Cannabinoids are an active component of the marijuana plant distinct from THC which has shown equal efficacy to antipsychotics for treating schizophrenia but without the side effects.
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That is potentially huge news as antipsychotics have debilitating side effectsâŚ
Yes does anyone think that THC helps with any form of PTSD that you have whether before illness or from illness? Or is this idea just plain unbeneficial to someone with sz?
Treating PTSD/SZ with THC (the more famous component of marijuana) is questionable. However treating with Cannabinoids is perhaps helpful. I found one study using cannabinoids which are distinct from THC and they were found to be helpful
THatâs a pretty cool discovery.
Yes it isâŚand thereâs people who study the differences between cannabinoids, so you can select the one most likely to help for your conditionâŚIâd recommend being proactive and contacting a researcher.
CBD for the winâŚ
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Marijuana Compound Treats Schizophrenia with Few Side Effects: Clinical Trial
By Maia Szalavitz @maiaszMay 30, 201210 Comments
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A compound found in marijuana can treat schizophrenia as effectively as antipsychotic medications, with far fewer side effects, according to a preliminary clinical trial.
Researchers led by Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne in Germany studied 39 people with schizophrenia who were hospitalized for a psychotic episode. Nineteen patients were treated with amisulpride, an antipsychotic medication that is not approved in the U.S., but is comparable to other medications that are.
The rest of the patients were given cannabidiol (CBD), a substance found in marijuana that is thought to be responsible for some of its mellowing or anxiety-reducing effects. Unlike the main ingredient in marijuana, THC, which can produce psychotic reactions and may worsen schizophrenia, CBD has antipsychotic effects, according to previous research in both animals and humans.
Neither the patients nor the scientists knew who was getting which drug. At the end of the four-week trial, both groups showed significant clinical improvement in their schizophrenic symptoms, and there was no difference between those getting CBD or amisulpride.
(MORE: The Complex Link Between Marijuana and Schizophrenia)
âThe results were amazing,â says Daniele Piomelli, professor of pharmacology at the University of California-Irvine and a co-author of the study. âNot only was [CBD] as effective as standard antipsychotics, but it was also essentially free of the typical side effects seen with antipsychotic drugs.â
Antipsychotic medications can potentially cause devastating and sometimes permanent movement disorders; they can also reduce usersâ motivation and pleasure. The new generation of antipsychotic drugs also often leads to weight gain and can increase diabetes risk. These side effects have long been known to be a major obstacle to treatment.
In the German study, published online in March by the journal Translational Psychiatry, weight gain and movement problems were seen in patients taking amisulpride, but not CBD.
âThese exciting findings should stimulate a great deal of research,â says Dr. John Krystal, chair of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, who was not associated with the research. He notes that CBD not only had fewer side effects, but also seemed to work better on schizophreniaâs so-called ânegative symptoms,â which are notoriously hard to treat.
Negative symptoms include social withdrawal, blunting of pleasure and lack of motivation, which commonly occur in schizophrenia. Since current antipsychotic medications can themselves cause the same problems, however, it wasnât clear whether CBD was better than amisulpride at treating these symptoms, or whether CBD simply caused fewer side effects to begin with.
(MORE: Stoned Driving Nearly Doubles the Risk of Fatal Car Crash)
Nevertheless, the new research helps elucidate the intricate complexities of the brainâs natural cannabinoid system and how CBD may work to alleviate symptoms of schizophrenia. Years ago, Piomelli and his colleagues discovered that people with schizophrenia have elevated levels of anandamide â a neurotransmitter that activates the same receptor activated by THC â in their cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting that they also had higher levels of it in the brain.
The difference was huge: anandamide levels were nine times higher in schizophrenic people than in mentally healthy controls, Piomelli says.
The researchers theorized that these radically high levels would correlate with hallucinations and delusions: the more anandamide bathing patientsâ brains, the worse their disease would be. The thinking was, in essence, that people with schizophrenia are constantly high on their own natural THC.
But what the researchers actually found was the opposite. âWhat you get is not a positive correlation, but a negative one. The higher the levels of anandamide, the lower the symptoms,â Piomelli says.
It didnât seem to make much sense at first, but research in both animals and humans now shows that anandamide is a natural stress reliever and antipsychotic. Piomelli thinks that the high levels seen in people with schizophrenia arenât the cause of the problem, but the result of the brainâs attempts to solve it.
(MORE: Study: Smoking Marijuana Not Linked with Lung Damage)
The new study confirmed that as CBD relieved patientsâ symptoms, anandamide levels rose in concert. âIt looks like anandamide is a signaling molecule that has evolved to help us cope with stress,â Piomelli says. âIn the brain, everything it does seems to be related to ways of relieving stress. It can relieve anxiety and reduce the stress response. It is involved in stress-induced analgesia [when you stop feeling pain while fighting or fleeing]. These are all mechanisms to help us prevent [negative outcomes related to stress],â says Piomelli.
âIf Dr. Piomelli is right, then the brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in anandamide levels,â says Krystal.
This raises another question, however. THC itself mimics anandamide. If high levels of anandamide are helpful for schizophrenia, why does marijuana smoking intensify psychotic states?
Hereâs where it gets complex. THC mimics not only anandamide, but also another cannabinoid, 2-AG, which fits the same receptors and is far more common. âThere is 200 times more 2-AG than anandamide in the brain,â Piomelli says. âAt the end of the day, the complexity is such that 2-AG has a whole cluster of effects. Anandamide has completely different effects, sometimes even opposite effects. That is why with THC you get a big mess.â
(MORE: Marijuana May Both Trigger and Suppress Psychosis)
Complicating matters further, when chronic marijuana smokers build up a tolerance to THC, it may down-regulate the entire system, making it harder for anandamide to have its positive effects. This may be why some studies find that people with schizophrenia who smoke marijuana get worse.
So, where does CBD fit in? It doesnât attach to a receptor like THC, or fool the brain into thinking that itâs getting extra anandamide or 2-AG. âWhat CBD seems to be doing is preventing anandamide from being destroyed,â says Piomelli. That allows the substance to exert its stress-reducing and antipsychotic effects on the brain longer, without the negative effects of THC.
If replicated, the results suggest that CBD may be at least as effective as existing drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia, without the severe side effects that make patients reluctant to take medication. The catch: âThe real problem with CBD is that itâs hard to develop for a variety of silly reasons,â says Piomelli.
Because it comes from marijuana, there are obvious political issues surrounding its use. Extracting it from the plant is also expensive. But the biggest barrier may be that CBD is a natural compound, and therefore canât be patented the way new drugs are. That means that despite the possibility that it could outsell their current blockbuster antipsychotic drugs, pharmaceutical companies arenât likely to develop it â a particularly striking fact when you consider that every major manufacturer of new generation antipsychotics in the U.S. has so far paid out hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in fines for mismarketing these drugs. Yet they still reaped huge profits.
(MORE: The Case Against the Ban on âBath Saltsâ and Fake Marijuana)
Piomelli and others are working to develop synthetic versions of CBD that would avoid such hurdles. âWe have one and are hoping to move forward in the near future,â he says.
For people with schizophrenia and their families, of course, it is likely to be infuriating that non-scientific issues like marijuana policy and patenting problems could stand in the way of a treatment that could potentially be so restorative. While itâs possible that these study results may not hold up or that researchers could discover problems related to long-term use of CBD, itâs hard to imagine that they could be any worse than what patients already experience.
I should have written cannibiols, not canniboidsâŚthe cannibiols are without THC. those are the ones to take.
Check this out you might find interesting,
http://www.echo-pharma.com/en/products-and-pipeline/pipeline/
2 CBD AP drugs in the pipeline.
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Thank you this is interestingâŚbut I have to find out how to purchase the extractions of cannabiols (the non-thc active molecules). I think in Canada you can get them from the wild. Not sure about the US though.
Gone to Pot - A Review of the Association between Cannabis and Psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. May2014, Vol. 5, p1-24. 24p. Gone to Pot â A Review of the Association between Cannabis and Psychosis - PMC
Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug worldwide, with ~5 million daily users worldwide. Emerging evidence supports a number of associations between cannabis and psychosis/psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia. These associations-based on case-studies, surveys, epidemiological studies, and experimental studies indicate that cannabinoids can produce acute, transient effects; acute, persistent effects; and delayed, persistent effects that recapitulate the psychopathology and psychophysiology seen in schizophrenia. Acute exposure to both cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids (Spice/K2) can produce a full range of transient psychotomimetic symptoms, cognitive deficits, and psychophysiological abnormalities that bear a striking resemblance to symptoms of schizophrenia. In individuals with an established psychotic disorder, cannabinoids can exacerbate symptoms, trigger relapse, and have negative consequences on the course of the illness. Several factors appear to moderate these associations, including family history, genetic factors, history of childhood abuse, and the age at onset of cannabis use. Exposure to cannabinoids in adolescence confers a higher risk for psychosis outcomes in later life and the risk is dose-related. Individuals with polymorphisms of COMT and AKT1 genes may be at increased risk for psychotic disorders in association with cannabinoids, as are individuals with a family history of psychotic disorders or a history of childhood trauma. The relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia fulfills many but not all of the standard criteria for causality, including temporality, biological gradient, biological plausibility, experimental evidence, consistency, and coherence. At the present time, the evidence indicates that cannabis may be a component cause in the emergence of psychosis, and this warrants serious consideration from the point of view of public health policy.
This specific cannabinoid Iâm referring too is not associated with an increased risk for psychosis.
Itâs Cannabidiol
I think that for the people who may have damaged their Endocannabinoid system by smoking lots of Spice, some natural cannabinoids (THC, CBD, and the plethora of others) stimulating the system should be healthy and help heal the damage done. I donât think Cannabis is automatic psychosis hospitalization fail death mode for people with SZ, like doctors make it sound.
Here are some articles to consider about the link between Cannabis and Schizophrenia:
Alcohol and cannabis use and mortality in people with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.
The Impact of Cannabis Use on Clinical Outcomes in Recent Onset Psychosis
There are some websites that sell CBD products already too.
Of course, one cannot go off of their meds and start taking CBD instead, so for me it isnât particularly helpful and can be somewhat expensive. I like Opusâ links about Rx CBD drugs, that way doctors wonât be so suspicious about it. It will be best when we can just grow CBD flowers on our own, but any relief from side effects and symptoms would be much welcome, even from some new pharmaceutical concoction.