News » 3 Mental Conditions That Cannabis Is Commonly Prescribed For





Medical marijuana is changing the landscape of the western medical treatment paradigm. One of the chief reasons it is growing in popularity amongst both patients and doctors is because of its effectiveness in treating mental conditions. These are conditions that, using normal pharmaceuticals, often require some heavy sedatives or otherwise debilitating drugs. The effective treatment of these problems, with few or no side effects, with medical cannabis has literally changed tens of thousands of lives.

Migraines

Probably the hardest thing for doctors to reliably treat are migraines. There are several drugs on the market to alleviate them, but it’s hit-and-miss as to whether they’ll be affective. Most have serious side effects possible with their continuous use and many cannot be used while on the job or driving a vehicle.

No consensus has been reached in the medical literature as to the cause of migraines and most neurologists agree that many causes may be to blame for this chronic condition. This explains why there are so many drugs for its treatment. Unlike most others, cannbis has been found to be effective nearly every time.

Medical marijuana has been used both in combination with prescribed pharmaceuticals and alone as a treatment for migraines. In fact, it’s been prescribed specifically for this for centuries.

Insomnia

This problem is often hard for doctors to pin down. The most effective treatments are long-term, but most patients cannot wait for them to work, so an interim fix is required. Most of the time, insomnia is a symptom of another problem, such as anxiety or chemical imbalance.

Over the counter sleeping pills are often ineffective for more than a few days at a time and prescribed drugs are often addictive. For these reasons, many have turned to medical marijuana as the treatment of choice. Sadly, little scientific research has been done into MMJ’s effectiveness for insomnia and much of the current literature focuses on its possible down sides.

Anxiety and Depression

Interestingly, mild anxiety is often associated with regular marijuana use, but most chronic anxiety is due to cyclical thought patterns that cause the person to become upset. Cannabis stops these cycles, causing a general mood elevation and “slow down” in some thought processes.

For these same reasons, MMJ is also often effective for depression. Although the two are distinctly different, depression and anxiety have similarities that make marijuana a common treatment for both. The difference here is that clinical depression is usually the manifestation of other, deeper problems. Whether they be social or physiological, those problems are the true cause of depression and marijuana should only be a stop-gap until those underlying problems are treated.

These are just three of the huge number of things that medical cannabis is often used to treat. Many mental, physical, and other problems are treated with marijuana with varying levels of success. The ongoing study and use of MMJ has shown that the interaction between cannabinoids and the human body are far-reaching and often very beneficial.

Tags: Anxiety, cananbis, Depression, Insomnia, medical, medical marijuana, mental conditions, Migraines