cannabis + pain

plants make aches less of a pain Growing pains. Stubbed toes. Bee stings. And broken bones. Pain is that very real, very inevitable part of being human—and the number one reason people visit the doctor in the US. The fact is millions of medicine cabinets across this country look exactly the same. They have ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and at least one heavy hitting prescription painkiller. That’s just how we’ve learned to care for ourselves. But as recently as the early 1900s, a stocked medicine cabinet would also have cannabis. It was a staple prescribed by American doctors before the prohibition to treat everything from a toothache to neuropathy, muscle spasticity to pain from childbirth. Despite a lack of science way back then, the first recorded use of cannabis for pain treatment was in China in 2737 B.C.. Civilizations have been using it for thousands of years. Today the science is there. We understand how cannabis works—that the body has a network of receptors that interact directly with cannabis compounds like CBD and THC (and terpenes!). We know that when these receptors are met with the right compounds found in the plant, they can actually modulate pain in the body at a fundamental level. Roughly 50 million Americans are disabled by chronic pain right this very moment. Pain is not something any of us chose, but how we manage it—that's a choice.