You only need two points to define a line, and with that line you can then go on to refine your database–but those initial points are absolutely the most crucial ones because without that first correlation it would never occur to anyone to even try a bigger, more complicated study. We found cannabis in the Iceman’s fanny pack–10,000+ years of cannabis being used for medicinal purposes is not a lack of documentation unless one chooses to ignore a rather staggering body of empirical evidence.
Unless they found his prescription, too, you have no such conclusion. (And that would take you back only 5,000 years.)
(Alternate answer)
You find a hell of a lot of trepanation, too.
Hemp use for cordage and seeds probably used for food goes back over 8000 years BCE (an archeological dig in what is now Taiwan), the earliest documented written use of cannabis for medicinal use dates back to 2727 BCE in China and medical use is well documented in writings from all over the Middle East and India so no matter how you want to parse it, cannabis has been a prominent source of food, textiles, cordage as well as medicine for much longer than any drug you’ve ever taken.
As for a prescription–well, Otzi also was carrying weapons but no military ID and flint knapping tools but no license to manufacture tools so of course he couldn’t possibly have been using those tools for anything one might assume would be their normal employment. Because of course nothing can possibly be used outside of a bureaucratic system to grant permission to do so. Why, it would simply be anarchy if anyone without a duly issued permission slip were to attempt any sort of endeavor and the world itself would crash to the ground and everyone would die. Of course.
The point is, neither you or anyone else knows if Otzi was carrying the pot for medicine, or for religious rituals, or for entertainment and any claims otherwise are pure conjecture.
Interesting.
I have a friend who now dispenses the stuff, and he makes claims for all sorts of health benefits, including for childhood disorders (population I work with). I take it all with a grain of salt, because I’m not personally interested in the stuff and I know he’s making a sales pitch. I did assume there was at least some scientific support for what he was telling me.
And it’s good that he paid attention to details and noticed that. And that he thought outside of the box. And it’s good he told the patient it was a gamble. And it’s great that he publicized his results.
But MTX treatment for PBC is still controversial. Current scientific consensus about its use is as follows, quoting UpToDate:
Which is why current standard of care is to use ursodeoxycholic acid instead.
Was your dad wrong to do what he did? No, not at all! What he did was appropriate, and in the best interest of the patient, especially since he informed the patient that it wasn’t proven in any way, shape or form. And MTX therapy still isn’t proven. Should it be considered for use when other modalities fail, or are not appropriate? Certainly.
We should be approaching CBD and THC the same way. Especially by telling our patients that while there’s a chance it could help, the hard evidence is lacking. We know insulin brings down glucose levels; we know vaccines reduce infectious disease prevalence; that statins reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. But we know far, far less about what pot will do.
I look forward to learning more.
It didn’t help my anxiety but I did get depression when I took it. Once I realized the depression was due to CBD and stopped taking it, it cleared up.
So now I have several bottles just sitting around of that crap.
that was in the 80s.
My understanding is that at the time he did the study, the standard of care was, “there is no treatment”, and the nature of the disease was unknown. I was still in high school and remember him wrestling with whether to continue that initial study to get enough data to be conclusive vs. Treating the participants.
I think it’s now understood to be an auto immune disease, and there are better treatments than methotrexate. And it’s a cheap, out-of-patent drug, so there’s little motive to do larger studies with it
Medicine moves on. His other big thing was that he did some of the early research on tagamet, in the 60s, which was a wonder drug when it was introduced, but is also no longer the standard of care for ulcers and other serious stomach-acid issues.
And I expect that after a few decades of real research into cannabis we’ll have better drugs for most everything it does.
I agree with you that we should be researching cannabis in a serious and scientific way. And I agree that there are all sorts of crazy claims out there, many of which are likely false. I thought you were discouraging the op from asking for people’s experiences here, not warning him off pseudoscientific claims. I heartily agree with that warning.
This article seems relevant:
It basically says “we don’t know much about THC and pot, but there might be some serious risks, and we (society) should go slowly and do more research”.
I’ve linked to that same article in earlier threads about THC and CBD. So great minds think alike!
[sub]and fools seldom differ[/sub]
