After working with and treating pain in thousands of patients with Cannabinoids for years I place low value on research like this. Here’s why: It assumes that everybody responds the same. This is untrue in clinical practice. Peoples metabolism absolutely plays a role in how they experience Cannabinoids. Some people are very sensitive and respond to CBD. Others don’t. Some respond to THC and some don’t. Pain is experienced differently by different people. This is dependent on what is causing the pain. Is it inflammatory? Is it neuropathic? Is it a combination of the two? Targeting the mechanism is important. In clinical practice CBD targets inflammation, THC in various combinations helps with nerve pain. Adding CBG also can be very effective, but for some patients it is to stimulating. Researchers, who don’t work with CannabinoidS often try to study at the way we study other drugs. They don’t standardize the formulation, they don’t recognize the impact of where the product comes from.(reliability), the difference between the Cannabinoid’s, the difference between how are you metabolizing experience them based on their form(inhalation vs edibles vs oil for example), also the difference in metabolism. I always tell patients that everyone’s response is different. I have a stepwise approach of how to target their pain after we discuss their pain and what we think is causing their pain. I tell them that most people have some response. We just work to see where they are on the scale. Some people have no response. I’m convinced that this is a metabolism difference. There are so many flaws in each study that I see and I can’t believe we use them to extrapolate to the general population. What drives me even more crazy is people that have no idea and have never worked with cannabis trying to study it. You really have to experience at clinically to know the questions to ask and how to study it. No study will convince me it’s not effective. After working with thousands of people doing a stepwise approach targeting their specific pain and using various forms of Cannabinoids I would say 95% have some effect which varies and about 5% have no response and I’m convinced this is a metabolism issue.

Posted by Dr. Jennifer Anderson MD at 2024-03-30 19:41:48 UTC