Medical cannabis Treatment for fibromyalgia and M.E My experience and questions

[Insomniac]

Legal Medical cannabis is available in Israel if you have the right connections, money and have someone healthy who is prepared to go through the 6 month beaurocracy for you.

I received my 3 month temporary medical cannabis license 2 month ago in the form of rolled up cigarettes. I regret not asking for the inhaler method because I am sometimes too exhausted to light, smoke and clear up after ashes 4 times a day without break. I don't even work and have my elderly parents take care of me. That is how weak I am.

I started on 1 puff 2 times a day. Now after almost 2 months I reached 2 puffs 4 times per day.
I was warned of side effects:
Tiredness
low blood pressure,
Lowered blood sugar.

I have been much more tired on this the last few weeks. I don't know if it is from the Medical cannabis or if it is just a general low for this illness.

I want to ask if anyone else with ME and fibro together has tried it.
Am I the only one to feel no improvement after 2 months?
Have others felt more tired on this?
What dose usually works for others.??
I am really upset that many patients with fibromyalgia alone in Israel seem to be having miraculous recoveries on this, while I am not. I can not ask the doctor who got it for me because he does not believe in "CFS", only chronic pain symptom of fibromyalgia. So I desperately want to hear from someone else who has tried this.

 

[Insomniac]

I forgot to say. I was told to take my blood pressure before and 1 hour after smoking the 2 puffs of cannabis. I notice that the blood pressure goes down by almost 10 points afterwards. I already have low blood pressure averaging 100/70 so it's not good. Sometimes I am too weak to even take my blood pressure after smoking.

I need to make a doctors appointment as part of the terms of receiving the temporary cannabis license. I phoned the doctor's helper in the meantime and he told me to reduce my dose.
I would just really like to hear from others who have tried medical cannabis for ME.

 

[Insomniac]

I searched for medical cannabis before starting this thread. Now I searched again and found only this thread:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...pain-and-sleep-and-the-pem-in-cfs.4106/page-4
All the links in it don't work because it is 3 years old. I now see there were 2 other people in it who had tiredness and no pain reduction or improvement on it. I'm sooo glad I am not the only one.
It is strange no one decided to take their blood pressure before and 1 hour after smoking like I was advised. There is a clear blood pressure reduction which is bad for OH, POTS or anyone who has low blood pressure.

 

[Christopher]

Initially it was very helpful with neurological and physical functioning, but the more I used it the worse those symptoms became when I took holidays from it. I am now much worse off now than I was before I started using regularly. I recommend very low dose and frequent holidays(weeks at a time) to gauge your symptoms off the drug. If I had exercised caution and respected its power, I may not have crashed from it, but I abused it.

 

[Insomniac]

Thanks Christopher. I did not know that could happen

Initially it was very helpful with neurological and physical functioning, but the more I used it the worse those symptoms became when I took holidays from it. I am now much worse off now than I was before I started using regularly. I recommend very low dose and frequent holidays(weeks at a time) to gauge your symptoms off the drug. If I had exercised caution and respected its power, I may not have crashed from it, but I abused it.

Thank you Christopher. I had no idea that could happen.

 

[liquid sky]

It gives me energy, but actually increases my pain after a while. I can use only tiny doses and have never used it more than once daily. There are so many different types of cannabis, I think it would take a lot of experimentation to find what works for each individual. It does give me much better sleep. I would love to see some good studies on medical cannabis for FMS/CFS.

 

[ramakentesh]

i found it made my OI profoundly worse but assisted with wired and tired feelings.

 

[kyro]

I used to vaporise regular kush (fairly high THC low CBD) sometimes, which did help with pain (I have CFS/ME), but gave me unpleasant low blood pressure, tachycardia, sometimes anxiety and I couldnt sleep well on it, couldnt get off to sleep easily and felt like I never really got into deep sleep. I did also notice that smoking too much could actually worsen pain. The psychoactive effects, although they can certainly be fun if you want to get high, listen to music or whatever, got in the way of actually being functional on a day to day basis if I used it regularly.
Recently I've got hold of a variety of cannabis that is apparently 50/50 CBD to THC. It has only very mild psychoactive effects, doesnt seem to affect my blood pressure or heart rate so much, and is good for keeping pain and wired feelings at bay. It also doesnt seem to disturb my sleep, as long as I dont vape too much. I don't use very much at all, just enough to be noticeable, a few times later in the day when I don't have alot to do, or need to unwind. It seems to work at least as well as anything else ive tried, amitriptyline, cocodamol, lyrica. It seems pretty good if I have PEM to dampen that wired feeling.
I've done a bit of research about cannabinoids, since they are immunomodulators, I wondered if the shift would be favourable for CFSers. The initial concern I had was that cannabis is known to shift immune expression from TH1 to TH2, which is the same direction as the shift in CFS. But looking at research on CBD the picture is more compicated, it can alter the balance back to TH1 under some circumstances http://ukcia.org/research/CannabidiolModulatesChemotaxis.pdf.
There are a number of cytokines that are favourably shifted by both THC and CBD, but CBD seems to have more theraputic potential from what i can tell. The interactions are complex though - CBD modulates he action of THC. CBD also appears to reduce inflammation, and oxidative and nitrosative stress, which is probably useful for CFS. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3026637/
In summary, the therapeutic potential of cannabis depends on the strain you ingest....

 

[jeffrez]

MJ provides me with some temporary pain relief, but nothing long lasting. I haven't checked my BP after smoking. I doubt I could function productively on a day-to-day basis taking cannabis regularly, though, so it's all basically a moot point anyway.

 

[SickOfSickness]

Dug up some more discussions. http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?posts/318597/
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/medical-marijuana-and-me-cfs.18599/
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/vaporized-cannabis.13169/
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/clinical-trials-medical-cannabis-tincture.20409/
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...get-for-the-treatment-of-liver-fibrosis.20420
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...an-reduce-pain-and-spasms-ucal-feb-2010.2462/
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-on-the-fibromyalgia-and-c.13892/#post-230759

 

[Lotus97]

Marijuana became addicting for me once my illness began. Prior to that I just used it occasionally. I'm not trying to tell people not to do it. I'm just sharing my experience. A lot of things can be addicting. The way I hear some people talk about methylation supplements is the same way drug addicts talk.

 

[antares4141]

I did it for a while, got mine off the street don't really know how potent the stuff I had was but I'd take one or two hits and it would make me totally worthless. Couldn't do anything productive cause I would walk in a particular direction to do a task and forget what I wanted to do before I made it to my destination. I still smoked it daily cause I liked getting stoned but after a while of being worthless only did it at night before bed. I quit for about three months and my head cleared up quite a bit but than started again and noticed it seemed to provoke my cfs symptoms but I think that was coincidence I suspect there were some other factors involved. I plan on trying it again sometime just to see if it does indeed provoke my symptoms. I don't really think it relieved my symptoms and wouldn't recommend it for that purpose.

I've found three things that really help me are mold avoidance (common sense not to the point of absurdity) no gluten or nuts or dairy (I sometimes put whipped cream in my coffee and feta cheese in a salad) drink only distilled water suspect the minerals provoke my symptoms but couldn't tell you why.