Marijuana A New Medicine Essays - Herbalism, Medicinal Plants

Marijuana: A New Medicine? Marijuana: A new medicine? In society today, there are many serious diseases that plague nations all across the world. Diseases like Glaucoma, Epilepsy, Parkinsons disease, and migraine headaches. What do all of these serious illnesses have in common? Every one of theses sicknesses can be cured or helped by the use of Marijuana. Throughout this paper I will discuss the positive aspects of Marijuana and the negative aspects. This issue has been raising a lot of eyebrows ever since scientific evidence has been provided that links Marijuana to the cure and decrease of certain illnesses. The main reason that Marijuana has been looked down upon by so many people for so long is because many individuals abuse the drug. An obvious setback to legalizing marijuana for medicinal uses is that the number of people that abuse the drug will undoubtedly increase. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world, and there is an estimated 67 million people affected by this disease in the world today (National Academy of Sciences.) Effective treatment for glaucoma involves pharmaceutical agents or surgical procedures that prevent progressive optic nerve damage. For surgery to be an effective way of therapy, a drug or surgical procedure that reduces intraocular pressure (IOP) must do so without causing more damage to the eye. Marijuana can reduce IOP when administrated orally, or by inhalation (Marijuana and Medicine.). Marijuana is a natural way to slow down the progression of glaucoma. Marijuana should be legalized in all states just for the main purpose of helping those who are infected with the serious disease of Glaucoma. Sixty percent of people who are affected by epilepsy can benefit from Marijuana. To this day it is still considered to be the best medication for many types of epilepsy and for most victims that have epileptic seizures. The use of Marijuana for epilepsy is not fully understood yet. Scientist don't know all of the facts about the use of Marijuana for a disease such as epilepsy. They have concluded that Marijuana enables Neurons, which are the brain cells that process information, to communicate with each other by the release of Neurons into the gaps of the brain. Most doctors will only prescribe the drug to epileptic patient s if that certain patient has serious cases of epilepsy. Parkinsons disease, a degenerative disease, affects about 1 million Americans over 50 (Marijuana and Medicine). Theoretically, marijuana could be useful for treating Parkinsons patients, because marijuana specifically inhibits the pathways between the nucleus (marijuana and medicine). There is one published clinical trial that I found in my research of the affects of marijuana for Parkinsons. That trial was prompted by a patients report that smoking marijuana reduced tremors, but the investigators found no improvement in tremors after five-patients smoked marijuana. Although new data might someday indicate a helpfulness for Marijuana to a Parkinsons patient. There is a clear need for improved migraine medications. Imitrex is the best available medication for migraine headaches, but it fails to abolish migraine symptoms in about 30 percent of migraine patients (Marijuana Aids in Migraines.) Marijuana has been proposed numerous times as a treatment for migraine headaches because it relieves the pain, but there is almost no clinical data on the use of marijuana on migraines. Among efforts to study marijuana was a preliminary study conducted in New York on 56 cancer patients who were unresponsive to anathematic agents (Marijuana and Medicine.) The patients were asked to rate the effectiveness of marijuana compared with the results during prior chemotherapy cycles. In this survey, 34 percent of patients rated marijuana as moderately or highly effective to reduce the pain that cancer patients may have (Marijuana and Medicine). Like smoking cigarettes, marijuana kills brain cells and damages your lungs. Lung cancer is a serious disease and people who smoke marijuana on a regular basis have a higher chance of getting lung cancer. Medical marijuana doctors say that it is alright for patients, because patients do not use it regularly. Marijuana was first used as a herbal medicine for the Chinese Emperor Shen in 2737 B.C. Marijuana has been used for a long time and it has proven to be one of