How Long-term Cannabis Use Benefits Patients in Pain? (New Study)

Despite the negative popularity of the cannabis plant, the research on finding its medical potential is on the rise.

A new study on identifying the pain-relieving effect of cannabis has presented a different picture of this naturally healing plant, suggesting that cannabis has no effect on increasing pain sensitivity which is common in the case of common pain-relief medicines.

The study particularly talked about the no reduction in pain tolerance even after a long-term cannabis user. Michelle St. Pierre is a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia who has worked on analyzing pain sensitivity among cannabis users. The complete study findings are published in the journal “The Clinical Journal of Pain”.

The trend of using CBD-infused products especially for pain-relief can make any person wonder about the healing benefits of this plant. In general, people are more likely to invest in a product which is presented as a risk-free, cruelty-free, and natural.

It explains why the alternative medicinal industry is blooming. However, it is not necessary for all these healing products to be as effective as medicines.

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Despite being popular as an illegal or hallucinating plant, the cannabis plant has miraculous health benefits which make it the number one choice in almost all natural pain remedies and supplements for pain management.

There is plenty of data that suggests the use of cannabis plant and cannabis-based products among patients for pain relief. And some of them combine or prefer it over the common pain killers urging researchers to have a clear stance over the efficacy and results of these CBD products.

Considering the highly addictive properties of the cannabis plant, it is natural to have security concerns over using this plant or plant-based products. Typically, the problem with over the counter pain-relieving medicines is that after some time, they stop working or in other words, the human body develops tolerance against them. Now cannabis is an equally powerful plant that may also cause similar effects.

In that case, the long-term use of cannabis for pain management would have been impossible. However, the study has brought the good news that cannabis users don’t experience any such problem even after years of using it.

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Zach Walsh from the Therapeutic Recreational and Problematic Substance Use Lab at UBC is the co-researcher and second author of this study. According to him, these results indicating how pain sensitivity may change over the years with using opioids can easily worsen a person’s health which is already at risk.

But finding these results is a relief that there is no such problem associated with the cannabinoids of the cannabis plant. This effect is somehow different from what is being reported by opioid users.

The opioid users are more likely to experience pain reactivity even after using these medicines for long. Cannabis and medicines somehow work the same and even their mode of action is the same. But somehow their response towards pain sensitivity is different.

Overall, this study concludes that frequent use of cannabis has no effect on increasing the pain sensitivity which people often fear. However, it doesn’t mean that a person can go beyond the safety limits recommended for using cannabis or CBD-infused products.