Health
Related: About this forumSmoking Marijuana Causes ‘Complete Remission’ of Crohn’s Disease
by David Downs
Marijuana scientific name cannabis performed like a champ in the first-ever placebo-controlled trial of the drug to treat Crohns Disease, also known as inflammatory bowel disease.
The disease of the digestive tract afflicts 400,000 600,000 people in North America alone causing abdominal pain, diarrhea (which can be bloody), severe vomiting, weight loss, as well as secondary skin rashes, arthritis, inflammation of the eye, tiredness, and lack of concentration.
Smoking pot caused a complete remission of Crohns disease compared to placebo in half the patients who lit up for eight weeks, according to clinical trial data to be published the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Researchers at Israels Meir Medical Center took 21 people with intractable, severe Crohns disease and gave 11 of them two joints a day for eight weeks. The standardized cannabis cigarettes contained 23 percent THC and 0.5 percent CBD (cannabidiol). (Such marijuana is available on dispensary shelves in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities that have regulated access to the drug.) The other ten subjects smoked placebo cigarettes containing no active cannabinoids.
Investigators reported that smoking weed caused a complete remission of Crohns Disease in five of the 11 subjects. Another five of the eleven test subjects saw their Crohns Disease symptoms cut in half. Furthermore, subjects receiving cannabis reported improved appetite and sleep, with no significant side effects.
more
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2013/05/14/smoking-marijuana-cured-crohns-disease-with-no-side-effects-new-study-shows/
longship
(40,416 posts)Eleven people in the treatment group is far from enough to be definitive. So, this is just a preliminary study. That doesn't mean that it's not important. It's just not large enough to make the statement, "Cannibis is an effective treatment for Crohn's disease."
But this is certainly strong enough justification for a larger, more definitive trial. I just don't know how the hell you double blind the damned thing.
Won't everybody in the the placebo arm know that they aren't getting the real Cannibis? And won't everybody in the treatment arm know that they are? That's a real problem with this study. If it cannot be blinded, it may not be much use.
Chemisse
(30,793 posts)If so, it would be easier to do a double blind study.
longship
(40,416 posts)Which has not happened for many years, I was stoned to the bejesus for hours.
The deal is here that when the treatment arm has significant physiological effects (like when smoking or consuming real Cannibis) which are absent in the placebo arm, the blinding in the study disappears. And without blinding there is no way to separate placebo effects in the treatment arm so one does not know whether the benefits in the treatment arm were placebo or the medication.
I know this is difficult to understand, but there is a very important reason why these studies have to be blinded, double blinded even, where nobody participating knows who's getting a treatment and who's getting a placebo. Not even the doctors know. That's the only way bias and placebo effects are null.
I have no info on the procedures used here. But if everybody in the treatment arm gets stoned, and everybody in the placebo arm doesn't, there goes the blinding as well as any objectivity or credibility in the results.
That's just the way these things work, or don't work, as the case may be.
Chemisse
(30,793 posts)I thought you meant the unmistakable smell and taste of the smoke.
Incidentally, the need for blind and double-blind studies is not difficult to understand at all, particularly for people who enjoy reading in the Health forum.
longship
(40,416 posts)I don't frequent there. But I am a big fan of science based medicine, and the Blog of the same name, and the podcast, Skeptics Guide to the Universe, hosted by Dr. Steven Novella, who helped start Science Based Medicine.
But I am only a dumb physics graduate. Medicine isn't my expertise.
Sgent
(5,857 posts)A treatment protocol off the top of my head:
Require patients to be free of pot use and any benzo use for 20 years, then...
Control Group -- a nebulizer with glycerin and xanax.
Testing Group -- a nebulizer with marijuana concentrate (like when you cook with it) and a placebo pill.
Its not ideal, but the idea is that they would both get a little high, and the xanax group wouldn't realize they they are enjoying a benzo rather than marijuana.
The real problem is the ethical implications...
GeorgeGist
(25,294 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)eShirl
(18,466 posts)which is amazing enough
mopinko
(69,806 posts)it is one of those waxing and waning diseases, and can go into remission at any time.
i am amazed that this word would even be used, honestly.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)growers. But they seem ok with Wall Street corruption.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)not to mention preying on the weak and defenseless, rather than
taking on the increasingly dangerous task of trying to actually arrest
and prosecute the uber-wealthy Corporate Crime Syndicate, who are
REALLY running things, from behind the scenery.
As recently pointed out by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation, Blackwater
has spawned hundreds of shell private "security" corporations, AKA
1000s of heavily armed and very crafty & well-trained assassins &
black-ops bagmen, of all nationalities (for "deniability" all for hire
to the highest bidder, to "take care of" anyone who gets in their way.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)the will supplement with their own "guards".
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)..smoking pot. Said it helped incredibly with his Crohn's, for which he's already had at least one surgery.
Who knew?!
This would be awesome news for a lot of people out there.
PB
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)If "pro-lifers" were really pro-life, they be screaming LEGALIZE IT already !!!!!!
If Obama were real progressive, he would legalize it.
but I'm not holding my breath for either to happen.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)I stopped eating pizza, my favorite food in the world, ten years ago.
After an incisional hernia from a fricken appendectomy, I had a series of surgeries in which I lost several feet of intestine, including a section called the ileum. Afterwards, I suffered for six years with symptoms similar to Crohn's.
I literally was unable to eat except once a day, in the evenings, for six years. One fucking meal a day. And even then I could only eat very specific foods that had zero fat and no fiber. Even then, if I ate during the day, I would spend the next 2-8 hours in the bathroom. I couldn't go on vacations, have business lunches, go out with friends. I stopped going to holiday dinners with family.
Except when I would smoke weed.
I finally did a great deal of research and found that this connection regarding MJRx and Crohn's is well known in Europe and is because of the antispasmodic effects of marijuana. After smoking, It was like my innards were normal for about 24-48 hours. I didn't even have to get that high. Just a toke or three, and within an hour I was pretty much back to normal, as far is being stoned.
After the research, I was able to convince my doctor to get me a marinol prescription, which worked okay, but not nearly as well as the real thing. Problem was that the hospital where she worked restricted her from prescribing the real thing. I'd take the marinol, and sometimes I would start getting high right in the middle of the day, which was sometimes problematic.
This last year, my doctor diagnosed me as prediabetic (it's in the family and the one-meal-a-day regime is just a stupid diet for someone sensitive to sugar) and I had to start eating regular meals 5-6 times each day, and my life spiraled out of control with horrific bouts of bloody diarrhea, rashes and cramps.
In a panic, I went back to my doctor. She finally referred me to another doctor who was willing to prescribe marijuana.
I finally received my MJ Rx certificate and I smoke a pinch of weed each evening. I have been eating regularly and living a normal life for the first time in a decade. I am no longer pre-diabetic, and I can actually eat pizza.
redwitch
(14,933 posts)What an awful disease Crohn's is!
Chemisse
(30,793 posts)It's such a shame this isn't more easily available (legally). Let's hope that ten years from now this will be as available for treatment as the risky and side-effect laden drugs that are now prescribed constantly, and without the slightest hesitation.
eridani
(51,907 posts)There are hundreds of cannabinoids and related compounds in marijuana, and research should really get much more specific.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)than how to profit from people's illness.
goldent
(1,582 posts)Many studies do not involve profit or potential of profit
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)health care industry.
Come on back when you think up an actual point.
BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)Nerves had me and my guts roiling. Pain was pretty bad and I would get up at about 2am and smoke and the pain would decrease. I've since added lots of liquid probiotics and feel I'm healed.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)Because the medical profession say Ulcerative Colitis is incurable.
BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)Now we find out? I have to go and cry for someone.
delrem
(9,688 posts)"Smoking pot caused a complete remission of Crohns disease compared to placebo in half the patients who lit up for eight weeks,"
Walk me through it slowly, and don't fault me for my ignorance.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Anyone given a the "cigarette" is pretty clearly going to know they didn't get the pot.
That being said, it's not entirely surprisingly, as Crohn's is clearly exacerbated by anxiety, which the MJ would most certainly alleviate.
An increase in appetite and improved sleep? Well, duh.
goldent
(1,582 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 09:57 PM - Edit history (1)
One would have to be really careful. Getting high twice a day for eight weeks would not work for a lot of people. Of course, if it is truely effective maybe this is what you do.
WovenGems
(776 posts)Maybe it also prevents it
An apple a day