Ten Illnesses That Marijuana Helps

Marijuana has been proven to help patients with certain illnesses, including the most severe like cancer. Big Pharma is notorious for giving people prescriptions to drugs that aren’t actually helping. Who wants to take a pill to treat depression where the side effects include increased risk of suicide? While doctors and drug makers stock their pockets with green, a different shade of the color is beginning to take the medical community by storm.

1. Depression
There are many Americans (and others worldwide) that suffer from the cold draw of depression. With a bleak outlook on life, these patients have trouble even getting out of bed in the morning. While some people will argue hand over fist that marijuana increases depression, those that have switched from Zoloft to Mary Jane know that the plant makes life seem much more bright.

2. Nausea
Feeling like you’re going to vomit? Most chemo patients have severe problems with nausea, making it hard for them to maintain a healthy weight while enduring the harsh radiation treatments. Other people deal with bad nausea as well, including people who simply come down with the flu. While doctors will prescribe hard drugs like Anzamet (which lead users to terrible nightmares and side effects similar to Parkinson’s), marijuana is a miracle plant when treating nausea. One bong hit and your stomach never felt better.

3. Glaucoma
When the watery surface of the human eye deteriorates, doctors are quick to prescribe topical eye ointments/drops to their patients. The drawbacks of these medicines? Constant blurry vision is one, which would make driving or functioning in public extremely difficult, not to mention a permanent eye color change, transforming the iris from whatever color it currently is to brown. Studies dating back to the 70s show that marijuana is extremely effective at treating intraocular pressure in people suffering with glaucoma.

4. Insomnia
If you mention to your doc that you’re having trouble sleeping, expect that they’re giving you something heavy like Benzos, tranquilizers, and sedatives. While these pills may help you sleep, the chance that you develop a dependency in high, no pun intended. Marijuana has been lulling people in to a healthy sleep since before most people knew what insomnia was.

5. Asthma
Bronchial spasms plague a good deal of people world wide. Having trouble breathing can be a terrifying experience and most people who suffer from asthma carry an inhaler with them at all times. Most doctors will prescribe Salbutamol for such an affliction. Side effects Potentially death if used wrong, not to mention extreme anxiety and tremors. So you’ll be able to breathe if you can get past your fear of everything around you and the fact that your hands no longer stay still. Marijuana actually opens the airways in your lungs and doesn’t have such a high mortality rate.

6. Cardiovascular Issues
High cholesterol becomes more of a common issue every day. Doctors tend to prescribe statins for these disorders and sometimes recommend Aspirin for it’s anti-clotting properties. But while pregnant women can’t ingest statins and Aspirin can cause bleeding in the stomach, these methods aren’t exactly perfect. Studies done on mice, however, show that marijuana reverses artery clogging and can even protect the heart from heart attacks in the future.

7. PTSD
Post traumatic stress disorder is something that more and more people seem to be diagnosed with. Considering how traumatic the world is getting, this makes sense. But with the doctors sticking to prescribing debilitating anti-depressants to treat this disorder, many people are suffering even more. Side effects stemming from these medicines include sexual problems, worsening depression, and dependency. The cannabis plant work to regulate the memories that trigger PTSD and the sativa strains that are available induce euphoria, making the user forget (even temporarily) what is causing their PTSD.

8. Alzheimer’s Disease
This degenerative disorder is not only painful for the person who has it but for those around them. There are no well known treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. With only four drugs known to slow the progression of the disease, the treatments’ effectiveness isn’t well measured. Not to mention the drugs used can cause anorexia and a slower heart rate, leading to other problems. Those patients with Alzheimer’s that have used marijuana are shown to have reduced inflammation in the brain tissue. Add in the fact that marijuana also prevents cell death by anti-oxidation and you have a far better medicine for this terrible affliction.

9. Cancer
Most people will argue until they’re blue in the face that chemotherapy is the only treatment for cancer. But with a high relapse rate, the radiation treatment leaves more families without one of their members more often than not. Those who go through chemo will lose their ability to eat and sleep, plus they will lose their hair and quite possibly their will to eve live anymore. There are many reports of people using cannabis oil to treat their cancer as compared to chemo, with far more positive results from the plant than the radiation treatment. Not only do some people believe that marijuana can actually cure cancer, the plant also helps those undergoing chemo to eat, sleep, and function more normally.

10. Chronic Pain
Whether you’re suffering from an accident that happened years ago (or recently) or you happen to get serious migraines, chances are the doctor will hand you a bottle of opiates, tell you to take two, and call him in the morning. What presents a problem with this is that for one, opiates don’t always work for people and can cause bad nausea and sickness in some. Oh and don’t forget the unbelievable amount of overdoses and addiction to opiates that the US is dealing with. More people die from opiate overdoses these days than traffic accidents. Guess how many people have died from marijuana? Still zero. And taking a bong hit will help any headache without the risk of becoming heavily addicted.