The Benefits of Cannabis in Treating Chronic Pain

Pain is the harbinger of disease, the alarm that tells us that something is wrong with our organism. Pain may occur due to various reasons, including trauma, fatigue, and even different maladies. Because of this multi-origin nature of it, and the fact that you may insufficiently understand it, pain can sometimes be hard to address. It is for this reason that you may need to consult an expert before making a move to use a certain pain relief mechanism Shiva Buzz store. Unfortunately, there are no efficient painkillers for certain types of pain but those which may have debilitating impact upon the system. Also, due to this reason, researchers continue their unabated search into new and more effective pain killers, even trying to study olden approaches to pain relief. 

Cannabinoids are drug substances extracted from marijuana, which can be used as analgesics. People have discovered that cannabinoids can be used to mitigate the pangs of pain in varying types of distresses, from headaches, to migraines, to chronic pain, and even birth pangs. There are some researches which have shown that marijuana may be used in the place of opioids in some patient populations. It can be used to mitigate mild to severe pain, and has proven to be more effective than opioids in some cases. Some patients who suffer from cancer, spasticity, HIV/AIDS, and migraines have testified that the use of cannabinoids has proven effectual in lessening their pain. 

How Cannabinoids Work 

Our bodies have an immense number of nerve endings called nociceptors, distributed in the skin, deep tissues, muscles, joints, and most visceral organs.  These receive and send possible threat signals of touch, temperature, chemical, or even movement changes, which are further interpreted in the brain to determine whether they are really pain-triggering, and the severity of the pain. There are two types of pain, which can either be acute- that is very severe and lasts for a short period- or chronic, which can last for many days, months, or even years.  

Though opioids have proven to be effective against acute types of pain, they are less effective for chronic pain. Additionally, the body eventually develops tolerance to them and their usefulness wanes to a great degree. This means that the user has to increase their intake with time, which leads to another problem, for they become more sedating and cause fatigue. This in turn makes them very burdensome to their users. In order to close this gap, experts have been contemplating the replacement or combination of opiates with cannabinoids. 

Cannabinoids work by blocking pain signals from being sent through the nerve receptors to the brain. Peripheral nociceptors contain numerous receptors for cannabis, which means that cannabinoids are very promising in both chronic and acute pain relief.  It has also been discovered from basic studies that cannabinoids and opiates use different mechanisms to induce pain relief, hence the combination of these two can have a synergetic effect in combating acute and chronic pain. 

Challenges facing the use of cannabis for pain relief 

There are only a few studies which have been done on the effectiveness of cannabinoids, and most of those were conducted on people suffering from cancer, injuries, and chronic pain. However, the techniques used to conduct these studies were not scientifically sound, hence there is not enough scientific basis for the safety of the application of cannabinoids.