Harvesting cannabis flower involves cutting the individual buds off the stems, cutting off leaves, etc. Close handling. Of generally annoyingly sticky stuff, with sharp scissors.
There are often many minor cuts and nicks and scrapes on the fingers in the process. They rarely tend to be serious, but now I think about it they're not as annoying as papercuts.
Suspect the mechanical "wound glue" action of the resins is more important immediately; and the fact that they pretty much only wash off with alcohol means the wounds are disinfected then too.
I spent years cleaning hundreds of pounds of weed (1 lb == ~8-10 hours of cleaning, if you're doing it well). Never once cut myself with scissors.
I also used canola or coconut oil to clean the resin off as that worked really well and was an inexpensive way to do it (and seems better than pouring alcohol all over your skin... which would cause it to absorb even more of the resin). Just don't get your hands wet before you put the oil on.
Even though the resin is oil based, you definitely absorb it into your skin. Hours of trimming turns into a spin.
Your hands don't get saturated in resin unless you're doing something wrong, like squeezing the buds trying to drain oil by hand. It would take a extremely bad trimmer to be continually cutting themselves while trimming. There are a lot of components to THC and CBD that could have beneficial properties, not just the fact that they are naturally sticky.
My hands would absolutely get covered, but then again the stuff I was trimming was really great quality. ;-) Looking at it under a magnifying glass, all the nodules were wet glimmering, it was impossible to not get it everywhere.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that not only opiates are effective cough suppressants, they're in fact pretty much the only known effective cough suppressants, all other tried non-opiates being only very slightly better than placebo. Could be wrong, of course.
This paper is specifically about topical application of these compounds. The last paper you read saying it was worse that cigarette smoke sounds like it was about inhalation of burning leaves.
Calling the the authors of the paper liars is a very strong claim that you haven't shown any evidence for.
I too am calling bullshit, although for different reasons. Take a look at Figure 3A. Is there really that big of a difference between THC and CBD treated vs. not treated images? To me, a seeing person with eyes, no.
They didn't claim that there was a statistical difference in 3A. It's with senescent cells at the 48 hour time-point when combined with hydrogen peroxide, that they saw the biggest difference. (3C, on the right)
"The last study I read found that it’s more harmful than cigarette smoke and that’s a serious bill"
I know this is total BS because the differences between the teeth/eyes/skin/house between hardcore stoners and hardcore tobacco smokers are far too obvious.
Stoners are so much better off it's not even funny.
I am entirely convinced its just a matter of volume. Weed residue is some NASTY shit. It is impossible to clean up. How tf is a human lung supposed to handle that?
Cig smokers on average smoke waaaaay more plant material than weed smokers. If you smoked 20 joints a day im positive your teeth would look every bit as fucked up as a pack a day smoker
"Formula 420" has always been 99% isopropyl alcohol mixed with rock salt
Try using something that benign to clean something where you smoked tobacco in. It isn't going to work.
Beyond that, stoners tend to utilize more types of filtration. Bongs/bubblers which water cool and add some kinds of filtration. Many stoners exclusively or nearly always vape - which is orders of magnitude healthier. Tobacco smokers very rarely use filtration techniques when they smoke, and utilize more intense and likely more combustion inducing vapes than weed vapes.
Two points: vaping cannabis leaves a tarry residue in the stem of my vape (which has no filter). Also most cigarettes have filters, while most hand-rolled joints don't.
Genuine question: do hardcore stoners smoke the equivalent of 2-3 packets of cigarettes per day? Seems very dangerous if it is the case, and apples-to-oranges if otherwise. But I don’t know any hardcore stoner.
Happy to answer questions you might have for a hardcore stoner.
No, hardcore stoners don’t smoke the equivalent of 40-60 one gram joints by themselves in a day. A súper “hardcore” stoner ala Snoop or Willy might combust up to half that amount in a day personally.
Most “hardcore stoners” - read: medicinal users - that need that level of phytocannabinoid input move onto dabbing or tinctures.
Awful reasoning. You are judging health effects by secondary characteristics, which might be entirely irrelevant.
Drinking Tea can make your teeth yellow, that doesn't dictate some latent health risk from having yellow teeth. Or that Tea is worse than snorting coke.
What you should be comparing (and are not) is actual health outcomes.
> The last study I read found that it’s more harmful than cigarette smoke
Link? I've yet to find a study that has isolated cannabis-only smokers. They all typically find that cannabis + tobacco smoke is worse than just tobacco, which isn't all too surprising.
Choking makes you as equally dead as any other cause. Dead is dead, no difference to the victim. It’s naïve to think cannabis is harmless, it can absolutely be lethal as a consequence of behavior or messing up any of the million different variables that your body needs regulated to keep you going long term.
A bit contrived, but the blood pressure effects can be pretty bad for me. I’ve unexpectedly fainted after smoking before and banged myself up a bit. I suppose it’s possible to faint and hit your head on something you wouldn’t want to.
How any mind altering substance can. People take it because it is psychoactive.
The ways it can end your life are innumerable.
("But what about alcohol!" Yes and? Because one thing is bad another thing can not possibly be bad?)
Also there is at least some link between it and schizophrenia. Anecdotally the weed smokers I know are, let's say, not the wisest and most moderate people I know. (Correlation and causation, I know.)
The last study I read found that it’s more harmful than cigarette smoke
That's true but smoking literally anything is phenomenally bad for your body. Even herbal cigarettes (regular herb lol) have terrible health effects. That said, there are perfectly safe ways to consume marijuana that don't involve smoking. Have you considered edibles?
>>The last study I read found that it’s more harmful than cigarette smoke
>That's true
It's very, very questionable that that's true.
Since no link has been provided, and every study I've ever seen says the exact opposite, I'll continue believing cannabis smoke is far less damaging until I see very strong evidence otherwise.
I’d really like to see that paper. I grow medical marijuana and before that was a cancer researcher. I often feel conflicted about the job I do now but the papers I’ve seen like this one show no link between smoking cannabis and causing cancer.
Agreed, partially. I wish the focus was more on getting more comfortable about the presence or lack of specific negative effects instead of trying to figure out how to market + advertise it as a cure-all. For a huge amount of people its used exactly like alcohol, so I really want to know the most I can about its effects in that scenario (edibles VS dabs of pure distillate VS smoking flower, etc...). We have reasonable generic answers to some of that like "smoking literally anything is bad for you", but not enough data on consumption methods that don't involve heat/smoke.
On the other hand, we've got a pretty solid understanding about this for alcohol.
> highly addictive mind altering substance
mind altering for sure, but you should clarify that it isn't highly addictive in the way most people think about that statement. Its not a heroin or opioid situation where there is a high propensity to physical dependence even after limited used. THC use is more like alcohol in that around ~9% of users will develop some sort of physical dependence after frequent heavy use, granted there is a noticeable lack of known immediately damaging physical symptoms (like liver damage with alcohol). THC withdrawl symptoms, when they exist, are generally irritability, insomnia, and decreased appetite.
> highly addictive mind altering substance, that can mess up your life and possibly end it as well.
I think you've watched a bit too much reefer madness. There is little to no evidence backing any of these claims (and btw you supplied none) with legal access to cannabis.
Cannabis can absolutely mess up your life, though not quite in the "reefer madness" way. I have seen promising people use it to cope with their existential boredom instead of making their life more interesting and enjoyable, eg by learning new skills or seeking out new situations. Between that and the fact that it also interferes with memory formation, people who habitually smoke a lot of weed often end up stunted, failing to reach their full potential.
No. Full personal potential. Skills and interests they should have developed. Friends they should have made. Trips and experiences they should have had. Things they would never have consciously traded in for getting high, were it presented to them as a stark choice.
It seems you've already made up your mind (and in a way that doesn't really agree with mainstream science about cannabinoids), but I will point out that the endocannabinoid system already exists in your body, your body uses these chemicals for interesting purposes (related to health).
Also: alcohol is a poison that is far more dangerous than cannabinoids to health. it is not correct that smoking them is more harmful than cigarettes.
> The last study I read found that it’s more harmful than cigarette smoke and that’s a serious bill.
This was an intentional distortion of the study (if we're talking about the same one) created by the press releases of antidrug organizations. The headlines all screamed that pot smoke was more dangerous than cigarette smoke, and you had to dig to the third paragraph of the articles (where facts go to die) to find out that what the study actually suggested was that (cigarette smoking + pot smoking) was worse than cigarette smoking alone.
IIRC, it also focused on people who were smoking their pot mixed with tobacco, and suggested the reason for the damage was that people hold in pot smoke far longer than they normally hold in cigarette smoke, so more of the cigarette smoke settled rather than being exhaled.
Cigarette filters are basically ineffective at reducing the incidence of cancer [1][2]. They're more or less just a placebo for cancer prevention.
When people started realising how bad smoking was in the 50's, the tobacco companies started manufacturing filtered cigarettes, which had the appearance of being less harmful. They even added extra chemicals to make used filters appear darker than they otherwise would, so that they appeared to be filtering more effectively [3].
You know how the filter gets yellow after smoking? It’s not tar, it’s a coloring applied to the filter to make smokers think the filter is doing something.
Thats part of the marketing, the official hip drug of the liberal sticking it to the man. But not anymore, you’re paying taxes on that weed.
Why are we giving it a free pass? There’s no strong evidence it’s risk free, it’s just another street drug. Perhaps it’s believed that if you smoke you’re more likely to develop liberal values. If you can really call drug induced beliefs values.
You're going way overboard. It is likely that a lot of the benefits of cannabis come down to simply sleeping better. Your "drug dealer" canard speaks to criminalizing something relatively harmless. Relative to alcohol, for example, which is a very harmful drug, you don't get people calling the vintners drug dealers. The drug war and the carceral state do a lot more harm than cannabis ever could.
During the pandemic in America, it was nearly impossible for me to buy rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer for about a year or two. The belief that rubbing alcohol is effective against viruses seems widespread here too.
It’s a lot less funny when charlatans convince a crowd to start drinking rubbing alcohol like they did in Iran in an attempt to prevent covid 19. Hundreds died
I actually agree with most of what you're saying (I never trust any industry to research their own products), but this bit is wrong. As a former cigarette smoker who occassionally smokes weed, it's simply not true to say marijuana is "addictive" in the same sense as other drugs, and discredits the rest of your post.
you will notice that "studies were excluded if they treated patients with [...] severe skin disorders". Which seems relevant in integrating those findings with these.
I heard snake oil is really good for your skin. I wonder if there are any unreplicated studies funded by snake oil manufacturers that we should vote onto the front-page like morons?
(You can check easily that this was funded by manufacturers of cannabis beauty products via MITACS)
I wonder because there used to be a "wormwood oil" from some other plant that I used as a kid and, like you said, it really was great at healing skin abrasions (cuts, scrapes, kids stuff).
Bran cereal was once found to lower cholesterol. What was actually happening was those who ate bran cereal ate less cholesterol-raising foods at the same time.
Its a mistake to think think scientific studies are about establishing facts. Science produces explanations that can be tested. If you never test them, science stops working.
As much as I enjoy cannabis (in moderation of course) I just don't trust any of the medical research surrounding it. The motivation to find medical benefits, to redress the social injustice of people being imprisoned for cannabis, is too strong to ignore. It makes all such research suspect by default as far as I'm concerned.
Anecdotally, I have never found cannabis to be effective at pain relief. I tried it, but it only enhanced my perception of the pain (just as it enhances my perception of taste, music, etc...) When I broke my foot I refused any prescriptions and tried a high-CBD strain of cannabis instead, but it made the pain worse. OTC paracetamol/acetaminophen proved far more effective.
I experienced something similar, the pain still persists but it's a bit different, maybe more "tingly" in some way. Wasn't better or worse for me though
> I just don't trust any of the medical research surrounding it.
Same, I tried to do some research about the effects of weed on a certain chemical in the body, and every paper I found had some completely different conclusions.
I will say the one thing cannabis does for me that’s absolutely amazing is as an anti-emetic/anti nausea remedy. Nothing else I’ve ever tried has come close to relieving those sort of symptoms. It does also seem to work for me as a sleep aid, but in the same way as say, antihistamines do (i.e. I’ll sleep, but I’ll have an intense brain fog the next morning)
> absolutely amazing is as an anti-emetic/anti nausea remedy
Agreed, cannabis seems to work great as an anti-nausea remedy. I've also found ginger to be effective for this (wikipedia claims evidence for that is inconclusive, but it definitely works for me.)
> The motivation to find medical benefits, to redress the social injustice of people being imprisoned for cannabis
(A) There's huge motivation to find medical benefits to anything. Indeed you should be skeptical of any "substance X improves Y!" claims, as they're usually in rats and not reproducible anyway. (If there's an actual backing study at all!) The idea that cannabis is particularly singled-out by researchers with some woke agenda seems rather silly to me.
(B) Nobody needs to prove cannabis is helpful to show that it's an extreme social injustice to imprison people for its use. It would be an injustice to imprison people for drinking soda, and soda is awful for you.
> (B) Nobody needs to prove cannabis is helpful to show that it's an extreme social injustice to imprison people for its use.
The specific nature of American federal drug laws concerning cannabis makes dodgy medical research an effective method for breaking those laws down. And the severity of the American penal system makes it easy for activist researchers to decide that the ends justify the means.
I've developed a pretty severe allergy to anything cannabis or CBD oil related. It started at the end of 2020 and came out of the blue after taking CBD oil one day. Before that, AFAIK I had no allergy to anything cannabis related. It causes bad respiratory issues for about 48 hours if I consume any and skin hives that take at least a month to fully clear up.
I wish I knew what caused my allergy to appear, whether age, COVID, or something in the oil that wasn't supposed to be there perhaps.
You may be allergic to something on/in it, such as a pesticide or fertilizer perhaps? Especially if it all came from one processor. Did it come from a dispensary?
Bet you they were smoking it, as compared to vaping or eating.
Side-bet that they were using isolated THC instead of actual plant.
And even if recovery time was extended - what was the subjective experience of the patient?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly - every time that cannabis gets legalized, opioid overdoses drop significantly. How many people get hooked on opiates post-surgery every year?
Uh, the reason I'm not dead because of the Sackler Family's profiteering is because I studied cannabis and know my strains and my doses. 250,000+ Americans dead, 5x that in family suffering, the single first drop in life expectancy for white males in the country in reasonable working age. And go look at the testimony I found from the floor of the House when they passed the original Prohibition if you like naked racism toward Blacks and Latinos. I found it in a library, they still exist.
It does work for blood pressure, anxiety, pain management, arthritis management, and just being able to relax and let your body heal.
Oh that's right, we have sick-care and a broken fucking system in the US where even maintenance medication (about to be discontinued) was billed at $35,000 a month if you include shipping. I used to get 90 day supplies. Now it's every month. I can only imagine what something newer than 20 years old costs here.
Hence I'm happy to have met some Nepalese and will likely travel to the capitol with guidance from a North Texas immigrant peer who shares the love of Guns N Roses and thinks I'd really like it there. Free health care. They speak English. They like music and don't throw people in jail for that plant that grows naturally in their environment. They might not have pets, but pets are a luxury. I'd rather go to a place that can enjoy an evening of food and music more than trying to get together for some cultish sports thing creating regional rivalries that mean abso-fuckin-lutely nothing.
Maybe those times when a PharmaBro with zero moral compass connived an exclusive supply chain of a previously inexpensive drug nobody else was bothering to make any more, and jacked up the price x10000 for as long as possible to squeeeeeeeze the health system for outlandish profits
Having read the study, methodologies, and conclusions: This looks like a wonderful bit of science. I appreciate the stepped approach they took to determining a potential best path forward. I find it exciting how it consistently improved outcomes on the wounds. It's particularly fascinating to me that it works in combination with the hydrogen peroxide, and that helps the process, not hinders it (it hinders it without cbd or thc).
Assuming the paper isn't a gigantic fabrication to be retracted or disputed, then this is a rather exciting time. I know many who suffer from skin lesions, and even reducing their healing time by 10% would be miraculous. Steroid creams work wonders too, but the toll it takes on the body is severe after the years pile up.
I absolutely love how the title suggests a million things more than the study itself.
Nothing in the study even could demonstrate any actual therapeutic effects.
Even if the study were one hundred percent well done[0][1] and described a real link between wound healing and Cannabis, it's relevance to the question of any actual benefits in actual human is almost zero. At best it is an extremely weak signal. Of course nobody would care about the study if it was somewhat truthfully reported about.
Please look at Figure 1 and tell me what they are doing. Are they doing what I think they are doing, are they actually doing the statistical test on the whole sample? Without any controls? Doing NOTHING obviously increases \beta-Gal activity, so of course even a treatment which does NOTHING has a positive effect. Are they actually ignoring that? Are they literally just running random data through a statistics program and get excited because they get out p < 0.0001, because their Null hypothesis isn't "no difference", but "nothing changed", which is obviously ridiculous. Please tell me I am totally wrong.[1]
[0] "All anti-aging drugs were dissolved in DMSO and then dissolved in the media before being applied (n = 3 for each condition) for 2 h daily for 5 days." - from section 2.3 in the paper in question. Yes n = 3[2].
One word of caution with CBD's. If you are on any medications that are metabolized by the liver, CBD's can slow the metabolic process in the liver of your RX drugs and in effect amplify them. Quite a large number of people have ended up in the ER due to overdosing on their prescription drugs without actually changing the dose as a result of combining with CBD's. Making this worse is that some doctors do not know this which can prolong the time to stabilize the patient.
Here is one of the many discussions on this topic. [1]
I don't know anything about this particular MDPI journal, but my experience with other journals published by this group is a bit worrisome.
They often (a) ask me to review papers that have nothing to do with my research activity and (b) ask me to be an editor of special issues that, again, are in fields unrelated to my work. I can think of no well-respected journal that does such things. The other side of the coin is that I know of no serious researchers who submit to, or read, MDPI journals, despite the fact that they have some journals that would, based on title alone, be relevant.
None of this need reflect on the paper in question, of course. Perhaps this particular journal is of high quality. And, even if not, perhaps the paper is of high quality.
112 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadThere are often many minor cuts and nicks and scrapes on the fingers in the process. They rarely tend to be serious, but now I think about it they're not as annoying as papercuts.
Suspect the mechanical "wound glue" action of the resins is more important immediately; and the fact that they pretty much only wash off with alcohol means the wounds are disinfected then too.
I also used canola or coconut oil to clean the resin off as that worked really well and was an inexpensive way to do it (and seems better than pouring alcohol all over your skin... which would cause it to absorb even more of the resin). Just don't get your hands wet before you put the oil on.
Even though the resin is oil based, you definitely absorb it into your skin. Hours of trimming turns into a spin.
Ooo that's a great tip, thanks.
https://www.bustle.com/articles/41125-one-night-cough-syrup-...
Calling the the authors of the paper liars is a very strong claim that you haven't shown any evidence for.
In a world where no one reproduces results, test enough hypotheses and one is bound to hold.
I know this is total BS because the differences between the teeth/eyes/skin/house between hardcore stoners and hardcore tobacco smokers are far too obvious.
Stoners are so much better off it's not even funny.
Thank fuck I gave up smoking it 25 years ago…
Cig smokers on average smoke waaaaay more plant material than weed smokers. If you smoked 20 joints a day im positive your teeth would look every bit as fucked up as a pack a day smoker
"Formula 420" has always been 99% isopropyl alcohol mixed with rock salt
Try using something that benign to clean something where you smoked tobacco in. It isn't going to work.
Beyond that, stoners tend to utilize more types of filtration. Bongs/bubblers which water cool and add some kinds of filtration. Many stoners exclusively or nearly always vape - which is orders of magnitude healthier. Tobacco smokers very rarely use filtration techniques when they smoke, and utilize more intense and likely more combustion inducing vapes than weed vapes.
Terrible reasoning. You can not judge the health effects of a substance by how easy their residue is to clean up, that is just stupid.
You actually have to look at real health outcomes and compare those.
Typical stoner logic :^)
Furthermore ever smoked weed through a cig filter? You barely get any effects if any at all. Because it filters thc out. So no, its not just for show.
The latter is complete poppycock.
No, hardcore stoners don’t smoke the equivalent of 40-60 one gram joints by themselves in a day. A súper “hardcore” stoner ala Snoop or Willy might combust up to half that amount in a day personally.
Most “hardcore stoners” - read: medicinal users - that need that level of phytocannabinoid input move onto dabbing or tinctures.
Drinking Tea can make your teeth yellow, that doesn't dictate some latent health risk from having yellow teeth. Or that Tea is worse than snorting coke.
What you should be comparing (and are not) is actual health outcomes.
Typical stone logic :^)
Link? I've yet to find a study that has isolated cannabis-only smokers. They all typically find that cannabis + tobacco smoke is worse than just tobacco, which isn't all too surprising.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/01/14/b...
Sit down, take it easy.
Also there is at least some link between it and schizophrenia. Anecdotally the weed smokers I know are, let's say, not the wisest and most moderate people I know. (Correlation and causation, I know.)
That's true but smoking literally anything is phenomenally bad for your body. Even herbal cigarettes (regular herb lol) have terrible health effects. That said, there are perfectly safe ways to consume marijuana that don't involve smoking. Have you considered edibles?
>That's true
It's very, very questionable that that's true.
Since no link has been provided, and every study I've ever seen says the exact opposite, I'll continue believing cannabis smoke is far less damaging until I see very strong evidence otherwise.
https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...
On the other hand, we've got a pretty solid understanding about this for alcohol.
> highly addictive mind altering substance
mind altering for sure, but you should clarify that it isn't highly addictive in the way most people think about that statement. Its not a heroin or opioid situation where there is a high propensity to physical dependence even after limited used. THC use is more like alcohol in that around ~9% of users will develop some sort of physical dependence after frequent heavy use, granted there is a noticeable lack of known immediately damaging physical symptoms (like liver damage with alcohol). THC withdrawl symptoms, when they exist, are generally irritability, insomnia, and decreased appetite.
I think you've watched a bit too much reefer madness. There is little to no evidence backing any of these claims (and btw you supplied none) with legal access to cannabis.
Total jerk.
Also: alcohol is a poison that is far more dangerous than cannabinoids to health. it is not correct that smoking them is more harmful than cigarettes.
This was an intentional distortion of the study (if we're talking about the same one) created by the press releases of antidrug organizations. The headlines all screamed that pot smoke was more dangerous than cigarette smoke, and you had to dig to the third paragraph of the articles (where facts go to die) to find out that what the study actually suggested was that (cigarette smoking + pot smoking) was worse than cigarette smoking alone.
IIRC, it also focused on people who were smoking their pot mixed with tobacco, and suggested the reason for the damage was that people hold in pot smoke far longer than they normally hold in cigarette smoke, so more of the cigarette smoke settled rather than being exhaled.
Lots of people also forgo a roach altogether because they “want to taste the resin on their lips.” - Martyjuana’s words, not mine. But I agree.
A roachless joint is actually the recommended method of consumption by Ganjiers for cannabis flavor assessment.
When people started realising how bad smoking was in the 50's, the tobacco companies started manufacturing filtered cigarettes, which had the appearance of being less harmful. They even added extra chemicals to make used filters appear darker than they otherwise would, so that they appeared to be filtering more effectively [3].
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9241071/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/6601565
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3088411/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2554344/
https://www.algonquincollege.com/umbrellaproject/dont-hold-y...
Why are we giving it a free pass? There’s no strong evidence it’s risk free, it’s just another street drug. Perhaps it’s believed that if you smoke you’re more likely to develop liberal values. If you can really call drug induced beliefs values.
I actually agree with most of what you're saying (I never trust any industry to research their own products), but this bit is wrong. As a former cigarette smoker who occassionally smokes weed, it's simply not true to say marijuana is "addictive" in the same sense as other drugs, and discredits the rest of your post.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/does-cannabis-actually-r...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36441553/
you will notice that "studies were excluded if they treated patients with [...] severe skin disorders". Which seems relevant in integrating those findings with these.
(You can check easily that this was funded by manufacturers of cannabis beauty products via MITACS)
Edit: Thanks. I wasn't familiar with MITACS. It does look like they exist to assist industry funding of studies like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_oil
I wonder because there used to be a "wormwood oil" from some other plant that I used as a kid and, like you said, it really was great at healing skin abrasions (cuts, scrapes, kids stuff).
Topically apply two compounds to either side of a minor wound and see which side heals faster and better.
Seems like with a large enough sample the truth would become clear pretty fast.
Anecdotally, I have never found cannabis to be effective at pain relief. I tried it, but it only enhanced my perception of the pain (just as it enhances my perception of taste, music, etc...) When I broke my foot I refused any prescriptions and tried a high-CBD strain of cannabis instead, but it made the pain worse. OTC paracetamol/acetaminophen proved far more effective.
Same, I tried to do some research about the effects of weed on a certain chemical in the body, and every paper I found had some completely different conclusions.
I will say the one thing cannabis does for me that’s absolutely amazing is as an anti-emetic/anti nausea remedy. Nothing else I’ve ever tried has come close to relieving those sort of symptoms. It does also seem to work for me as a sleep aid, but in the same way as say, antihistamines do (i.e. I’ll sleep, but I’ll have an intense brain fog the next morning)
Agreed, cannabis seems to work great as an anti-nausea remedy. I've also found ginger to be effective for this (wikipedia claims evidence for that is inconclusive, but it definitely works for me.)
(A) There's huge motivation to find medical benefits to anything. Indeed you should be skeptical of any "substance X improves Y!" claims, as they're usually in rats and not reproducible anyway. (If there's an actual backing study at all!) The idea that cannabis is particularly singled-out by researchers with some woke agenda seems rather silly to me.
(B) Nobody needs to prove cannabis is helpful to show that it's an extreme social injustice to imprison people for its use. It would be an injustice to imprison people for drinking soda, and soda is awful for you.
The specific nature of American federal drug laws concerning cannabis makes dodgy medical research an effective method for breaking those laws down. And the severity of the American penal system makes it easy for activist researchers to decide that the ends justify the means.
I wish I knew what caused my allergy to appear, whether age, COVID, or something in the oil that wasn't supposed to be there perhaps.
Bet you they were smoking it, as compared to vaping or eating.
Side-bet that they were using isolated THC instead of actual plant.
And even if recovery time was extended - what was the subjective experience of the patient?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly - every time that cannabis gets legalized, opioid overdoses drop significantly. How many people get hooked on opiates post-surgery every year?
It does work for blood pressure, anxiety, pain management, arthritis management, and just being able to relax and let your body heal.
Oh that's right, we have sick-care and a broken fucking system in the US where even maintenance medication (about to be discontinued) was billed at $35,000 a month if you include shipping. I used to get 90 day supplies. Now it's every month. I can only imagine what something newer than 20 years old costs here.
Hence I'm happy to have met some Nepalese and will likely travel to the capitol with guidance from a North Texas immigrant peer who shares the love of Guns N Roses and thinks I'd really like it there. Free health care. They speak English. They like music and don't throw people in jail for that plant that grows naturally in their environment. They might not have pets, but pets are a luxury. I'd rather go to a place that can enjoy an evening of food and music more than trying to get together for some cultish sports thing creating regional rivalries that mean abso-fuckin-lutely nothing.
Even if the study were one hundred percent well done[0][1] and described a real link between wound healing and Cannabis, it's relevance to the question of any actual benefits in actual human is almost zero. At best it is an extremely weak signal. Of course nobody would care about the study if it was somewhat truthfully reported about.
Please look at Figure 1 and tell me what they are doing. Are they doing what I think they are doing, are they actually doing the statistical test on the whole sample? Without any controls? Doing NOTHING obviously increases \beta-Gal activity, so of course even a treatment which does NOTHING has a positive effect. Are they actually ignoring that? Are they literally just running random data through a statistics program and get excited because they get out p < 0.0001, because their Null hypothesis isn't "no difference", but "nothing changed", which is obviously ridiculous. Please tell me I am totally wrong.[1]
[0] "All anti-aging drugs were dissolved in DMSO and then dissolved in the media before being applied (n = 3 for each condition) for 2 h daily for 5 days." - from section 2.3 in the paper in question. Yes n = 3[2].
[1] I highly recommend reading: https://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/gg/GG_Mindless_2004.pd...
[2] Granted, this isn't as bad as it sound, since they try to measure differences of groups of samples.
Here is one of the many discussions on this topic. [1]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYCkVjdgDqQ [video] [58 minutes]
They often (a) ask me to review papers that have nothing to do with my research activity and (b) ask me to be an editor of special issues that, again, are in fields unrelated to my work. I can think of no well-respected journal that does such things. The other side of the coin is that I know of no serious researchers who submit to, or read, MDPI journals, despite the fact that they have some journals that would, based on title alone, be relevant.
There is a bit of discussion of whether to consider MDPI a "predatory" publisher at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI.
None of this need reflect on the paper in question, of course. Perhaps this particular journal is of high quality. And, even if not, perhaps the paper is of high quality.