Medical Marijuana

Medical cannabis or medical marijuana) refers to the use of cannabis and its constituent cannabinoids, such as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), as medical therapy to treat disease or alleviate symptoms. The Cannabis plant has a history of medicinal use dating back thousands of years across many cultures and the cannabis plant is one of the most recognizable plants in the world. Cannabis has been used to reduce nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy and people with AIDS, and to treat pain and muscle spasticity.

There are two types of receptors in our body that allows us to take in the effects of medical cannabis - CB1 receptors that are found primarily in the brain, spinal cord, and periphery and CB2 receptors that are found on the immune tissues. When coming into contact with cannabis, our body produces molecules (called endocannabinoids) that interact with these CB1 and CB2 receptors which produces the euphoric state that helps to dull our senses to various symptoms. One common use of medical cannabis is to ease the symptoms of nausea. In trials conducted by National Cancer Institute, two FDA-approved cannabis-based drugs, dronabinol and nabilone, helped to reduce chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting in cancer patients.

Another common use for medicinal cannabis is stimulating appetite. In a clinical trial conducted by the National Cancer Institute, "patients with HIV/AIDS and weight loss found that those who took dronabinol (delta-9-THC) had increased appetite and stopped losing weight compared with patients who took a placebo." Though, the trial also found that the dronabinol was less effective at increasing the appetite of patients in the advanced stages of cancer than standard treatment methods.

Marijuana plants contain hundreds of chemicals, 109 of which fit into a category called cannabinoids. THC, of course, is one of these cannabinoids, and it's the chemical most often associated with the effects that marijuana has on the brain....