies report overestimation, the findings of time production and time reproduction studies remain inconclusive.

 

In a 1998 study that used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to focus on the brains of volunteers on THC, the authors noted that many had altered blood flow to the cerebellum, which most likely plays a role in our sense of time.

 

Limitations on what sort of marijuana research is allowed make it particularly difficult to study this sort of effect. Since weed makes blood vessels expand, it can give you red eyes. A case of the munchies is no figment of the imagination both casual and heavy marijuana users tend to overeat when thy smoke.

 

Marijuana may effectively flip a circuit in the brain that is normally responsible for quelling the appetite, triggering us to eat instead, according to a recent study of mice.

 

It all comes down to a special group of cells in the brain that are normally activated after we have eaten a big meal to tell us we’ve had enough. The psychoactive ingredient in weed appears to activate just one component of those appetite-suppressing cells, making us feel hungry rather than satisfied.

 

 

Marijuana can control 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 chronic depression or depressed people are simply more likely to smoke. But one study suggests that smoking weed 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 report 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.

 

Researchers think it’s possible that CBD might be a useful treatment for anxiety disorders, and that’s something that several institutions are currently trying to study.

 

The recent report suggested that evidence of a link between marijuana and an increased risk of most anxiety disorders was limited.

 

 

However, the authors wrote that there is moderate evidence that regular marijuana use is connected to an increased risk of anxiety, depression and even PTSD. As in other cases, it’s hard to know whether marijuana use causes that increase or people use marijuana because of an increased risk of social anxiety.

 

The THC content of marijuana in Florida and across the US has tripled since the mid 90’s, according to a large recent study in which researchers reviewed close to 40,000 samples of cannabis. While THC levels hovered around 5%, on average they skyrocketed to roughly 10%.

 

Meanwhile, the CBD content in marijuana the part that’s responsible for many of the drug’s therapeutic effects has dropped, the researchers found, shifting the ratio of THC to CBD from 14:1 in 1995 to about 80:1 in 2014.

 

Still, tracking THC potency over time can be tricky. The older a sample gets as per its history, the more its THC appears to degrade. How it is stored matters too. These two barriers could be interfering somewhat with the metrics on pot’s potency.

 

In a recent study, scientists used MRI brain scans to get a better picture of the brains of adults who have smoked weed at least four times a week for years.

 

Compared to people who rarely or never used the drug, the long-term users tended to have a smaller frontal cortex, a brain region critical for processing emotions and making decisions. But they also had stronger cross-brain connections, which scientists think smokers may develop to compensate.

 

Still, the study doesn’t show that smoking pot caused certain regions of the brain to shrink; other studies suggest that having a smaller orbitofrontal cortex in the first place could make someone more likely to start smoking.

 

Most researchers agree that the people most susceptible to brain changes are those who begin using marijuana regularly during adolescence.

 

 

Some athletes, especially in certain endurance and adventure sports, say marijuana use can boost their athletic performance. This may be because of anti-inflammatory or pain-relieving effects due to back pain such as Spinal Stenosis, Fibromyalgia and many others that make it easier to push through a long workout or recover from one.

 

At the same time, there are ways that marijuana could impair athletic performance, since it affects coordination and motivation, and dulls the body’s natural recovery process. Without more research, it’s hard to know how marijuana affects athletic performance. Contact the experts at All Natural MD Florida to get started on your medical marijuana doctor card certification in Lakeland, Orlando, Sarasota, Bradenton, Tampa, Brandon, Fort Myers, Naples and more (800) 250-6737.