Everyone is familiar with the pain blocking ability of morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and the rest of the opiate-based pain medications. As a group, they are the most widely abused drugs in America today. But without them patients can be stuck with unbearable levels of pain. I know when I was passing a kidney stone several years ago that I loved the spinal morphine that blocked that terrible pain. When used for just a couple of days to block an acute pain event, these drugs are truly wonderful. The problem is that they are quickly addictive. We used to think that that was the only issue with their use – that otherwise they were well tolerated by the body.
Unfortunately, as I reported a couple months ago in the newsletter, there is a newly discovered dark side to opiate based drugs that makes their use unacceptable – glial cell activation. Glial cells form the tissue in the brain and nervous system that structurally hold everything in place. Additionally they are the immune cells of the nervous system. They are supposed to protect the nervous system from foreign invaders. When they are activated they become, as one researcher put it, “Like rabid monkeys with machine guns.” They produce massive amounts of inflammatory chemicals that destroy everything around them. This is good if what is around them is some sort of evil bacteria or virus, but when there is only good nerve cells around them, nerve destruction takes place. It is this type of nerve inflammation that is the direct cause of most degenerative brain conditions like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc…
New research has shown that using an opiate-based pain killer causes glial activation. The pain killers induce nerve inflammation and death. The average patient will feel this as general pain everywhere – like fibromyalgia, and brain dysfunction like cloudy thinking, memory trouble, and the like. This starts happening in as little as five days of opiate use, and continues for many months after the opiate use is stopped. The pain killer is literally creating the pain you are trying to stop with the pain killer. This is either really stupid or brilliant marketing by the drug supplier.
We need a better alternative. That better alternative may be CBDs. CBDs are the medically active components found in hemp plants. Folks using the hemp varieties, we call marijuana, first noticed their existence. Smokers using marijuana to get high also reported improvements in their pain levels. For a long time the world dismissed this as a byproduct of being stoned, that like drinking too much alcohol decreases your ability to be aware of the pain simply because you aren’t aware of much of anything period. But as pot became a high value drug resource, plant chemists began researching the chemistry of the hemp family. The two first and most prominent chemicals found in marijuana are THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), and CBD (cannabidiol). THC is responsible for the psychoactive effects of marijuana, while CBD appears to have only medically useful effects. In fact the CBD is found to help protect the brain from some of the nasty side effects of the THC.
What medically useful effects have been discovered for CBDs?
CBDs reduce nausea and vomiting
Suppress seizure activity
Combats psychosis
Fights inflammation and pain
Fights neurodegenerative disorders
Fights tumor and cancer cells
Combats anxiety and depression
Most of this research has been done on animals as there is no funding for marijuana research on humans as the government still classes marijuana as a class 1 drug – very illegal. Lots of independent research by individual doctors trying to help their patients is showing the medically useful side to marijuana, such that many states have defied federal law and made the medical use of marijuana legal.
Personally I have been following the research with a great deal of interest because I deal with patients in pain every day. I have not recommended medical marijuana for any patients, however, because I am highly opposed to the use of drugs for getting high. There is a huge amount of research showing the detrimental effects of THC on the nervous system – much more than on the benefits of CBDs. So until the research came out about the pain causing neuro-inflammation of the opiate drugs, I was not highly motivated to seek an alternative. Now, however, I am.
Fortunately an available alternative has been available for a couple years that I have been keeping tabs on – CBDs derived from non-marijuana types of hemp that don’t contain any THC. To this point the CBD extracts have been super expensive, like three times the cost of good cocaine, according to the internet – $150 to $200 per gram. Over the last few months this cost has come down quite a bit, and while it is still expensive, it is doable for average folks that need pain relief. I contacted several companies for prices and availability and found the largest importer of CBD oil for medical purposes and can now acquire these products for patients. They source their CBD oil from Denmark where it is organically grown and extracted using liquid CO2 instead of solvents, like most manufacturers use.
Traditionally CBD oil is taken as a spray under the tongue, so stomach acids don’t destroy it – but it tastes really terrible. I have had some in the office for patients to test, and that is the most common response. So for use in the office I have acquired CBD oil in capsules at a dose equal to 10 sprays – 10 mg per capsule. Additionally that 10 mg is in a concentrated base of all the naturally occurring other compounds in hemp oil. CBD is simply the best researched portion of the oil. There are over 60 phytochemical compounds found in hemp oil, and they all have their own beneficial effects. And the cost is down to only $1 per capsule in 60 capsule bottles ($59.95). I also ordered some CBD oil balm for rubbing into sore joints. I have opened a bottle of the capsules so you can buy just a few capsules to see how well they work for you before committing to a whole bottle.
All medications are very individual in their effects on each person, so you will have to experiment on just what dose and what timing works best for you. There does not seem to be an upper limit to how much you can take, as there are no toxic compounds that have been identified in CBD oil. This oil is completely legal (so far) and there are a couple pharmaceutical companies that are planning on versions of this product for treating seizures. I don’t know if that will make it better accepted and “more legal” or if the drug companies will push for it to be restricted and controlled once they class it as a medical drug. For the moment anyway it is available to us common folk without any prescription. So if you are looking for pain relief and don’t want to get on the opiate marry-go-round, then here is an alternative.