Marijuana Provides More Pain Relief For Men Than Woman, Says Study (psypost.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PsyPost: Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) found that men had greater pain relief than women after smoking marijuana. In this study, the researchers analyzed data from two double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies looking at the analgesic effects of cannabis in 42 recreational marijuana smokers. After smoking the same amount of either an active or placebo form of cannabis, the participants immersed one hand in a a cold-water bath until the pain could no longer be tolerated. Following the immersion, the participants answered a short pain questionnaire. After smoking active cannabis, men reported a significant decrease in pain sensitivity and an increase in pain tolerance. Women did not experience a significant decrease in pain sensitivity, although they reported a small increase in pain tolerance shortly after smoking. "These findings come at a time when more people, including women, are turning to the use of medical cannabis for pain relief," said Ziva Cooper, PhD, associate professor of clinical neurobiology (in psychiatry) at CUMC. "Preclinical evidence has suggested that the experience of pain relief from cannabis-related products may vary between sexes, but no studies have been done to see if this is true in humans." You can view the results of the study online in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Comments

Unreliable experiment

[sir-gold]

When the Mythbusters used the hand-in-icewater method (to test pain tolerance differences in men and women) they had results that varied wildly between individuals, to the point where they had to disqualify some test subjects for having too high of a tolerance.. There was also a difference in pain tolerance between women who had given birth and women who hadn't.

The effectiveness of pain medication also varies with pain tolerance. For someone with low tolerance, a single asprin will take care of whatever minor pain they have. Someone with a much higher tolerance won't "feel" the pain until it is much more severe and beyond the reach of a basic pain reliever (and will feel little to no relief as a result)

Key Scientific Factors Missing

[spiritwave]

One critical problem with science pertaining to cannabis (the science term for marijuana, if unclear) is the unscientific factoring of three key variables.

Intake Method (smoking versus vaporization versus edibles...):

Any study that only relies upon smoking cannot detach the possibility (probability, or even certainty) that the act of smoking itself is the relevant issue of that research.

When more people learn about cannabis vaporization, and how amazingly more efficient and healthy that intake method is (that efficiency being seriously great for losing wallet weight, if you will), the popularity of vaporizing cannabis logically increases upon that educational increase, so at least factoring in vaporization into cannabis research is critical for scientific accuracy.

Intake Amount:

Measuring intake amount in joints (or such) is scientifically reckless, because a joint can be any size (for all intents and purposes), and can contain one or more strains of varying psychoactive and other powers.

A rigorously established "estimate" for consistent joint size has recently emerged, but not a concrete scientific measurement.

Intake amount (which can vary dramatically) obviously is a critical factor in determining health impact for worst through best, so that recklessness is unacceptable, and places any research resulting from that recklessness firmly in the category of basically (if not utterly) useless.

Strain Differential:

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of different cannabis strains, and strain effects can vary dramatically between each other to a degree that can leave the user feeling like they're different drugs entirely.

This is not just about THC and CBD amounts (the two most popular cannabinoids these days), but about the fully detailed strain signature literally involving hundreds of compounds (cannabinoids and terpenes).

Just the psychological impact alone can vary to a degree at which generically stating 'study finds cannabis is good (or bad) for n% of people' is meaningless without scientific rigor being applied to strain consistency.

Conclusion:

Despite perhaps coming off as an uptight douche (certainly not my perhaps cannabis-exhaling intention), I appreciate the positive efforts in cannabis research, and I'm glad people are finding benefit from cannabis use for pain (my mom uses a very mildly vaporized "Cheese" strain daily to brilliantly manage Alzheimer's disease symptoms with some hopeful signs of even working against the disease itself – supposedly an impossibility, but recently scientifically suggested to work against the unhealthy protein buildup commonly believed to cause AD).

I wrote this comment in hopes of doing my small-but-tractional part to help raise public awareness of the need to raise scientific awareness going forward along these research lines that are significant in tune with cannabis popularity.

Of course, a disastrous limit against genuine cannabis research is the remaining prohibitionary elements unethically kept in place by the people controlling the illegality of cannabis – those people having a serious financial interest to demonize cannabis demonstrably with no respect for public safety.

Anyone still believing prohibition is the right way to solve drug abuse (which is scientifically distinct from use, and is clearly a health – not criminal – issue) must understand the fact that no concrete (so credible) evidence proves literally any effectiveness from prohibition. At least nationally speaking, we don't even have a "drug free" prison system, but are expected to shell out billions of taxpayer dollars yearly for a "drug free" America.