Welcome back to Mayo Clinic radio I'm dr. Tom chives and I'm Tracy McCray recently the US Food and Drug Administration approved a form of medical marijuana for the treatment of seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy and it really seems like we hear more and more about people using marijuana to treat all sorts of medical problems and to help overcome the side effects of some traditional medical treatments 30 states and the District of Columbia currently Buy Terpenes have laws legalizing medical marijuana in some form here to discuss is internal medicine specialist and addiction expert dr. John Ebert so medical marijuana legitimate for medical use so since we last spoke about this the National Academies of science came out with a report and that report essentially summarizes all the available medical literature looking at the efficacy or the effectiveness of it and the safety of medical cannabis and what they found was that it is very effective for three specific conditions and one of them is spasticity the other one is chronic pain what was that first one it's so spasticity so muscle spasms so some people that have spinal cord injuries or some people who have multiple sclerosis can have incredibly painful spasticity the muscles spontaneously.
Spasm very painful it's like a charley horse but constantly okay right it's effective for that it's effective for nausea and it's effective for chronic pain and specifically neuropathic pain or pain that comes from a nerve so what's interesting about their findings is they didn't have a lot of data that actually supported that it was truly effective for the indication that the new drug approved by the FDA is indicated for which is which is epilepsy or these severe forms of epilepsy there is some existing data but but they didn't have a lot I think it's important for patients True Terpenes who are interested to are interested in exploring this as a methodology to talk to their clinicians and and and really ask the question would it seem like the the condition that I have might be effectively treated by medical cannabis and those clinicians I think need to have that information or there is if that information is available on the internet and can be searched and can be learned so that they can share that with their patients is there some science behind it you know why it works yeah so there's been lots of science in the space which has somewhat been impeded by the fact that under federal law medical cannabis is illegal so there's no research so there is there has been research okay um.
You can actually and there has and is ongoing research so it is possible to have the approval to do research with medical cannabis so there's research suggesting that is effective for these conditions so why does it work well what's interesting about so I certify patients for medical cannabis and when I speak with these patients a lot of them are interested in medical Terpenes for sale cannabis because they nothing else really seems to have worked and most of the patients that have certified have been for chronic pain they say I want to try something new and I say it might be effective for pain and one of the things that they really struggle with as some of those preconceived notions about what it is to smoke pot you people are traditionally smoked tied in what it is to use medical cannabis very different experiences so.