Marijuana Reduces Migraine Pain – The Fresh Toast

Incredibly disabling, migraines are most common in people aged 20 to 50 and are three times more common in women. About 10% of the population will get one. About 95% of the population suffers from headaches. The most common headaches include tension headaches (must occur frequently), cluster headaches, and persistent headaches (NDPH). This excludes alcohol and diet-related headaches. A migraine is characterized by the fact that it is a neurological disorder that causes a variety of symptoms, most notably a throbbing headache on one side of the head. Migraines are often worsened by physical activity, light, sounds, or smells. They usually last at least four hours or even days.

Data suggests that marijuana can relieve migraine pain and be the best over-the-counter remedy. More research needs to be done, but early studies are promising. Published in the Journal of Pain, the first study to use big data to analyze the role of cannabis in treating headaches and migraine pain. Using archival data from Strainprint—an app that allows patients to track their symptoms before and after taking medical marijuana—scientists found that inhaled marijuana reduced self-reported pain severity for headaches by 47.3% and for migraines by 49%. 6% reduced.

“We were motivated to conduct this study because a significant number of people report using cannabis for headaches and migraines, but surprisingly few studies have addressed this topic,” said study lead author Carrie Cuttler, assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University.

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Instead of documenting before and after data points in real time, previous research asked patients to recall how marijuana affected the severity of previous headaches. As Science Daily first reported, a clinical trial found that cannabis may be more effective than ibuprofen in relieving headaches, although researchers in the study used nabilone, a synthetic cannabinoid drug.

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However, in the Washington State study, 1,300 patients who used the app more than 12,200 times submitted information about their headaches before and after marijuana use, while 653 patients used the app over 7,400 times to track their changes in their migraine pain.

More conventional treatments can result in “overuse headaches,” which can cause the patient's headaches to worsen over time. However, researchers found no such result in patients who used cannabis. However, they found that patients consumed more marijuana over time, suggesting they may be developing a tolerance to the plant. Additionally, the study reported a difference in headache reduction between genders, with significantly more sessions involving men (90%) than women (89.1%).

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Patients received no additional benefits when using cannabis strains with higher or lower concentrations of THC and CBD. Since the plant contains more than 100 cannabinoids in addition to THC and CBD, researchers believe this suggests that other cannabis elements such as terpenes may play a role. The study found that concentrates such as oil produced a greater reduction in headaches than marijuana flower.

“I suspect that the effectiveness is slightly overestimated,” Cuttler said. “I hope this research will motivate researchers to take on the difficult work of conducting placebo-controlled trials. In the meantime, this will give medical cannabis patients and their physicians at least a little more information about what to expect from using cannabis to treat these conditions.”