Smoking marijuana impairs cognitive function in multiple sclerosis patients
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“This is the first study to show that smoking marijuana can have a harmful effect on the cognitive skills of people with MS,” said study author Anthony Feinstein, MPhil, PhD, of the University of Toronto. “This is important information because a significant minority of people with MS smoke marijuana as a treatment for the disease, even though there are no scientific studies demonstrating that it is an effective treatment for emotional difficulties.”
Feinstein noted that MS itself can cause cognitive problems. “In addition, cognitive problems can greatly affect the quality of life for both patients and their caregivers,” he said.
For the study, researchers interviewed 140 Canadian people with MS. Of those, 10 people had smoked marijuana within the last month and were defined as current marijuana users. The marijuana users were then each matched by age, sex, the length of time they had MS, and other factors to four people with MS who did not smoke marijuana.
The researchers then evaluated the participants for emotional problems such as depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders. They also tested the participants’ thinking skills, speed at processing information, and memory.
The study found marijuana smokers performed 50 percent slower on tests of information processing speed compared to MS patients who did not smoke marijuana. There was also a significant association between smoking marijuana and emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.
People with MS have higher rates of depression and suicide compared to the general population. “Since marijuana can induce psychosis and anxiety in healthy people, we felt it was especially important to look at its effects on people with MS,” Feinstein said. -American Academy of Neurology
Posted February 14th, 2008 by harminka
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cannabis and MS
No one denies that Cannabis has an effect on the human body in both senses emotionally and mentally, however it is a fraction of the pain that is suffer everyday by those with MS and it is those sufferer's confirm that this so called drug that relieves the pain and indeed some symptoms! so why do people who do not suffer from the disease then try to cut off the one drug that indeeds actually works to relieve some of the pain and the distress suffered by those who have MS.
These experts and so called experts would not see a dog die in pain or suffering yet they would see a person with MS suffer severe pain every day because it is labeled a illegal drug and not a medicine - the mental scars are far worse from the system to be just diagnosed with MS medically, even then get treated for it never mind being the person who has to suffer MS.
Indeed the system is far more mentally damaging than any drug's side effect's currently available can actually cause!
The system lets the individual down, thus leaving thousands in limbo land by following the Macdonald Criteria.
Indeed a system or criteria that allows a human man woman or indeed a child to suffer for months if not years before giving an official medical diagnosis to allow alow access to drugs to elevate the suffering of that individual is wrong !
It is not the drug by which some turn to for pain relieve that it is fault it is the system that allows the drug companies to develop the drugs for MS to be sold to the highest bidder VIA the stock market for a profit margin that is wrong not to mention it be morally wrong to allow these drugs be traded and there for allowing the price to be controlling pain relief, severe disability and human suffering is wrong.
It is a system that disgraces us all and those in a position to do more that allow them selves to be bought by the drug companies who could indeed control this disease be judged by their actions!
To allow those who suffer from MS to suffer for a profit margin for the attraction of a news headline is a disgrace, we can only hope those that suffer waken up to such campaigns to stop so called labeled illegal drugs ready available on the street and proven to work to be replaced by the manufactured drugs more readily available is an injustice against mankind.
The rights of the individual to control pain relief should be left in those that are in such a position of no fault of their own, not left to those who who have the grace of passing judgment's on others and do not actually suffer from this chronic disease and there for causing pain and indeed stress by deciding the fate of others.
What has the world come to and the west calls ourselves a tolerative and humane society
regards
a carer