No one eats moldy bread when they have an infection, nor would any doctor suggest it. Fortunately, the researchers have figured out the good component of the mold, and so they prescribe penicillin for us.
Why is marijuana different? Are there any other drugs which are prescribed (by mainstream physicians) to be taken in such a relatively raw state? Wouldn’t most of the political problems of medical marijuana go away if they’d just sell pills of the active chemical?
PLEASE Let’s not get into a debate about legalization. I’m asking purely about the pharmaceutical and manufacturing perspectives.
Prescriptions tend to be for medicines that may cause problems if used improperly, but there are evidence-based OTC medicines that include herbal extracts, for example:
Caffeine as an adjuvant to painkillers - speeding and enhancing their effect
Menthol/eucalyptus as a decongestant
Aloe vera in burn and sunburn treatments
My neuro had me taking magnesium for my migraines but I had some side effects pop up so I stopped taking it.
I was just reading that the herbal supplement butterbur is becoming well known in the neurology/medical community for reducing migraines (and apparently hay fever). I’m certainly no herbal supplement guy, but I’ll have to try to remember to ask my neuro about that next time I see him. If I went off Topamax, I’d probably get migraines 2-3 times a week instead of 4-5 times a month. If I could add some other pill to the mix to take it down to 1-2 times a month I’d give that a shot.
Sure. Dietary fiber for people suffering from constipation. But doctors don’t need to write a Rx for Raisin Bran, because the government has not enacted legislation criminalizing the casual possession of Raisin Bran… All doctors need to do is hand their patients a list of high-fiber foods and tell them that increasing their consumption of foods on the list might help relieve their constipation, and they can be bought over the counter at any supermarket without a Rx.
When people talk about “herbal supplements”, I generally presume (perhaps wrongly) that they’re talking about some sort of pill which contains the herb’s active chemical, and I was looking for something far less processed, like the ground marijuana leaves that so many are currently talking about. So, using Mangetout’s example of caffeine, I would reject a pill of No-Doz, but I accept a bag of coffee beans.
Pot’s active ingredient, THC, is available in a pill. It’s called Marinol, or dronabinol. It’s indicated for nausea induced by chemotherapy and as an appetite stimulant. It’s a schedule II drug, like morphine and oxycodone.
Here in Georgia the governor is a proponent of medical marijuana for children’s seizures.
Since beer sales on Sunday only became legal a few years ago, legal reefer won’t arrive soon. But what the governor wants is essentially hash oil in capsules.
As readers of High Times back in the 70’s recall, the greatest weed on earth is grown by the federal government in Mississippi. Compassion for those poor little kiddies aside, Georgia wants to get in on the ground floor with a state-run grow operation.
There are those in the medical community who say marijuana is not a prescription drug until the FDA says it’s a prescription drug. This requires extensive testing, evaluation and much much more. The problem is that there is no return on investment for anyone who wishes to pay for all this work to be done. Few would pay $10 a pill for something that can be grown in a garden or flower bed.
We have a large volume of anecdotal evidence that marijuana is the new wonder drug. I’m sure there are many cases where marijuana provides the intended effect. We have to also know where it doesn’t work at all, and this anecdotal evidence is largely ignored by the commercial media. We need the double blind testing to make any scientific assessment of its effectiveness. I seem to remember a story that THC was found to effect the memory-related parts of the brain, but I was high at the time so maybe I’m wrong on that [grin].
As a general rule, herbal remedies are mild in virtue and slow to have effect. For a society spoiled on two aspirin cutting a headache in an hour, three cups of Peppermint tea every day for two weeks just to get small relief just isn’t a cure worth the effort.
The OP asks we not touch upon the legal issues, but I don’t see how that’s possible. For many of us who voted in favor of medical marijuana, the goal was indeed the legalization of the plant for all its various uses.
Delta 9 THC, one of the most psychoactive components of pot, is the active ingredient in marinol. It lacks other isomers, along with flavinoids, and a ton of other molecules of unknown significance that can be found in pot.
There are lots of herb teas on the market, which are pretty much just crushed leaves/ground woody parts in teabags. Licorice is used for coughs, ginger is used for stomach ailments, … Some of them are quite effective.
My retired pharmacist neighbor says that the reason it can’t be prescribed is because you can’t control the potency of a natural product, which can vary from plant to plant. Prescribed medicines are manufactured and the potency can be controlled in the production process.
Right…but the OPs question was whether a “mainstream” MD acting in accordance with her industry’s best practices or current standard of treatment protocols would prescribe any of them. I think that even if we take “prescribe” to mean “recommend” rather than the more literal “you need to take this piece of paper with my signature on it to the pharmacist to get this thing”…the answer is “not many.”
Tincture of benzoin is used to make things sticky, like EKG leads or bandages that we don’t want to change every day. That’s herbal, and not particularly highly processed. Dentists still use clove oil in some of their dental pastes.
That’s about all I got off the top of my head. Find a doctor who will suggest - not just say, “Sure, go ahead and try it,” if you bring it up - licorice for coughs or ginger for stomach ailments, and I’ll bet you $100 imaginary dollars that you’re dealing with an “integrative” or “complementary” practice, not a “mainstream” one.
(Which is why my own doctor is an integrative one.)
I would hope that a real doctor would avoid making recommendations regarding a field (herbal remedies/supplements) that is largely unregulated and in which one cannot be sure that one is receiving any actual ingredients.
The stoners who claim that pot has miraculous curative properties need to understand that the scientific research regarding those claims is virtually non-existent.
One of my hopes, now that recreational pot is legal in my state and the federal government seems to be willing to allow it, is that our local universities will be able to do some studies on it’s medical properties.
But they have gotten very little done while it was legal for medical purposes, so maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath.