Cannabis Instead of Opioids for Chronic Pain reduction - summary of research from goodrx

[cesanon]

An interesting article worth a read. These are just some excerpts.

Though personally, I would stay away from Cannabinoids unless and until your reach hospice.

It is undisputed that Prostate cancer cells have extra cannabinoid receptors.

So, given the role and cannabinoid play in mammal physiology, it is almost certain that cannabinoids either hinder or accelerate the activity or growth of prostate cancer cells.

The limited evidence so far is that they invigorate the growth of prostate cancer cells.

Once you are in hospice, that becomes not such an important issue.

It appears that cannabinoid pain reduction is more sustainable the opioid pain reduction. And is just plain more effective for chronic pain.

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"For some conditions, cannabis may provide an alternative to opioids. Studies have not yet shown cannabis to be helpful for acute pain. However, for chronic pain — and particularly nerve and neuropathic pain — there may be benefits.

There is promising research for the use of THC in neuropathic pain. This shows promise for its use as a single cannabinoid. These studies showed that even a small amount of THC decreased chronic neuropathic pain. However, it worked better when inhaled, rather than taken by mouth.

One study from 2020 looked at adults who were reliant on opioids for chronic pain for a decade. With cannabinoids, half of the adults were able to stop all opioids. A third cut back on them. Patients have said they prefer cannabinoids over opioids because of:

Less severe side effects

Lower effects from withdrawal

Easier accessibility

Better outcomes

Can I use cannabinoids in combination with opioids?

Studies have shown taking cannabis can decrease the use of opioids for chronic pain by 40% to 60%. When taking both of these medications as a part of their chronic pain therapy plan, patients experienced fewer side effects and a better quality of life with cannabis use. "

[Tak-Druk]

My understanding is that cannabinoids can actually inhibit prostate cancer.

I have found them to be an excellent substitute for opioids to manage bone pain and chemo side effects. If nothing else it helps me avoid constipation issues, while it also helps my appetite during chemo. Cannabis also helps me sleep and rest! ...and even lift my mood a bit.

Here's one article... but I have looked at others that support a similar theory. I would be very interested in hearing conflicting research if you have it! Thanks.

"Prostate cancer cells possess increased expression of both cannabinoid 1 and 2 receptors, and stimulation of these results in decrease in cell viability, increased apoptosis, and decreased androgen receptor expression and prostate-specific antigen excretion."

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[cesanon in reply to Tak-Druk]

1. Thanks for the link.

2. I did a quick look at the article. It doesn't appear to say what you think it says.

It is invitro and says it is worth looking at a clinical trial. I agree with that. And it isn't inconsistent with what I said.

In particular: "Curiously enough it was determined that high cannabinoid CB1 receptor immunoreactivity is associated with greater disease severity and poorer outcome in prostate cancer patients.[35] In this study, 42% of the high CB1 receptor immunoreactivity group on prostate biopsy presented with Gleason scores of 8–10 when compared with 12% in the low CB1 receptor immunoreactivity. The incidence of metastases at diagnosis was also higher in the high CB1 receptor immunoreactivity (17%) than in the low group (5%). Patients with high CB1 receptor immunoreactivity showed a significantly worse survival rate than those with low CB1 receptor immunoreactivity (hazard ratio 2.51, with 95% confidence limits of 1.43–4.43; P < 0.05)."

3. My data is from a sample of about 100 patients out of perhaps 2,000 prostate cancer patients under the care of Dr. Myers.

He never published this but said those patients that bragged about self-medication with cannabis consistently exhibited more aggressive cancer, and not at subtle nuanced levels.

This is basically invivo and opposed to invitro.

4. There are over 150 cannabinoids and almost the same number of terpenes in commonly available street marjihuana.

No doubt there are some of the cannabinoids that will shut down pca growth and others that accelerate it. That is in the nature of cannabinoids.

And actually, the clinical trials proposed by the authors would suss that out. Properly conducted they would trial it one cannabinoid at a time.

What Myers personally observed was that the mix of cannabinoids in the street marijuana that his patients were self-treating themselves with, was evidencing a pattern of harm.

5. Unfortunately we are unlikely to ever find out. Such a clinical study can't be done in the US.

And even outside the US, there is no pharma money to finance such clinical trials.

6. The FDA standard for unproven treatments is they are guilty until proven innocent.

It is risky behavior to adopt other more irrational standards based on ideology or emotional needs.

[Tak-Druk in reply to cesanon]

Yeah... I just did a quick google for cannabis and prostate cancer and that was near the top. It seems I've heard a lot of anecdotal/'scientific' evidence that cannabis inhibits prostate cancer growth. One direct source I have talked personally is Dr. Abrams at the UCSF Osher Clinic for Integrative Medicine: that was maybe 7 years ago and I don't have all the details, but he seemed to have put a lot of thought and research into the topic, supporting the opinion that cannabis could be inhibitory of cancer growth, but at least that it is harmless enough to be worth the indirect benefits. I'm imagining how interesting it would be to see a debate/discussion between Abrams and Meyers.

Thanks for the additional info and clarification. Meyers provides some interesting food for thought. I'm going to do some more poking around to see if I can find any other information that supports his conclusions. I do wish there was more ready, actual data; but alas, like you said, that's not where the money goes for clinical trials... though that's an entirely different discussion! (When I was considering your post, I did find one article that said cannabis was shown to promote worse outcomes in HPV related head and neck cancer!)

[cesanon in reply to Tak-Druk]

I think it is indisputable that cannabis works very well for chronic pain.

The jury is still out about exactly how carious cannabinoids interact with the greater number of cannabinoid receptors on cancerous prostate cells.

[6357axbz]

“So, given the role and cannabinoid play in mammal physiology, it is almost certain that cannabinoids either hinder or accelerate the activity or growth of prostate cancer cells.” Perhaps they should add, “or maybe do nothing at all” 😂

What a totally BS statement!

[cesanon in reply to 6357axbz]

"What a totally BS statement!"

Facts are facts.

The FDA standard for unproven treatments is they are guilty until proven innocent.

[LearnAll]

One possible way Cannabinoids can slow PCa is by working on reducing anxiety, promoting better sleep and thus, indirectly boosting capacity of immune system to kill cancer cells and inhibit their growth. It is proven that chronic stress lowers the capacity of Immune System to fight illness. Never forget that Cancer cells were kept under control for decades of our lives by our Immune System...until it could not.

[spencoid2]

I live in the "Emerald Triangle" of California. Most people here think that cannabis can cure almost any ill. I do not agree and am probably the consumer of the smallest amount of anyone I know. However I have had real benefits form a few uses of cannabis. First I made a half THC/CBD tincture that works very well to reduce anxiety in dogs, I call it my "doggie drops". It relaxes my Niece's dogs anxiety during fireworks to the extent that he is not a total wreck. I was taking cannabis candy fairly regularly to help with sleep but it eventually stopped working and I found no reason to continue.

However I had a case (which I may have already mentioned) of what I considered to be almost a miracle cure and which I have discussed with many of my doctors. There was no known study of similar "cures" at the time and I have not thoughtmuch about this recently. I forget many of the deatila and did not chronicle it in writing at the time so my ability to descrtibe the details at this point is not good. What I do remember (which I will never forget because the ffect was so dramatic) is that I had neuropathic pain and was taking gabapentin a drug that is prescribed off label for al sorts of things including neuropathic pain. I think the only on label use is for seizure disorder. I think ti stopped working as I continued to have pain and it was severe at times. Do not remember where?

I had friends over and certainly without thinking that cannabis would do anything about the pain, I smoked a huge amount of it. The next day the pain was gone. Of course I can not ascribe cannabis as the reason for the spontaneous recovery but I have a theory that I presented to several doctors and they all said that they were unaware of any such thinking by others but that it seemed plausible.

Pain nerves fire at different rates when there is no pain vs when there is. It is the brain that interprets the signals and determines if there is pain or not. It is my idea that a huge doe of cannabis can serve to reset the threshold that the brain uses to decide if pain is present. Unless they were afraid of insulting me, no one dismissed my idea as impossible. Unfortunately because of the legal status of cannabis and various hallucinogenics, there has been very little serious studies of these drugs. That is slowly changing. Many uses for hallucinogens are being studied including but not limited to treatment of traumatic stress syndrome and providing relief of anxiety in terminal patients

Hopefully serious studies of the effects of cannabis will replace the anectdotal "evidence". Might not live long enough to see this but I am almost certain to use both hallucinogens and cannabis near the end of my life to help me find peace. I have already made some progress in this without the drugs but I am taking Lexipro which I swore I never would and it has made me a lot more accepting of my condition and has reduced the anger I was experiencing. Never got really depress but dis get quite bitter.

[cesces in reply to spencoid2]

Cannabinoids are very powerful. They have an effect on many feedback systems.

They are present and functioning through out mammalian physiology, with out introducing them externally.

And there are over 150 types in the cannabis plant. And the mix varies from plant to plant.

It's unwise to assume anything that powerful, in unknown and unpredictable combinations, will automatically know good from bad, and only do good.

[ck722]

I take cannabis rectally to avoid the High. When I stop taking it my PSA goes up. Cannabis works for some people and not for others.

[kainasar in reply to ck722]

Would like to know, is that kind of dose applied? Enema?

[ck722 in reply to kainasar]

A tiny trace of RSO or FECO smeared inside an 00 gel capsule. Too much will ruin your day and the next day also. I go by "feel"/ tolerance. Place 1" inside, no more.

[Graham49]

Use of opioids for cancer relief is also suspect for making cancer worse, see paper below. There are other studies that show similar results. This is why when I had a prostatectomy I asked the anethecist to minimize use of morphine.

Does Opioid Use Cause Angiogenesis and Metastasis?

Ravi K. Grandhi, MD, MBA, Samuel Lee, MD, Alaa Abd-Elsayed, MD, MPH

Pain Medicine, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 140–151, doi.org/10.1093/pm/pnw132

Published: 30 January 2017

[cesces in reply to Graham49]

Interesting.

[ck722 in reply to Graham49]

After my RP I used oral cannabis oil only and was fine. I never had any pain. Strange. I did become somewhat of a forgetful idiot the first week.

[Hidden]

Facts are only facts to those that make the facts.....eat,drink,love and live.