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Uncategorized Friday, December 21st 2012 at 10:35 am

Feeling No Pain? Researchers Discover How Pot Provides Pain Relief

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Medicinal marijuana has been gaining wider acceptance throughout the United States, but there are still plenty of things we don’t understand about the effects of the drug. We may be a step closer on at least one angle, though — the ability of cannabis to dull pain. Using brain imaging technology, researchers at Oxford University suggest that the drug doesn’t actually lessen the intensity of pain that patients are feeling. Instead, it seems to change the perception of the sensation, helping patients find the same amount of pain more tolerable.

The results of the small MRI study were published this week in the journal Pain, and show that the active compounds in marijuana — cannabinoids — seemed to reduce activity in the parts of the brain that registered pain, suggesting that while test subjects could likely still experience pain, they didn’t seem to mind it as much. In other words, it’s not working to change what nerves are feeling, but to change patient’s perception of what their nerves are feeling.

That insight could have major potential for understanding how marijuana and cannabis compounds help to relieve pain for some patients, a mechanism that is still woefully misunderstood. While some patients get no pain relief benefit from cannabis, others find it works where no other drug has. So while it’s clear that cannabis can help patients suffering from pain, understanding the mechanism of how it does so is key to bringing that relief to more patients, and applying it more effectively.

There’s a lot of work yet to do before these clues offer real world help for people suffering from long term pain as this latest study was carried out on healthy volunteers exposed to a pain causing chili-cream.The next step is to start working on imaging studies that can show whether the drug has the same effect on patients actually suffering from long-term, chronic pain.

(via Medical Xpress)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-E-Screws-Jr/5200506 Bruce E. Screws Jr.

    This is similar to the synaesthesia described in William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” (the book that started the “cyberpunk” genre and coined the term “cyberspace.”) One of the characters, after a severe injury, is administered a drug that changed the feeling of pain to a completely different sensation.

  • Gal1968

    I never write in on these forums , I just read and move on .but this is one subject where I felt compelled to do so . In 2006 I had my first lower laminectomy . After that came epidural injections , steroid injections , s.i. Joint injections . 2010 I had my second lower lumbar laminectomy followed by more Percocet , Vicodin, Zoloft, ibuprofen etc. more spinal injections followed by a spinal stimulator followed by mor S.I. Joint injections finally leaving me with three pins in my left lower S.I joint now waiting to get more pins in my right side . I have many , many sleepless nights due to the excruciating pain of everyday life . I have prayed for death on more than one occasion . I started vaporizing pot to relive my pain and guess what ? Yep works better than any of the above mentioned drugs . I can stand being around people again when I use it and I even laugh with my wife who should be canonized a saint just for putting up with me . I have a idea , my doctors all agree ( all five of them ) let me hit the M.J. And leave me become some what of my old self , as if I can even remember what that is . Did I mention I am a old 44 years this shit started when I was 36 . Quit trying to control me with the hard core narcotics that only make me have the runs and the night sweats