In The Clinic
One of the most publicized benefits of cannabis therapies has been in the relief of seizures. I have come to expect seizures in children and young adults to vastly improve with moderate doses of CBD.
My young patients have primary seizure disorders, Dravet’s, other genetic related disorders or are on the Autistic Spectrum. Initially all of these patients were coming in for seizure related disorders, but now it has spread and there are some very interesting initial findings.
In over 80% of the patients, seizures either cease or greatly diminish. In some cases, there is only pre-seizure behavior with are no actual seizures. When these kids are back in school, they are highly improved, even though they still have some “aborted seizures”, as a result to CBD use.
For Autistic children with violent outbursts, we are finding that additional THC is required to suppress the outbursts.
The most satisfying and amazing findings, however, are not related to the control of seizures or other behaviors; the most amazing findings have been vast improvements over their first year in neck tone, increased alertness, occasionally some speech improvement and over-all increase muscle tone, again with decreased spasticity. In many cases at initial consultation the child would have poor neck tone and poor neck control, and at one-year post visit their head is well controlled and they are responsive.
I have worked with several children who develop more normal and “connected” emotional behavior after taking cannabis medicine. For example, a year prior, the child was never jealous or much aware of their sibling and now they act out with jealousy. You might say that is a nuisance for the parents, but I can assure you that the parents are overjoyed to see new and “normal” feelings in their child.
So, what is happening? For sure something is happening in these children that is way, way beyond seizure or outburst control. I think we might be witnessing neurological improvement.
Possibly they are getting improvement neurologically and some new neurological circuits are forming. This leads me to wonder what would happen if we gave these children CBD from initial diagnosis?
In my 37 years of practice as an internal medical doctor, I have dealt with many patients suffering from myasthenia gravis and various other neuromuscular disorders. Prior to discovering medical cannabis, I was limited by traditional therapies. However, with several options for dosed medical cannabis therapies we are seeing some exciting and promising results.
It has become clear that many, but not all, of the mitochondrial diseases often have neuromuscular, cerebral and other issues. Each disease is different, but they share some common characteristics. They often have acetylcholine deficiency states, centrally, peripherally or both. Additionally, they frequently have circulating antibodies against acetylcholine receptors or acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine. We have found THC, THC-Acid and CBD can all lead to increasing acetylcholine activity and/or function in the central and peripheral nervous system. It is well worth continued therapy using this multi-cannabinoid triad of therapy.
There is increasing evidence that cannabinoids, particularly CBD, possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. This makes cannabis therapies effective in the treatment of a wide variety of oxidative stress associated diseases including: atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, myocardial infarction, cardiovascular diseases, chronic inflammation, stroke and many other inflammatory, autoimmune and age related diseases. The use of various cannabis therapies in these patients has resulted in generally improved conditions and I am hopeful further research will provide viable alternatives for patients whose conditions are not able to be managed through traditional pharmaceutical therapies.
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