Using Cannabis for Arthritis Pain

If you or someone you know has had to struggle with arthritis, then you know just how debilitating it can be at times. My grandma has been struggling with arthritis for years now, and it is really hard to watch her go through that knowing there is nothing I can really do to help. Sadly, arthritis is not necessarily an uncommon ailment in the United States. In fact, there are some 50 million adults in the United States that have been diagnosed with joint pain related to arthritis. Joint pain is a huge bummer because it can really affect your day to day life and make it so that you are not able to enjoy things as you normally would. People with arthritis will tell you that the pain can be extreme. According to some research from the CDC about arthritis, a shocking 25% of patients with arthritis and joint pain have said that their pain can be extremely severe depending on the day.

What this means is that there needs to be more help available to these people in order to give them hope. It is also true that people with arthritis are more likely to be impacted by some mental health problems like depression and anxiety. So, why am I talking about this today? Well, it all comes down to medical marijauna. Have you heard of people using cannabis to help with joint pain relief? With how many hours I spend typing every week, I fully expect to be dealing with some serious arthritis by the time I hit 35. Using medical marijuana may be extremely important to me down the road. 

The problem with dealing with arthritis pain is that relief can be hard to find. A lot of over the counter pain medications do not really have an effect on the pain, and using opioids that are sometimes prescribed to treat arthritis can have some pretty nasty results. The biggest problem for people with this condition is that there are not a lot of options available for them to treat their symptoms. One of the things that doctors recommend is lifestyle changes, like getting more exercise and working out. However, the problem with this is that it can be hard to do those things while you are in so much pain. So what if there were a drug that would provide more relief for arthritis pain but would not cause the same long-term problems that opioids do? Well, my friends, that is where cannabis comes in. Research has been done over the last few years that suggests the effectiveness of using cannabidiol to reduce joint inflammation and ultimately lead to less arthritis pain.

Cannabidiol (CBD) is part of the cannabis plant that is extracted and used to create a variety of CBD products in today’s marijuana industry. The great thing about CBD is that the federal government has deemed it has a hemp-derived product, which means that it is legal to sell it and use it throughout the entire United States. It also does not produce a high that people normally associate with cannabis. CBD is much more focused on wellbeing and health benefits, rather than getting high. It is not yet known what exactly about CBD can help the body, but we know that it does. CBD reduces inflammation on a cellular level, so much so that many medical patients have begun using this type of cannabis product to treat their arthritis and joint pain. If you have been struggling with pain and have not tried using CBD before, it may be worth trying!