Medical Marijuana and the Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis is an inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system. The body essentially “tags” its own tissue and begins to destroy it. There are many who advocate the use of medical marijuana as opposed to traditional treatments in order to treat this debilitating disease.

Multiple Sclerosis causes the onset of sudden blindness, weakness in the legs and muscles, extreme fatigue, shock sensations in the face and hands, burning sensations in various parts of the body, muscle pain, poor word recall, bladder failure, sudden muscle jerking, sudden muscle collapse and organ dysfunction.

Immediately after smoking or ingesting marijuana, users describe feeling relaxed and mellow. Marijuana contains four hundred chemicals, the same found in cigarettes, sixty of which are cannabinoids. A cannabinoid is the major active ingredient, and THC is the chemical most often associated with marijuana’s affect on the human brain. THC stands for delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol, and is the plant’s main psychoactive chemical. The concentration of THC and other cannabinoids varies and depends on genetics and processing after the marijuana is harvested.

As a multiple sclerosis patient, it begs the question; Why would you want to use a substance that affects muscle coordination, short term memory, raises levels of anxiety and increases heart rate when the disease already does that?

THC mimics, blocks, and interferes with normal brain function. There are three cannabinoid receptors in the brain; the basal ganglia, the hippocampus and the cerebellum. The basal ganglia is responsible for unconscious muscle movement, the cerebellum controls coordination, and the hippocampus is responsible for recollection of events and short term memory.

When marijuana is ingested or eaten, the stomach breaks it down, and the blood absorbs it carrying it to the liver, and the rest of the body. Although THC levels are lower, the effects last longer.

Marijuana has been around for thousands of years and is believed to be a native plant of India where it originated in a region in the North Himalayan Mountains. The resin of the cannabis flower produces a much more potent product called Hashish and may be helpful in the treatment of pain caused by the onset of cancer and other debilitating diseases since Morphine is in fact the first line of defense in making the patient comfortable and the pain bearable. The bottom line is that, although medical marijuana has been proven effective in other medical arenas, it should not be considered an effective treatment or a reasonable drug to be used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.