If you inhale, then holding your breath would … well … nevermind.
Thank you all. The responses have been very enlightening. Ignorance fought!
Mods: I am NOT requesting you to close this thread. I’m satisfied with these answers, but I don’t mind if others continue the conversation.
Those two are just oils that can be extracted by steam distillation or solvents - not exactly sure how raw you meant by ‘raw state’ - because even in the case of marijuana, the active ingredients may be extracted by burning (albeit by the consumer, rather than in bulk)
You can purchase eucalyptus leaves or essential oil, as well as menthol crystals online, or in many health food stores or Whole Foods type places.
Just to be clear, no one is writing “prescriptions” for marijuana precisely because it is not a prescription drug. What you get from a doctor concerning marijuana, is a “recommendation” not a prescription. You take that recommendation to a pot store, not a pharmacy.
Wouldn’t most of the political problems of medical marijuana go away if they’d just sell pills of the active chemical?
Marijuana contains lots of active chemicals and part of the problem is that the political climate makes doing actual scientific research extremely difficult.
As Qadgop says, the one active ingredient you can get via prescription is classified as a Schedule II drug, which, no doubt, is due to politics and not science.
Marijuana itself (the plant, not the extract) is classified as a class one narcotic (along with heroin, etc.), which makes very little sense, so some sort of political shenanigans do seem to be probable. It’s also the reason why there have been zero government-funded studies about the efficacy of marijuana as treatment for any maladies.
Aspirin was originally derived from an herbal preparation of willow bark, which contains salicylic acid. It’s not quite an herbal preparation anymore and I doubt that they always use willow bark nowadays, but it is a medication that is based off of herbal medicine.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/12/22/aspirin.history/
Apparently some people still do prepare willow bark as an herbal remedy: http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-955-WILLOW%20BARK.aspx?activeIngredientId=955&activeIngredientName=WILLOW%20BARK
There ARE pills of the active chemical THC, it’s called Marinol and it’s been used for years for anorexia associated with HIV and for nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy.
There are those who argue that THC is not the only pharmaceutically active component and medical marijuana is currently the only source of those other chemicals.
Doctors do sometimes prescribe other than “drugs”. I’ve had several relatives who were told to increase their consumption of high-potassium foods like bananas (my grandma was told “eat two bananas a day”), a doctor might recommend something like chamomile tea for relaxation before bed before prescribing sleeping pills, caffeine is often recommended to migraine sufferers, melatonin is an OTC supplement in the US (some other countries require a prescription) used for jet lag and some sleep problems, and things like epsom salts and tea tree oil are also used and recommended by doctors for various problems.
Actually, it’s a schedule 3 drug like Tylenol #3 or hydrocodone-combination products, see the Drug Abuse and Dependence section of the prescribing monograph.
Given that there are quite a few (arguably) better choices to control seizures, that memory/cognitive impairments can persist for a long time after regular use, particularly in adolescents and young adults, and that marijuana use in teenagers and young adults is associated with a much greater chance of developing schizophrenia later in life, I’m thinking the Governor of Georgia is perhaps not the best person to listen to with regards to treatment of epilepsy in kids.
While I would agree that politics are involved, the justification for Dronabinol being schedule 3 while marijuana is schedule 1 is in part due to the fact that the delta-9-THC used in Dronabinol is completely synthetic. It has to be chemically made from scratch and can’t be extracted from the plant source. Is said justification/requirement incredibly stupid? IMO, yes.
Wow, they changed that from schedule 2 over 15 years ago now, and I never noticed!
Well, I didn’t prescribe it often, just for a few hospice and chemo patients.
So who was the moron that came up with Marinol as the name for synthetic THC? I can think of dozens of catchy names, all better than Marinol.
Marijuana + dronabinol would be what I would guess is the reason for the brand name of Marinol. As to who came up with it, I would guess it would be whatever marketing team at Solvay Pharmaceuticals was chosen to come up with the name. You have to keep in mind, dronabinol is what we call an orphan drug, a status in which the government gives additional incentives for making the drug due to the relatively small portion of the population with the orphan disease it is/was intended to treat compared to the costs of regulatory approval, so the team who came up with the name probably used the above (or similar) rationale since it wasn’t going to be a huge blockbuster drug.
Yeah, “Marinol” makes me think of lefty nuns.
If you can find a butterbur product that’s certified PA (pyrrolizidine alkaloid)-free, which apparently is not easy (I ran across a headache specialist’s website that said they no longer recommended butterbur extract for migraine patients because the German firm supplying PA-free product changed its manufacturing process and didn’t do the necessary safety studies).
PA alkaloids are what make comfrey unsafe unless rigorously processed out (toxic to the liver, possibly carcinogenic).
Before using such herbs, I’d be a lot more comfortable with a prescription product rather than something bought online that’s supposed to be safe.
Don’t believe anyone who claims that plant-based drugs don’t get investigated and turned into prescription drugs because it’s uneconomical/they can’t be patented or similar excuses. We have lots of useful and profitable drugs on the market that were derived from plants, and more in the pipeline all the time.
If pot truly has fantabulous medical uses, I’d expect extracts to be formulated that relieve various conditions without the accompanying “high”, and with dependable levels of the active substance(s). But that’s contrary to what most legalization advocates want.
It may be that the useful parts of pots do, necessarily, come with a high. In medical terms that’s a side effect. The opiates have that problem, but it doesn’t stop them from being used.
Frankly, I think legalizing for recreational purposes as in Colorado and Washington is a far more honest approach. But that’s another whole topic.
Sidenote: JUST TODAY I noticed an acquaintance on Facebook asking for comfrey leaves because she “had some bones to knit up.”
:smack::eek::rolleyes:
My absolutely mainstream OB/GYN recommended ginger for morning sickness. And red raspberry leaf tea before labor.
According to current knowledge, your “absolutely mainstream OB/GYN” is somewhat light on evidence-based practice.
Ginger has been used to relieve nausea, but there’s concern it might increase the risk of miscarriage. And this statement about the effects of raspberry leaf tea is not exactly reassuring when it comes to predictable effects:
“The chemicals in red raspberry might have antioxidant effects and help relax blood vessels. They might also cause muscles to contract or relax, depending on the dose and the muscle involved.”
Add to that the fact that 1) proper dosage is a matter of conjecture, and 2) arriving at that dosage through self-administration of tea is very imprecise to begin with, and you wind up with a recommendation that’s heavy on guesswork.
I think the tea mostly is to give women in the last stages of pregnant something that feels proactive to do.
Then again, apparently cannabidiol, a component of marijuana, is approved as an orphan drug for Dravet Syndrome (severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy) under the name Epidiolex, although the drug itself is still actually in Investigation New Drug (IND) status according to the manufacturer, GWPharma. Dravet syndrome is severe enough (and cannabidiol doesn’t seem to have the same memory-impairing effects as THC does due to CBD not acting as an agonist at CB1 receptors) that use of a high CBD oil can be argued to outweigh the risks in this particular circumstance. That being said, the evidence for use is still rather limited.