TL;DR: Medical Cannabis and CBD News this Week (June 11, 2021)

We read all the latest news and science about medical cannabis and CBD so you don’t have to. You can click on any of the story headings to go to the full article.

NFL to spend $1 million researching medical cannabis pain management [MJ Biz Daily]

• Interest in the use of cannabinoids, including medical marijuana, outpaces available evidence, according to Dr. Kevin Hill, co-chair of the NFL’s pain management committee and director of addiction psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
• The league needs “better information, better science” to ensure the use of CBD to treat pain in elite athletes is safe and efficacious.
• The NFL updated its policy last fall to discourage athletes from endorsing products that contain CBD or other cannabinoids.

Loosened regulations on medical marijuana research could provide advances in treatment [Fox]

• For more than 50 years, cannabis research has been limited to marijuana that comes from one federally approved facility in Mississippi.
• Dr. Sue Sisley, the president and principal investigator at the Scottsdale Research Institute, says past DEA regulations have limited her study on marijuana as a PTSD treatment for military veterans.
• Having a real-world form of cannabis for studies will also provide much-needed answers for patients.

Study: For Some Symptoms, Medical Marijuana With THC Is Better Than CBD [Forbes]

• THC is also medicinal—and in fact, cannabis users seeking prompt, effective relief from nausea want more THC, and less CBD.
• In what’s been described as “the largest study of its kind,” researchers at the University of New Mexico have been tracking via an app cannabis users’ habits: symptoms, cannabis product selections, and subsequent experience of relief (or not).
• They found that cannabis users using the drug to soothe symptoms of nausea found relief in as quickly as five minutes—but they also found that users smoking joints of cannabis flower achieved more relief, and more quickly, than someone using a vaporizer or using edibles.

Cannabinoid Profiles in Medical Cannabis Users: Effects of Age, Gender, Symptoms, and Duration of Use [Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research]

• A total of 629 participants recorded data between May 2017 and August 2019.
• THC-dominant products were more frequently consumed for symptoms of pain and sleep, while CBD-dominant products were more frequently consumed for anxiety and depression. 
• Females more frequently consumed CBD-dominant products, and males more frequently consumed balanced (THC:CBD) products. 
• Oil use was more prominent among females, while vaping was more common among males.

Medical Cannabis Use: Exploring the Perceptions and Experiences of Older Adults with Chronic Conditions [Clinical Gerontologist]

• With this research, we investigated older adults’ perceptions and experiences of medical cannabis use to treat and/or manage chronic conditions, specifically as a substitute for prescription drugs.
• Our findings suggest that older adults are open to medical cannabis as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs, hopeful with regard to the management of symptoms and pain, and aware of and astute at managing issues related to stigma both from their physicians and family and friends. Furthermore, older adults describe the frustrations with education, awareness, and lack of support with dosing.

If you think that you might benefit from medical cannabis and/or CBD products, book a free appointment with one of our medical practitioners to discuss if they might be right for you.