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Cure for cancer.

  • Thread starter Monkey
  • Start date
  • #21
Great, where are the links to these cited studies so that we might educate oursleves?
 
  • #22
you happen to ask when im at the wrong computer.....main stuff im thinking of has been published by Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti at the University of South Carolina.....
 
  • #24
from the first link I found:
http://www.scmedicalmarijuana.com/m...rsity-of-south-carolina-concerning-marijuana/
"His earlier studies have suggested that marijuana could be useful in the fight against cancer, however the new publishings seem to contradict those findings."

actually boils down to the fact all cancers arent created equal....his findings still hold alot of weight in those cancers affecting cells involved with the immune system.....

one of those things, some years ago it was discovered one bacteria normally found in the human gut has links to a certain type of cancer but remove that bacteria from the gut and other health issues pop up.....human life is actually a fairly delicate balance.....throw in differences in body chemistry from one person to the next and things get real complicated fast....

my sister is highly sensitive to the strep virus and has it up to once a month on a fairly regular basis....if i have ever had strep it was never bad enough to go to the doctor for so if you go through my medical file you will not find one positive diagnosis for strep.....took 28 years for me to discover im allergic to sulfa antibiotics cause i am so rarely sick enough to need them....

two kids, from the same parents, grown up in the same environment......two very different ends of the spectrum as far as disease......
 
  • #25
Yea, it is pretty crazy how much individuals can differ even within families!
 
  • #26
and thats exactly why a magic bullet for cancer is near impossible.....cancer covers way to much territory to be covered with a single solution......does not surprise me at all marijuana wont work in all cancer situations as far as killing it nor that in some cases it might make it worse.....but chances are, specifically for those cancers as well as general diseases affecting the immune system it has a huge possibility to being one of the best plans of attack.....especially refined extracts from the plant.....

the anti nausea and chronic pain help from smoking or other wise ingesting it is another area it greatly helps....you would be hard pressed to find a cancer doc that says there is a pill that works for the bone deep nausea associated with chemo than pot......even those docs that refuse to recommend it will usually say that the science is there
 
  • #27
Okay, from what I read, it seems he prematurely presented data, maybe not falsified, but one has to wonder when data "put to the test" fails the original assertion... kind of like that German (think he was German) physics guy at Bell Labs that was completely discredited and even stripped of his Ph.D. Go figure. But that was my point. Proponents of legalization can present "proof of claim", but when it comes down to it, those claims never stand up (barring the palliative uses). I'm not saying this is willful deception, only that the access to the literature is necessarily one-sided because they're generally gleaning their information from one side only. The same, of course, holds true for the other side, the staunch opponents. Personally, I believe it should be available, by prescription only, in pill form, to those who would benefit from it. Clean out teh psychotropic/hallucinogenic aspects and present a wonderful palliative cancer treatment that everyone can agree upon.
 
  • #28
not as simple as that......im guessing you have never dealt with a chronic illness requiring medication....mine is pretty straight forward as my issue is pure pain due to malformed knee joints....my wife has a more complex chronic problem as she gets migraines so since she is a better example for this im gonna use her....

my wife has suffered from debilitating migraines since she was about 20 or so......her major problem with finding a treatment that works is 18 months or so from discovering a solution its not gonna work.....reason? the body gets used to a particular drug and it looses effectiveness....

marijuana has about 65 cannabiniods, most well known is THC.....while all these are in the same family they act in slightly different ways.....kinda like thebaine, morphine and codeine are all opiates in the opium poppy, the first is a stimulant and the last two are depressants and morphine is a better pain killer but codiene is the better cough suppressant.....

alot of the issues pot truly does help like MS and other autoimmune diseases individuals really build up drug tolerances like my wife does to the migraine meds....by switching between varieties you get variations in these 60 some active chemicals and get around alot of the issues with tolerance being built up.....if you read true medical marijuana boards that are full of sick ppl you will quickly discover certain strains of marijuana work best for certain conditions and others either wont work very well or at all.....ppl with chronic pain tend to gravitate to a certain group of varieties, ppl with MS another group, those with rheumatoid arthritis another....

for a moment forget all the medical users just looking for a real high.....plenty of those types also pop pills so just remove them from this conversation.....just cause some idiot pops pills to get stoned doesnt mean i shouldnt be able to have vicodin....

in Europe the number one drug perscribed for deperssion is St Johns Wort.....its not some synthetic pill.....for all its problems for someone with a chronic illness, marijuana has far fewer negative side effects than the majority of drugs......sit and listen to the side effects of the drugs for minor stuff advertised on tv the next time a commercial comes on......i cant take sleeping pills cause bout half those weird side effects you hear on the commercial i get, no matter what family of drug the sleeping pill falls under.....marijuana is FAR safer for me to take than any prescription sleeping pill....
 
  • #29
Not to shoot down your statements rattler, but I feel as if some are very strongly rooted in fact, but opinion.
One major problem with pain relieving medications, be it advil, marijuana, or placebo is the confirmation bias associated with them and I feel this could be a MAJOR contributor to people on Med. Marij. boards and such.

Consider a case where a person takes strain A of marijuana, doesn't feel much better. They take strain B, feel better. So they say, oh strain B works for relieving migraines. Little do they realize that they were going to be feeling better on that particular day no matter what they had taken.

Another thing that happens very often with placebos/homeopathy/etc is someone takes a new drug. Later on, in a study, someone asks them if they have ever tried that particular drug. If they did, but it didn't work, they feel embarrassed for having tried it and say no. A small portion, who felt better but it is very possible was in no means related to the drug say, Yea, I tried it, it worked great!" You now have a sample where a high portion of the people who tried it say it worked great, but this is in strict contradiction to the actual results.

All I'm saying in relating to this discussion, is that if drugs do show results in clinical trials, pharmaceutical companies will be ready to jump on it and mass produce it if there is a sizeable number of peopel willing to purchase it.
 
  • #30
you do realize current federal drug laws make it extremely difficult for any drug related to marijuana to hit the market.....and given the huge flop of Marinol(synthetic THC) most drug companies aint interested in putting in the time and money to come up with a synthetic, patentable version of the other active chemicals in pot....

as far as placebo and pain......guessing you have not had to deal with long term pain......would cut off my left nut if i got 3 docs to tell me it had a 30% chance of giving me relief.....ive been told by 5 different orthos scattered across the northwest US that they have no doubt i am in alot of pain, infact they would be surprised if i wasnt given what my x-rays and MRI's look like.......but the ONLY solution is total knee replacements and at this point i am not a good candidate as there is a 70% plus chance that i will be an amputee inside 15 years......so they say deal with the pain for now.....

with medical marijuana....the body produces cannibiniods......scientific studies of the body produced two, to hell with the 60 some in pot, state that they have a direct connection to the immune system and how it responds including such things as reducing tissue swelling due to the body over reacting like with rheumatoid arthritis....

this aint some odd ball wonder chemical, its variations on ones the body uses to control the systems its supposed to give relief for.....
 
  • #31
not as simple as that......im guessing you have never dealt with a chronic illness requiring medication....mine is pretty straight forward as my issue is pure pain due to malformed knee joints....my wife has a more complex chronic problem as she gets migraines so since she is a better example for this im gonna use her....

You'd be guessing wrong then. First, I've inherited GERD from my father. GERD is not simple heartburn as many people think. Everyone gets heartburn. GERD symptoms can be bad enough that they can actually simulate heart attack symptoms. I also sustained a double knee injury in high school that have left me in chronic pain since I was 15. It wasn't really bad at first, not even into my early thirties, but it was constantly there, mostly in my left knee. This has also left me with a luxating patella in each knee (double ACL injury) that I've opted to NOT have repaired just yet. This has also developed, over the years, into CMP. As well, I've suffered from migraines since my mid to late teens, I think they started around 16 or 17. Nausea, light sensitivity, spike above the eye, the whole gamut. I tried medication very early on, but the "whizzy head" side effects were unacceptable to me. I am on medication for GERD, mostly to prevent ulcers, pre-cancerous lesions, and cancer, since my father does have pre-cancerous lesions, my risk is increased. Other than the proton-pump inhibitor I am on, I take nothing for pain unless it's completely unbearable. I work, at home and at, well, work. I don't engage in sports so much, I can't really any longer, but am otherwise "active". The only times I am bed-ridden is when I have a particularly bad migraine, which I "sleep off" for 8-12 hours and then muddle through. My wife, as well, has her issues since she has chronic relapsing/remitting Lyme due to being mis/undiagnosed years ago. She takes nothing but maybe Advil or Tylenol, as well.

But, you're right, it's not "as simple as that". Pain can be managed without the use of drugs, and especially without the use of narcotics or illegal drugs. In fact, chronic use of opiates can actually CAUSE pain, rather than alleviate it. There are a large number of anti-inflammatories out there. Pain is both somatic and psychological in its components with respect to how it's tolerated on an individual to individual basis. Like depression, pain can be a downward, worsening spiral in one person, and overcome in another. Some people "have it in them" to overcome pain, like myself. Other people can LEARN to manage their pain with little to no drug use. Still others can't. And still others will use every excuse in the book to remain on their preferred medication. I've known people of every color in that rainbow. IME, those who advocate breaking the law to treat their pain almost always fall into the last group, those who actually like taking the drugs they're taking.

On the "medical marijuana boards", let's not forget what I said previously. You have on those boards a whole bunch of people who use or are advocates of using the "drug". Information circulates and is repeated, and I'm sure myths endure, as in any other closed community. The problem is no one who wants to use, or continue to use, marijuana (or any other drug), is actively researching why they should NOT be doing so.

And, on sleeping pills... yet another unnecessary palliative that can be, potentially, far more harmful than helpful. And ANY drug, including marijuana, taken to "fall asleep", can cause you to become dependant upon it specifically for that purpose. Sleep involves a whole mess of chemical processes and responses within the body and is not some simple thing. There are many reasons why a person can not fall asleep and, most of the time, these are psychological. Barring organic brain injury or congenital defect or disorder, insomnia is both cognitive and behavioral. Treating cognitive and behavioral "problems" with drugs NEVER works long term. Finding other ways in which to deal with insomnia are usually far more successful, long term. And, before you accuse me of "not knowing what it's like", BTDT. I rarely have bouts of insomnia any longer as long as I listen to my body's cues as to when to sleep. Not everyone is a 9to5er. I'm not.
 
  • #32
I take nothing for pain unless it's completely unbearable.

that being the key.......i have not had a pain free day in 6 years...last couple weeks have been real bad due to weather systems moving through, ive slept a total of 8 hours in the last 5 nights.....only reason i can hold down a job is i am self employed and sign my own paychecks and have figured out how to make things work but i have no illusions if i was working for someone they would tolerate my issues.....

i dont have some issue that comes and goes, for all intents and purposes the back of my knee cap acts like a sanding block on the end of my femur.....at 29 my knees on x-ray look like im in my late 60's after living a hard life.....you know opiates suck for chronic pain but refuse to accept marijuana works....WTF? ive got scripts for enough pain pills to keep the most die hard pill popper on 2 week bender, ive got a script to keep me stoned out of my mind.....aint what im interested in....looking for relief from pain that still allows me to carry on a normal conversation....
 
  • #34
How many people actually utilize marijuana for purely medicinal purposes?
 
  • #35
How many people actually utilize marijuana for purely medicinal purposes?


Montana has about 1 million ppl....35,000 have the medical marijuana card.......last polls i saw said over 50% of adults between the ages of 18 and 35 have used marijuana atleast once recreationally.....that should put Montanas population of 18-35 at a real rough figure of 250,000.....

so in theory a minimum of 125,000 have used marijuana recreationally in just one age group which leaves out the 1960's and early 70's young adult population and 35,000 ppl of all age groups are registered to use medicinally in my state......

---------- Post added at 09:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:28 AM ----------

to put this all in perspective....

In 2009, 16 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant, or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the year prior to being surveyed. Source: National Survey on Drug Use and Health (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration Web Site).

anyone here saying we should abolish opiate pain meds, muscle relaxers, ADHD and similar meds just because some abuse them? just because the potential for abuse is there and some choose to abuse them does not make them not a legitimate medicine.....
 
  • #36
How many people actually utilize marijuana for purely medicinal purposes?

Even if marijuana has 0 medicinal use, government has no right to tell me what I can put in my body as long as I'm not hurting anybody.
 
  • #37
Even if marijuana has 0 medicinal use, government has no right to tell me what I can put in my body as long as I'm not hurting anybody.

there is that whole argument which i do happen to agree with.....was trying to stick to the medically relevant stuff though since its there.....
 
  • #38
I also agree with you both, for the record.
 
  • #39
that being the key.......i have not had a pain free day in 6 years...last couple weeks have been real bad due to weather systems moving through, ive slept a total of 8 hours in the last 5 nights.....only reason i can hold down a job is i am self employed and sign my own paychecks and have figured out how to make things work but i have no illusions if i was working for someone they would tolerate my issues.....

i dont have some issue that comes and goes, for all intents and purposes the back of my knee cap acts like a sanding block on the end of my femur.....at 29 my knees on x-ray look like im in my late 60's after living a hard life.....you know opiates suck for chronic pain but refuse to accept marijuana works....WTF? ive got scripts for enough pain pills to keep the most die hard pill popper on 2 week bender, ive got a script to keep me stoned out of my mind.....aint what im interested in....looking for relief from pain that still allows me to carry on a normal conversation....

Right, and again I go back to the psychological aspects. Neither have I had a pain-free day in almost 30 years. Yes, oh, yes, I know, I've heard it time and again, your pain is SO much worse than mine. Think that if you will, I make no qualifiers as to more or less pain comparing individual to individual because it's a worthless exercise. List to what I am saying... if you find a pain management course, especially one that incorporates physical and cognitive/behavioral therapy, AND you're willing to stick with it, you WILL find that you've less a need for medication for management. That is, unless of course, you WANT to medicate yourself. It's within you and you have to ask yourself, "Have you tried? Have REALLY tried?"

I'm not exactly sure that anyone completely straight and highly intelligent would consider a conversation with someone half-baked "normal". I know I wouldn't. Be that as it may, and keeping in mind I've detailed my injuries to you and that fact that I need replacement surgery that I've opted out of and the fact that I do not use pain killers. Take that as you will, but certainly don't try to validate your pro-marijuana argument by asserting that it's something of a "necessity". And, at the very least, admit that those you opt to use it do so because they ENJOY using it. Anything less is dishonest and hurts credibility.

I'm not saying anything should or should not be legal. I am merely stating that you can not justify breaking the law when you have other options. My opinion on the matter of use is that it's a personal choice, to an extent. As with anything, the potential for abuse exists. While the extent here may not be akin to a crackhead mugging someone, I *do* believe some "recreational" drugs should still be and remain illegal. I tend to have the same opinion of legal prescriptions that are abused, yet handed out like candy. I won't say, "aw, too bad, sucks for you" of course, but I do believe that the vast majority of people on drugs like Valium, Vicodan, Percowhatever, Oxycontin, etc., etc., use them as recreational drugs and enjoy them and are simply uninterested in cleaning their bodies out and finding other means. Is that their prerogative? Certainly. But, I don't have to agree with it and I don't have to like it, especially when their "pain management method" leaves them dependant on social programs that I, and others, have to pay for.
 
  • #40
been that route...do the physical therapy and the like......actually on fewer pain pills now than 2 years ago cause i hate the side effects of opiate pain meds and the side effects interfere with work unless i keep them under a certain line cause i run printing presses and being stoned running the equipment eventually means loosing a hand or worse...distractions cause your skins crawling cause your going through physical withdrawls at 2 in the afternoon are as bad as being stoned...

my point with the pot is there are plenty of ppl with legit problems where anyone will be perfectly fine with them being prescribed opiates.....but bring up these individuals using marijuana and all the sudden they are just interested in being stoned....WTF either they have a legit medical issue or they dont....either way they are stoned and for many its far easier to be closer to normal....i know a couple guys locally that after being allowed to smoke they went from being stoned out of their gourds on opiates, living on welfare to holding down full time jobs again cause opiate are piss poor at handling back pain caused by something pinching a nerve root and pot works....does that mean they are 100% functioning like they would with no injury? absolutly not but it made enough difference they could take over their lives again instead of being ruled by an injury....

i dont do the whole "im worse off than you" crap either.....on a scale of 1 to 10 my wife has experienced far higher levels of pain than i have between her migraines and a burst ovarian cyst that damn near killed her.....on a scale of 1-10, she rates that cyst at about a 15.....my knees have never been worse than about an 8....the problem is unlike my wifes migraines and ruptured cyst my knees will be at between a 4 and 8 for months on end with no break.....

my whole point is there is no such thing as magic bullets in medicine for complex issues like cancer or even pain management.....what works for one person wont necessarily work for another....ive got a buddy thats far worse off than i am due to a vehicle wreck 10 years ago.....if i asked him today how his back felt he would tell me "No clue, havent checked in with it today".....he told me how he does his stuff and i tried it....after 5 months i was told by two different docs not to do that anymore cause it was causing negative physiological changes to my body.....

what works for one person will not nessisarily work for everyone....
 
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