In Adult Patients With Chronic Pain. Does the Use of Marijuana Compare to Conventional Pain Management Strategies Result in Improved Pain Relief and Better Quality of Life?
The pain management process is one of the essential medical practices. With the emergence of different diseases causing discomfort and pain to adults, scientists have dived into research to help find out the appropriate approaches to help relieve discomfort, make people feel better, and enhance their quality of life. The article by Shah et al. (2019) opines that some of the conventional medications failed to achieve the desired outcome, and a room has been created to diversify some prescribed medicines like opioids and benzodiazepines. With the increased number of adults suffering pain and seeking medical assistance, the research to manage such problems was extended to using natural products like marijuana as a substitute for conventional drugs (Wadsworth et al., 2022). The proposed use of cannabis due to its medicinal properties also sparked the debate on whether marijuana should be legalized. The few states which legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes recorded its effectiveness in pain management as well as a reduction in opioid overdose Shah et al., (2019). Since the legalization of cannabis for chronic pain management, adverse consequences have been registered compared to when conventional approaches like opioids and other pain relievers were in use. Therefore, marijuana compares to traditional medications in pain relief due to its effectiveness, reliability, and approval, legalization for use by some states, and ability to reduce cases of opioid overdose and other conventional drugs. The comparison nature of marijuana in improving the quality of life is discussed as follows.
Effectiveness in Pain Relief
Marijuana has been proven effective in reducing pain intensity experienced by patients with chronic medical conditions, just like conventional medications. Since the ultimate goal of pain treatment is to restore comfort and improve quality of life, patients who used medicinal marijuana recorded positive outcomes of the therapy. According to Shah et al. (2019), about nine states in the US have already allowed the use of marijuana since 2013 due to its known effectiveness in pain management compared to other conventional drugs. Similar research also indicates that the states where federal laws permitted the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes confirmed that cannabis worked miraculously when dealing with chronic pain (Shah et al., 2019). Additionally, most people living in the states where marijuana was legalized reported using the drug majorly for chronic pain management. Such constructive use of cannabis reflects on its essential comparison with modern medicine eradicating pain and promoting wellbeing among adults.
The effectiveness of cannabis use in pain treatment has been evident through its ability to reduce the number of patients admitted to medical facilities due to chronic body aches. The article by Bao et al. (2023) indicates that allowing people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes by the state authority was accompanied by reduced hospital admission due to chronic pain from 19.3% to 13.0%. The percentage decrease in pain and discomfort within the hospital was attributed to using marijuana to achieve a similar purpose. The low number of pain cases in the facility reflects the ability of cannabis to enhance wellbeing and safety through pain relief, just like other conventional medications which have had widespread use in history. Ideally, the role of marijuana in pain reduction has also been evident, specifically in the reduction of discomfort and deteriorating health conditions caused by different diseases (Shah et al., 2019). For example, the effectiveness of cannabis in pain treatment has been found in patients suffering from lung and colorectal cancers. Though there is inadequate evidence to prove the direct us medicinal marijuana to cure colorectal cancer, its contribution to reducing pain cannot be underrated as it enhances the comfort of such patients when conventional pain relievers could have been used. Therefore, cannabis remains one of the preferred pain management interventions and can be used as a substitute for modern medications.
Similarly, the effectiveness of marijuana in reducing pain and discomfort has been proven through its action in particular types of cancers. The pain caused by breast cancer, for instance, is found to be best managed through the use of marijuana. Most importantly, cancer survivors have been found to continue using cannabis to manage the pain likely to come later (Bao et al., 2023). For instance, the continued use of cannabis for pain management by people who have recovered from cancer increased from 5.6% to 12.2% (Bao et al., 2023). That increment is significantly higher compared
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