Despite widespread interest from residents living with a number of conditions that can be treated with cannabis, Georgia has had a bit of a rough go getting its medical marijuana program off the ground. With confusion over marijuana products, processes, licenses, and jurisdictions, the Peach State is having its fair share of issues.
And while there is plenty of debate over how the program should operate, patients who qualify for a medical marijuana card in Georgia are desperately waiting for products to arrive that can help treat their symptoms and conditions.
Though you may not want to wait another minute to get the natural relief you deserve, it may be comforting to know that medical marijuana products are closer than ever before. You can be ready to fully harness the power of treating your condition with cannabis when that day finally arrives, by making sure you do your research now.
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about using cannabis products to treat chronic or intractable pain of all kinds!
Treating Pain with Medical Marijuana
The idea of medical marijuana has been around much longer than its implementation as a government program in the United States. Using cannabis for medicinal purposes dates back much farther than written history, but most scholars agree that it at least tracks back to Asia somewhere around 500 BC.
In fact, it’s very likely that cannabis plants have been used to treat many different illnesses and conditions before recorded history. However we do know roundabout when cannabis was notated as a potential pain reliever in modern times.
In the 1830s a physician named Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy was studying his practice in India when he noted that cannabis extracts could lessen stomach pains and reduce vomiting in those suffering from cholera. By the late 1800s, medical cannabis was used commonly in the Western world, being sold at nearly every pharmacy and recommended by every doctor.
Is Medical Marijuana an Effective Pain Treatment?
Pain is a complex problem, because it can exist as a symptom of another condition or it can be a condition by itself. For doctors, it can be very difficult to analyze pain on a spectrum because it is a subjective problem.
Everyone experiences pain differently, and nearly every individual has a unique threshold for pain.
Typically, pain is an indicator by the body to address something that has happened that requires attention, the same way that inflammation is usually an indicator of a problem located somewhere in the body. Other times, pain can be a condition of itself, such as chronic pain, or pain that exists permanently and will not go away, even with treatment.
Pain is extremely relative, and because of the individualization that generalized pain incurs, there isn’t always a clear-cut treatment for addressing pain. This is one of the benefits of using medical marijuana as an alternative treatment method for pain, especially chronic pain.
Medical marijuana is noted as an extremely effective pain reliever, offering a natural alternative to aggressive medications such as opioids and narcotics. There are many anecdotal reports about medical marijuana treating pain effectively, and there’s also a lot of available information in the scientific community about using medical marijuana to treat pain.
How Does Medical Marijuana Treat Pain?
Medical marijuana is often touted as a type of wonder-drug because of how many symptoms and conditions it can help with. Ranging from cancer, HIV/AIDS, Crohn’s disease, migraines, muscle stiffness, headaches, and PTSD, medical marijuana is approved as a treatment option for many different conditions.
Part of the reason why cannabis is effective in so many different conditions or illnesses is because of where the compounds in the cannabis plant go to work – the endocannabinoid system (ECS).
The endocannabinoid system is a complex system involving the central nervous system (including the brain) and peripheral nervous system. It works to produce endogenous cannabinoids called endocannabinoids and maintains a huge network of receptors for these compounds, which break down by way of enzymes.
The ECS affects an extraordinary number of functions in the body, many of which are performing their operations without conscious thought, such as liver function, cardiovascular functioning, learning and memory, sleeping, nerve function, appetite, metabolism, and muscle formation.
The endocannabinoid system is where cannabis gets sorted out in your body. By introducing cannabinoids from the cannabis plant to your ECS, you’re sending compounds throughout a massive communication network, which can affect potentially millions of functions.
This is partly why cannabis is effective at treating a large variety of conditions and symptoms; it goes to work at the source by introducing compounds that can help adjust different levels in your system, offering a type of regulation for your system.
Why is Medical Cannabis so Effective at Treating Pain?
When you introduce cannabis to your system, it acts like a map for its natural compounds to travel throughout your body, addressing and adjusting problems along the way. This is the reason why cannabis is such an amazing form of medicine, it goes to work in your body addressing symptoms by way of volume, looking to fix or regulate abnormalities.
Because pain is so highly relative, it requires either specific knowledge of the source and cause of the pain so that doctors can treat it, or a generalized sense of where the pain is occurring to be able to prescribe a treatment that is known to be useful in that area, a kind of guessing game.
Cannabis, on the other hand, works by addressing abnormalities or irregular levels of compounds in your body, adjusting them internally as best as it can.
Often it is the case that pain can be treated with cannabis long-term more effectively than other treatment options because there are usually either very limited negative side effects or none at all, and as a natural substance, cannabis is not subject to the same complications that many other medications are known to cause.
Get Your Georgia Marijuana Card to Legally Treat Your Pain With Cannabis!
Georgia allows the use of low-THC cannabis oil to treat intractable pain, which offers a natural alternative to many harmful pharmaceuticals. For treating intractable pain long-term, medical marijuana is one of the best and oldest forms of pain treatment and offers incredible pain relief for many medical marijuana patients around the world.
For Georgians, this means getting the relief you need naturally and organically, and Georgia Marijuana Card is here to help!
Reserve your medical marijuana evaluation appointment today and get $25 off when we start processing applications!
Feel free to give us a call at (866) 781-5606, and we can help answer your questions about getting medical marijuana in Georgia