Medical Cannabis – A Better Choice For Chronic Pain
Currently, 100 million Americans – 1/3 of the country – suffer from chronic pain. Although chronic pain is a very serious issue, treating it has still been difficult. Since it cannot be easily measured (chronic pain is subjective), it cannot be easily treated. As such, it went largely undertreated until the 1990s when opioid prescriptions began to rise.
However, despite this rise in opioid prescriptions, clinical studies have shown that medical marijuana is very effective at treating chronic pain. Apollo Cannabis Clinic, comprised of the top physicians and scientists, reduces chronic pain effectively and safely with medical marijuana.
The infographic below presents the differences between opioids and cannabis, along with startling statistics, suggesting that medical marijuana is a very effective alternative to opioids.
Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks. It is important to recognize, however, that chronic pain doesn’t exist in a vacuum; many other symptoms and conditions are present alongside it, from sleeping problems to social withdrawal to a lowered immune system to anxiety, depression and many other issues.
Opioid prescriptions increased in the 1990s and since then, dependence and overdoses have become rampant. In 2015, opioid prescriptions were associated with 15,000+ deaths in the United States alone. In that same year, medical marijuana, on the other hand, had zero.
That’s because it is nearly impossible to overdose on marijuana; you must take 1,000 times the dosage in order to fatally overdose. With opioids, however, it would only take five times the amount to fatally overdose.
Part of this epidemic may in part be due to the misleading of the public; in 2007, three of the top executives from Purdue Pharma plead guilty to criminal charges for marketing OxyContin as safe and for minimizing the risk of addiction.
What we know now is that since 2010, opioid prescriptions have increased four times since the 1990s. While all of these numbers are startling, a study has shown that when patients used medical marijuana, the use of opioids and other pain medications decreased by as much as 64%.
With the largest medical marijuana study showing that medical marijuana is effective at treating chronic pain, including muscle spasms in those with multiple sclerosis and nausea in those undergoing chemotherapy, medical marijuana indeed presents itself as a viable alternative.
