Cannabis - What MS and Alzheimer's Have in Common

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease involving damaged nerves in the brain and spinal cord of the sufferer.  Alzheimer's is a disease involving plaque buildup in the brain which negatively affects memory and other cognitive functions.  What do they have in common, well they both affect the nerves and they both have symptoms of inflammation.  Inflammation can be very damaging, more damaging than you might realize, for example migraine head aches are caused by inflammation and it has been discovered that if you have as little as one of these a month over a prolonged period of time, brain lesions can form on the white matter of the brain.  These lesions are like holes on the surface of the brain.

In Alzheimer's there is a problem with plaque build up in the brain causing inflammation of neurons eventually leading to cell death and a shrinkage of the brain.  Each neuron holding a memory that dies is another lost memory.  You might be asking what can cannabis, or  marijuana, do for these diseases.  Well compounds in cannabis like THC, which gives marijuana's high, and others like CBD, CBN, CBV, and THCV can treat neurons by ridding the nerves of inflammation and doing other good things like increasing the production of myelin, the insulator of neurons, and even promote neurogenesis, the growth of new neural pathways.  These things that cannabis' compounds, known as cannabinoids, can do are beneficial to both Multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's, not to mention any disease that has neural inflammation involved with it.  Some of the diseases Cannabis can help include but are not limited to: Cancer, Lupus, Dementia, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Schizophrenia, Parkinson's, Migraine Headaches and more.

For Alzheimer's a 2006 study actually showed cannabis does far better than the current prescriptions on the market.  On a CNN special I watched just yesterday, they showed a girl less than two that went from over 70 seizures a day down to about 10 just by using cannabis, a form that doesn't even get you high.  There is no good reason why cannabis that doesn't get you high should be illegal.  I urge you readers to support legalization and research of cannabis.  We have made some progress here in the U.S. because there is a prescription legal form of THC called Marinol.  However it is only approved for nausea and appetite in AIDS / HIV patients and those who are undergoing Chemotherapy.  As a UK research doctor said, cannabis could provide us with 40 years worth of new medicine.