Smoking Marijuana Causes ‘Complete Remission’ of Crohn’s Disease

[n2doc]

by David Downs

Marijuana – scientific name “cannabis” – performed like a champ in the first-ever placebo-controlled trial of the drug to treat Crohn’s Disease, also known as inflammatory bowel disease.

The disease of the digestive tract afflicts 400,000 – 600,000 people in North America alone causing abdominal pain, diarrhea (which can be bloody), severe vomiting, weight loss, as well as secondary skin rashes, arthritis, inflammation of the eye, tiredness, and lack of concentration.

Smoking pot caused a “complete remission” of Crohn’s disease compared to placebo in half the patients who lit up for eight weeks, according to clinical trial data to be published the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Researchers at Israel’s Meir Medical Center took 21 people with intractable, severe Crohn’s disease and gave 11 of them two joints a day for eight weeks. “The standardized cannabis cigarettes” contained 23 percent THC and 0.5 percent CBD (cannabidiol). (Such marijuana is available on dispensary shelves in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities that have regulated access to the drug.) The other ten subjects smoked placebo cigarettes containing no active cannabinoids.

Investigators reported that smoking weed caused a “complete remission” of Crohn’s Disease in five of the 11 subjects. Another five of the eleven test subjects saw their Crohn’s Disease symptoms cut in half. Furthermore, “subjects receiving cannabis reported improved appetite and sleep, with no significant side effects.”

more
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2013/05/14/smoking-marijuana-cured-crohns-disease-with-no-side-effects-new-study-shows/

[longship]

1. That's a very small study.

Eleven people in the treatment group is far from enough to be definitive. So, this is just a preliminary study. That doesn't mean that it's not important. It's just not large enough to make the statement, "Cannibis is an effective treatment for Crohn's disease."

But this is certainly strong enough justification for a larger, more definitive trial. I just don't know how the hell you double blind the damned thing.

Won't everybody in the the placebo arm know that they aren't getting the real Cannibis? And won't everybody in the treatment arm know that they are? That's a real problem with this study. If it cannot be blinded, it may not be much use.

[Chemisse]

6. Could the pot be ingested instead of smoked, and still be potentially effective?

If so, it would be easier to do a double blind study.

[longship]

7. Well, every time I've ingested pot.

Which has not happened for many years, I was stoned to the bejesus for hours.

The deal is here that when the treatment arm has significant physiological effects (like when smoking or consuming real Cannibis) which are absent in the placebo arm, the blinding in the study disappears. And without blinding there is no way to separate placebo effects in the treatment arm so one does not know whether the benefits in the treatment arm were placebo or the medication.

I know this is difficult to understand, but there is a very important reason why these studies have to be blinded, double blinded even, where nobody participating knows who's getting a treatment and who's getting a placebo. Not even the doctors know. That's the only way bias and placebo effects are null.

I have no info on the procedures used here. But if everybody in the treatment arm gets stoned, and everybody in the placebo arm doesn't, there goes the blinding as well as any objectivity or credibility in the results.

That's just the way these things work, or don't work, as the case may be.

[Chemisse]

15. Ahh, I didn't think about the getting stoned aspect.

I thought you meant the unmistakable smell and taste of the smoke.

Incidentally, the need for blind and double-blind studies is not difficult to understand at all, particularly for people who enjoy reading in the Health forum.

[longship]

19. Thanks. That's good (re: Health forums)

I don't frequent there. But I am a big fan of science based medicine, and the Blog of the same name, and the podcast, Skeptics Guide to the Universe, hosted by Dr. Steven Novella, who helped start Science Based Medicine.

But I am only a dumb physics graduate. Medicine isn't my expertise.

[Sgent]

25. Tough question

A treatment protocol off the top of my head:

Require patients to be free of pot use and any benzo use for 20 years, then...

Control Group -- a nebulizer with glycerin and xanax.

Testing Group -- a nebulizer with marijuana concentrate (like when you cook with it) and a placebo pill.

Its not ideal, but the idea is that they would both get a little high, and the xanax group wouldn't realize they they are enjoying a benzo rather than marijuana.

The real problem is the ethical implications...

[GeorgeGist]

24. Blinded by the light.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. bkmrking to read later. thanks for posting.

[eShirl]

3. actually it reads: “complete remission” of Crohn’s Disease in five of the 11 subjects.

which is amazing enough

[mopinko]

4. complete remission isn't what it sounds like.

it is one of those waxing and waning diseases, and can go into remission at any time.
i am amazed that this word would even be used, honestly.

[rhett o rick]

5. Sadly, our current Admin is working feverishly to shut down medical marijuana

growers. But they seem ok with Wall Street corruption.

[99th_Monkey]

11. Very sketchy order of priorities

not to mention preying on the weak and defenseless, rather than
taking on the increasingly dangerous task of trying to actually arrest
and prosecute the uber-wealthy Corporate Crime Syndicate, who are
REALLY running things, from behind the scenery.

As recently pointed out by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation, Blackwater
has spawned hundreds of shell private "security" corporations, AKA
1000s of heavily armed and very crafty & well-trained assassins &
black-ops bagmen, of all nationalities (for "deniability&quot all for hire
to the highest bidder, to "take care of" anyone who gets in their way.

[rhett o rick]

14. Yes, it isnt enough for the corporate rulers to use our own police forces against us,

the will supplement with their own "guards".

[Poll_Blind]

8. A friend of mine when I was a kid had Crohn's and as we grew older he started...

..smoking pot. Said it helped incredibly with his Crohn's, for which he's already had at least one surgery.

Who knew?!

This would be awesome news for a lot of people out there.

PB

[99th_Monkey]

9. Hardly a day goes by, that I don't hear about another illness Mj heals.

If "pro-lifers" were really pro-life, they be screaming LEGALIZE IT already !!!!!!

If Obama were real progressive, he would legalize it.

but I'm not holding my breath for either to happen.

[Android3.14]

10. It's for real

I stopped eating pizza, my favorite food in the world, ten years ago.
After an incisional hernia from a fricken appendectomy, I had a series of surgeries in which I lost several feet of intestine, including a section called the ileum. Afterwards, I suffered for six years with symptoms similar to Crohn's.
I literally was unable to eat except once a day, in the evenings, for six years. One fucking meal a day. And even then I could only eat very specific foods that had zero fat and no fiber. Even then, if I ate during the day, I would spend the next 2-8 hours in the bathroom. I couldn't go on vacations, have business lunches, go out with friends. I stopped going to holiday dinners with family.
Except when I would smoke weed.
I finally did a great deal of research and found that this connection regarding MJRx and Crohn's is well known in Europe and is because of the antispasmodic effects of marijuana. After smoking, It was like my innards were normal for about 24-48 hours. I didn't even have to get that high. Just a toke or three, and within an hour I was pretty much back to normal, as far is being stoned.
After the research, I was able to convince my doctor to get me a marinol prescription, which worked okay, but not nearly as well as the real thing. Problem was that the hospital where she worked restricted her from prescribing the real thing. I'd take the marinol, and sometimes I would start getting high right in the middle of the day, which was sometimes problematic.
This last year, my doctor diagnosed me as prediabetic (it's in the family and the one-meal-a-day regime is just a stupid diet for someone sensitive to sugar) and I had to start eating regular meals 5-6 times each day, and my life spiraled out of control with horrific bouts of bloody diarrhea, rashes and cramps.
In a panic, I went back to my doctor. She finally referred me to another doctor who was willing to prescribe marijuana.
I finally received my MJ Rx certificate and I smoke a pinch of weed each evening. I have been eating regularly and living a normal life for the first time in a decade. I am no longer pre-diabetic, and I can actually eat pizza.

[redwitch]

13. I am so glad you have found some relief!

What an awful disease Crohn's is!

[Chemisse]

17. That is an amazing story.

It's such a shame this isn't more easily available (legally). Let's hope that ten years from now this will be as available for treatment as the risky and side-effect laden drugs that are now prescribed constantly, and without the slightest hesitation.

[eridani]

12. Wish they'd check high diol low THC strains as well

There are hundreds of cannabinoids and related compounds in marijuana, and research should really get much more specific.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. That would require a health care industry that is concerned with health rather

than how to profit from people's illness.

[goldent]

20. Lucky for us that isn't true

Many studies do not involve profit or potential of profit

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. Tell that to those of us that have actually been through and around the misnamed

health care industry.

Come on back when you think up an actual point.

[BlueToTheBone]

18. It was very helpful when I had severe colitis.

Nerves had me and my guts roiling. Pain was pretty bad and I would get up at about 2am and smoke and the pain would decrease. I've since added lots of liquid probiotics and feel I'm healed.

[Auntie Bush]

22. Is colitis the same as ulcerative colitis?

Because the medical profession say Ulcerative Colitis is incurable.

[BlueToTheBone]

23. Well then, no. n/t

[aquart]

26. OMG.

Now we find out? I have to go and cry for someone.

[delrem]

27. What in hell does this mean:

"Smoking pot caused a “complete remission” of Crohn’s disease compared to placebo in half the patients who lit up for eight weeks,"
Walk me through it slowly, and don't fault me for my ignorance.

[cbayer]

28. It's a small study and it's hard to imagine how they could have placebo controlled it.

Anyone given a the "cigarette" is pretty clearly going to know they didn't get the pot.

That being said, it's not entirely surprisingly, as Crohn's is clearly exacerbated by anxiety, which the MJ would most certainly alleviate.

An increase in appetite and improved sleep? Well, duh.

[goldent]

29. I'm not sure how great this would be given the side effects

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 09:57 PM - Edit history (1)

One would have to be really careful. Getting high twice a day for eight weeks would not work for a lot of people. Of course, if it is truely effective maybe this is what you do.

[WovenGems]

30. Hmmmm...

Maybe it also prevents it
An apple a day