Cannabis Associated With Sustained Improvements In Anxiety Patients
Researchers estimate that about 4% of the planet’s human population suffers from some level of anxiety, although, they do not know the exact number. Anxiety often goes undiagnosed for various reasons in certain parts of the world, so the actual rate may be much higher.
Anxiety is often described as involving intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations. Physical symptoms of anxiety can include a fast heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, and/or fatigue.
Many of the pharmaceutical medications that are currently commonly prescribed to patients for anxiety involve a long list of possible side effects. Some cases of anxiety are so bad that pharmaceutical treatments don’t even work. Fortunately, medical cannabis products may be able to help in some cases.
Below is more information about a recent study via a news release from NORML:
London, United Kingdom: Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) exhibit sustained improvements in their symptoms following the use of cannabis products, according to data published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports.
British investigators assessed the safety and efficacy of plant-derived cannabis products (either oils, flower, or a combination of both) in over 300 patients enrolled in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Cohort participants possessed a doctor’s authorization to access cannabis products. (Since 2018, specialists have been permitted to prescribe cannabis-based medicinal products to patients unresponsive to conventional medications.) Authors assessed the efficacy of cannabis at one, three, six, and 12 months.
Consistent with prior studies, cannabis treatment was associated with persistent improvements in patients’ anxiety, sleep, and health-related quality of life. Patients presenting with severe baseline anxiety were most likely to experience a clinically significant improvement in anxiety symptoms at 12 months.
Researchers concluded: “The findings from this cohort study demonstrate that treatment with CBMPs [cannabis-based medicinal products] is associated with statistically significant improvements across anxiety-, sleep-, and HRQoL-specific PROMs [patients-reported outcome measures] after 12 months in patients with GAD. … Results also indicated CBMPs were well tolerated throughout the study. … Patients were prescribed either oils, dried flower, or a combination of both, and this study identified no difference in outcomes at 12 months between treatment groups.”
Other studies assessing the use of cannabis products in patients enrolled in the UK Cannabis Registry have reported them to be effective for those suffering from chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, depression, migraine, inflammatory bowel disease, and other afflictions.
Full text of the study, “A cohort study comparing the effects of medical cannabis for anxiety patients with and without comorbid sleep disturbance,” appears in Neuropsychopharmacology Reports.