I attended a rather interesting conference in Palm Desert last week dealing with cannabis. Most of the meeting was how to set up a business with cannabis but there was a scientific session. The session was put on by a group of physicians whom are dealing with the problems of prescribing cannabis.
As we all know there is an inbuilt system of receptor sites in the body for cannabis. The sites are found in every organ in the body except the brain stem, which may explain the reason why one cannot kill themselves with an overdose of cannabis. The brain stem is full of receptors for opioids and when they are full, the patient can become unconscious or develop severe cardiac rhythm disturbances and respiratory arrest . These receptor sites have been the target of a number of investigations. The current conclusion is that they are empty for reasons as yet unknown and could be responsible for many common disorders for which we do not have an answer. These include migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and many other so-called “functional disorders”. These of course are misnamed because they are “dysfunctional disorders”.
They also presented some decent evidence on the effects of cannabis and HIV. They found that it does increase appetite, reduces nausea, decreases epression, and gives adequate pain relief, and reported decrease in peripheral neuropathy. The problem here again is dosage.
Again referring to what I stated above again regarding the endocannabinoid receptor deficiency and have added post traumatic stress disorder as another example of this deficiency, possibly.
Finally, I discussed including drug education with the Alberta Medical Association , in conjunction with their very successful youth running program. Unfortunately, the organization for reasons that are inexplicable to me, have decided that this Association would be inappropriate! In other words the medical hierarchy continues to be deficient in any strategy attempting to decrease naïve massive increase in drug abuse, addiction, and death therefrom.
Finally, as promised, I received my latest contribution from RX. org, who have completed the study and has been published in the The International Journal of Risk and Safety, entitled Enduring Sexual Dysfunction after Treatment with Antidepressants – 300 cases. They studied the drug Isotrentinoin and demonstrated persistent sexual dysfunction. This phenomenon has also been noted after other antidepressants. In the same paper they also described persistent genital arousal disorder which is an inappropriate sexual problem.
The New York Times recently reported a report discussing the research of Dr. Mangan who works with risk.org , showing that people taking antidepressants discover that they cannot quit. There have been other articles commenting on the difficulty in getting off various antidepressants. A questionnaire sent out to patients with antidepressant withdrawal problems found thousands of comments in regard to this difficult situation, which is completely ignored by the current hierarchy of psychiatry. This of course filters down into the general practice.
Risk.org is continuing investigation into the side effects of many psychotropic drugs I’m sure we’ll hear more from them in the very near future .