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New research shows that medical cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic and improves the … More quality of life for patients who use it.<\/p>\n
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The use of medical cannabis is an \u201ceffective treatment option\u201d for chronic pain patients, according to the findings of a recent study. The research also found that chronic pain patients who used cannabis for at least on year \u201cexhibited significantly lower healthcare utilization\u201d than non-users and had better quality of life.<\/p>\n
The study<\/a>, which was published last week in the journal Pharmacy, was written by researchers with the Florida-based medical cannabis telehealth company Leafwell and George Mason University in Virginia. The findings also showed that chronic pain patients who used cannabis reported fewer visits to urgent care centers and hospital emergency departments (EDs).<\/p>\n Additionally, the data showed that hospitalization rates were lower among chronic pain patients who used medical marijuana, although the difference was not sufficient to be considered statistically significant.<\/p>\n \u201cExposure [to cannabis] was associated with a 2.0 percentage point reduction in urgent care visits, a 3.2 percentage point reduction in ED visits and fewer unhealthy days per month,\u201d according to a report<\/a> from online cannabis news source Marijuana Moment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe findings of this study suggest, in line with existing research, that medical cannabis is likely an effective treatment option for patients with chronic pain,\u201d authors wrote. \u201cThis underscores the potential for not only [quality of life]<\/p>\n gains associated with medical cannabis use, but also positive downstream effects on the healthcare system resulting from treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n The self-reported data used for the study was collected from chronic pain patients by Leafwell. The telehealth platform operates in 36 states, connecting physicians with patients seeking certification to use medical cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cannabis-exposed group included individuals who had used medical cannabis within the prior year and were seeking recertification of their medical card through Leafwell,\u201d the authors wrote, \u201cwhile the unexposed group comprised first-time Leafwell patients who self-reported no cannabis use in the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n Study Of More Than 5,000 Chronic Pain Patients<\/p>\n The study included data from 5,242 chronic pain patients. Of them, 3,943 reported using cannabis over the past year, while the remaining 1,299 participants reported no past-year cannabis use.<\/p>\n Mitchell Doucette, senior research director at Leafwell and the lead author of the study, said the findings show that medical cannabis can improve the lives of chronic pain patients.<\/p>\n \u201cWe looked at a large set of real-world data, where we compared medical cannabis users who we knew used for at least one year and people who had never used cannabis,\u201d Doucette told Marijuana Moment. \u201cWhen we compared those groups, we found that medical cannabis users who had used for at least one year had lower rates of emergency room visits, lower rates of urgent care visits and, importantly, increased quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we combine those outcomes,\u201d added Doucette, who has a doctorate in health and public policy from Johns Hopkins, \u201cit suggests that medical cannabis is not only leading to better quality of life for chronic pain patients but, again, potentially better health outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Doucette noted that some previous studies have explored quality-of-life improvements among medical cannabis patients, and other research has studied healthcare outcomes, \u201cbut really this is the first study to kind of connect these two dots.\u201d<\/p>\n Overall, Doucette said, it is becoming increasingly apparent that medical marijuana \u201cis a helpful medicinal product for certain groups of people\u201d and that healthcare systems \u201cshould try to alleviate access and cost margins for those individuals who it may be too costly of a product for them to access.\u201d<\/p>\n Cannabis And Chronic Pain<\/p>\n The Leafwell study is consistent with other research into the use of medical cannabis as a treatment for chronic pain. Also last week, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) reported<\/a> on the results of German study<\/a> showing that cannabis extracts significantly reduced pain and improved mental health for chronic pain patients who used it.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings indicate that treatment with medicinal cannabis improves both physical and mental health in patients with chronic pain,\u201d the study\u2019s authors concluded. \u201cThe results suggest that medicinal cannabis might be a safe alternative for patients who are inadequately treated with conventional therapies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research shows that medical cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic and improves the … More quality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,15054,15058,15057,15053,15055,15059,84,392,15052,15060,15051,15056],"class_list":["post-17316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannabis-and-chronic-pain","tag-cannabis-and-pain-research","tag-cannabis-and-pain-study","tag-cannabis-for-pain","tag-cannabis-research","tag-does-cannabis-relieve-chronic-pain","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-medical-cannabis","tag-medical-cannabis-research","tag-medical-marijuana","tag-medical-marijuana-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}