Cannabis a treatment for night blindness?

[mainer]

I've read accounts of patients with color blindness who suddenly saw color for the first time when they smoked pot. Others have noted that pot makes colors look more vivid. Clearly, cannabis has an effect on retinal cells.

Now there's evidence that it also helps in night blindness:

As Mo Costandi reports for The Guardian, 25 years ago, pharmacologist M. E. West from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica reported that local fisherman who smoked weed or drank rum made from the leaves and stems of cannabis plants had "an uncanny ability to see in the dark".

The same thing was rumoured to be happening to Moroccan fisherman and mountain dwellers who smoked hashish - a product of the cannabis plant - and in 2002, a team of researchers from the US and Spain set out to study the phenomenon.

They gave one volunteer a placebo and three others hashish, and found that all three of the test subjects had better night vision after taking the drug. They published their results in 2004 in the Journal of Ethno-Pharmacology.

But, between then and now, no one had been able to figure out on a biological level exactly how weed could have that effect.

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-suggests-cannabis-could-enhance-night-vision?utm_content=buffer77097&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[roamer65]

1. Man, I hope CA and NV pass legalization.

If they do, 2018 will be the year of legalization referenda across the country.

[NightWatcher]

2. Then I should smoke more of it at work...

Nah, I'll hold off till I'm done.

[MADem]

3. It's always been touted as an eye remedy for glaucoma and other conditions.

That puff in the eye that the ophthalmologist gives you, to measure the inter-ocular pressure in your eye? Weed is said to improve that.

This article WAAH WAAH WAAHs about how you'd have to be high all the time (Willie Nelson has perfect vision, then--LOL) but nowadays, they can take the psychotropic elements out of pot and leave the medicinal, if needs must:

http://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/medical-marijuana-glaucoma-treament

The idea that marijuana can be helpful in treating glaucoma dates to the 1970s. Studies conducted then showed that smoking marijuana lowered the IOP of people with glaucoma. As a result of this research, additional studies were conducted examining whether marijuana or its active ingredient, a compound known as THC, could be used to keep IOP lowered. This research was supported by the National Eye Institute, a division of the federal National Institutes of Health.

The research found that when marijuana is smoked or when a form of its active ingredient is taken as a pill or by injection, it does lower IOP. However, it only lowers IOP for a short period of time—about three or four hours.

This short period of time is a major drawback for the use of marijuana as a glaucoma treatment. Because glaucoma needs to be treated 24 hours a day, you would need to smoke marijuana six to eight times a day around the clock to receive the benefit of a consistently lowered IOP. Because of marijuana's mood-altering effect, smoking so much of it daily would leave you too impaired to drive, operate equipment or function at the peak of your mental ability....