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ME/CFS South Australia Inc supports the needs of sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related illnesses. We do this by providing services and information to members.
Disclaimer
ME/CFS South Australia Inc aims to keep members informed of various research projects, diets, medications, therapies, news items, etc. All communication, both verbal and written, is merely to disseminate information and not to make recommendations or directives.
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed on this Web site are not necessarily the official views of the Society or its Committee and are not simply an endorsement of products or services.
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Medical marijuana beats three leading Fibromyalgia drugs
Thursday 13 November 2014
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Marijuana beats 3 leading fibromyalgia drugs
Marijuana for fibromyalgia is not about using a high to cover up the pain. There is a growing body of clinical and real-world evidence that marijuana helps pain on a deeper level, and the law can’t catch up fast enough. Below is little visual representation I put together of what the National Pain Foundation found in a survey of 1300 patients. Although the sample size of people that tried Marijuana was smaller (n=390), the results still paint a picture of marijuana potentially being (much) more effective than the three leading drugs for fibromyalgia [Cymbalta, Lyrica, and Savella]. On a smaller scale, that’s the trend we’re seeing with treatment reviews on HealClick as well. (Read 42 treatment reviews)
Picking is straining
I tried marijuana once after I got sick, and my reaction made me vow never to try it again. When I heard stories of marijuana improving fibromyalgia and seizures, I wondered how it went so wrong for me. Then I realized…the same reason for its potential might be the same reason a lot of patients react horribly to it. Leafly, a leading marijuana review site, shows a mind-boggling 1038 strains, and these strains can have wildly different effects, one of them being the high that’s equal parts love and hate.
CBD-only?
The general consensus is that cannabidiol (CBD) is the anti-inflammatory counterpart to THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] without the high.
Dr. Allan Frankel [see below] explains that CBD helps pain by binding to microglial cells, causing a reduction in cytokines and pain reduction in fibromyalgia. Microglial cells are gaining steam as a potential cause of pain, brain inflammation, and severe fatigue.
Dr. Frankel Discusses Medical Cannabis
According to Leafly, here are a few high-CBD strains:
- Charlotte’s Web
- Harlequin
- Sour Tsunami
- Cannatonic
- Remedy
- Pennywise
- ACDC
If it’s CBD that we think is helping, then we absolutely need controlled pharmaceutical research on it. A CBD drug called Epidiolex which has no THC, is being tested now in Dravet’s syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. No word on clinical trials of CBD-only drugs for fibromyalgia yet, and it takes roughly 1.3 billion dollars to bring a single drug to market, so who knows when it’ll happen.
What can we do in the meantime?
That’s where the legality of marijuana combined with open sharing of experiences on the internet is so important. Patients are going to try it, but our experiences need to count. We can turn each of our N=1 experiments into the largest marijuana research study ever done, something a large, anecdotal Facebook group won’t accomplish. In other words, we need to track, and this is what our users are doing here.
If you’re trying any strain of medical marijuana for fibromyalgia, consider using a simple daily tracker to track, and make sure to use a tracker that claims to use the collected data for research.
The above originally appeared here.
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