Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at using CBD as part of a pain management plan, home brewing with cannabis, cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome—or scromiting—and more. Enjoy.
CBD and Pain Management
There’s promising news for mature individuals who are looking for ways to manage pain without relying solely on opioids, such as oxycodone.
A new study suggests using CBD as part of a pain management plan may allow individuals to reduce their reliance on opioids. According to Ziva Cooper, Ph.D., the director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, a recent study showed that half of the participants who used CBD extracts reported that they were able to cut their opioid use. And other literature suggests that CBD could decrease anxiety and craving in people with opioid use disorder.
Cooper’s team is also exploring the effectiveness of minor cannabinoids, like Cannabinol (CBN) and cannabigerol (CBG) as pain management tools. CBG, for example, is of specific interest to Cooper and her team because animal studies suggest that CBG doesn’t have intoxicating effects like THC, and could help with pain, appetite, and depression.
Speaking to Allyson Martin for an article that appeared in Cannabis Wire, Martin acknowledged more research is needed , particularly on the efficacy of these minor cannabinoids. Said Cooper, “What are the effects of these products? Are they safe? Are they therapeutic? And the truth is that even though they are available in many states, we actually don’t know how safe and how therapeutic they are because they haven’t yet been tested, really, in people.”
She and her team are also looking into the potential therapeutic uses of specific terpenes. These are compounds found in a variety of plants that are responsible for the aroma of specific strains of cannabis. Two terpenes in particular have caught the attention of Cooper’s team and may be the subject of future research: beta caryophyllene and myrcene.
Caryophyllene exhibits a shaded pale yellow color, a sweet flavor and is naturally found in figs and allspice. Myrcene is also found in hops and is responsible for the peppery, spicy, balsam fragrance in beer. It’s also expressed in lemongrass, which has been used in traditional folk medicine.
As always, anyone who chooses to self medicate by adding CBD or other cannabis products to their treatment regimen should first discuss their plan with their doctor.
To learn more we suggest you read Alyson Martin’s insightful and revealing article in the July 9, 2021 edition of Cannabis Wire.com.
Cannabis News and Notes
There’s a new book that mature consumers of cannabis, home brewers and others may want to toast. Keith Villa, Ph.D., a brewmaster and co-founder of Colorado-based CERIA Brewing Company, has penned a guide for home brewers who want to brew using cannabis.
The book, Brewing with Cannabis , examines the active components of cannabis, the chemistry of how they interact with beer and introduces the growth of marijuana and brewing in the modern craft beer movement.
Readers will have an opportunity to learn how to decarboxylate the cannabinoid THC-A into the fully psychoactive form of THC—a process that’s also required when making edible forms of cannabis—and how to add cannabis and CBD to non-alcoholic beer and homebrew for different effects. A wide-range of extract-based and all-grain recipes are also discussed and readers are shown how to adopt or use them as a guide for creating non-alcoholic beer or homebrew.
In addition, Villa explores the agriculture and biology of cannabis, unique characteristics of the plant, the similarities between cannabis and hop plants, and what is needed to successfully grow cannabis plants at home (where state legal).
Published by Brewers Publications, the book will be available starting August 2, 2021 through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retailers. An eBookversion will be available for Kindle, Nook and Apple Books starting September 2021.
To learn more click on the link that follows.
www.brewerspublications.com/products/brewing-with-cannabis
Stat of the Week
This week’s magic number is 7.6 percent. It comes from a study that appeared in the publication Health Economics Letters that examined the relationship between the legalization of recreational cannabis and opioid use in corresponding states by looking at opioid-related emergency department (ED) visit rates.
While not stated by the investigators, such a relationship is of interest to many mature consumers since older individuals and others who use opioids to manage pain often look for ways to reduce their use of these painkillers in order to avoid dependence and related side effects.
According to the study’s principal investigator, Coleman Drake, researchers examined emergency department data from 29 states from 2011 to 2017 and found that in states where recreational cannabis was legal, opioid-related emergency room visits decreased by 7.6 percent in the first two quarters after legalization was implemented. However the researchers wanted to make it clear that this reduction dissipated after 6 months.
One take away from the study is that individuals may use cannabis to manage pain, as well as to relieve opioid withdrawal symptoms, even though cannabis does not directly treat opioid use disorder. The researchers also found no evidence that legalization of recreational cannabis increased opioid-related ED visits. They also concluded, however, that, while cannabis legalization may offer some help in curbing the opioid epidemic, it is likely to not be, by itself, a panacea.
Coleman Drake is affiliated with the Department of Health Policy and Management, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
To read an abstract of the study you can click on the link below.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.4377
Cannabis in the News
What’s been described by some researchers as a relatively rare condition has recently been the subject of increased coverage in the press. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS, is the name given to a condition experienced by a small percentage of cannabis consumers that’s characterized by intractable nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.
Laura Strickler and Steve Patterson, writing for NBC News.com, report that doctors say CHS, known to health care workers as “scromiting,” a mashup of “screaming” and “vomiting” — has popped up with increasing frequency at hospitals in Colorado.
Strickler and Patterson report that the ER at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo saw only five scromiting cases in 2009. However, by 2018, the number had risen to more than 120, according to data compiled by Dr. Brad Roberts, an emergency room physician at the hospital.
While the numbers of actual cases may not seem significant, given the number of individuals in Colorado who use cannabis for medicinal and recreational purposes, what makes the condition noteworthy is the severity of the condition and the fact that a number of emergency room physicians report patients often have to undergo expensive medical testing in order to diagnose what’s going on and may require hospital admission for symptom management.
Dr. Roberts told Strickler and Patterson that the presence of such patients strains hospital resources and that when faced with people suffering from bouts of non-stop vomiting, doctors often order up an array of diagnostic tests to rule out other underlying causes.
Said Roberts, “We use up a lot of medical resources to see if there is anything more seriously wrong with them.”
There is some suggestion the condition may be linked to heavy use of cannabis with a very high THC content.
One new study, conducted by CReDO Science, suggests there may be a genetic link to the condition, calling it a “manifestation of gene–environment interaction in a rare genetic disease unmasked by a toxic reaction to excessive THC exposure.”
Said the company’s COO Nishi Whiteley, the company is assessing its next steps, with the current high priority focused on “coming up with treatments that are affordable and sensible for the patient that will help provide them immediate relief.”
Perhaps it should be noted that while this condition is newsworthy, due to the fact it is severe enough to send individuals to the emergency room, it is still relatively rare—given the number of individuals who now consume cannabis regularly.
To learn more, you can read the article by Laura Strickler and Steve Patterson in the July 11, 2021 issue of NBC News.com and the article by Andrew Ward which appears in the July 6, 2021 edition of Benzinga.com.
www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1273463?
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com and 347-528-8753.
