Study Confirms That Cannabis Enhances Quality Of Life
This article was originally published on Leafly and appears here with permission.
A recent study conducted by a group of UK-based researchers found that medical cannabis was associated with improvements in health-related quality of life, anxiety, and sleep quality. This research adds to the growing body of literature suggesting that medical cannabis can help patients with chronic health conditions improve their well-being. The study also observed a reduced use of opioid medications among cannabis patients, and found that patients prescribed dried cannabis flower (versus tinctures and lozenges) were most likely to show clinical improvement.
The Complex And Nuanced Task Of Studying Cannabis
The cannabis plant is an incredibly complex and variable medicine. It contains over 400 chemical compounds, more than 100 of which have known medical effects. These chemicals are present in different amounts and combinations in cannabis, depending on numerous factors: The particular strain, the way it was grown, the way it was processed, and the way it is consumed.
When observational studies investigate cannabis use, they often capture results from a wide variety of different substances, not just cannabis. More controlled studies—there aren’t many—tend to focus on one or two isolated components of cannabis. While these studies provide more specific results, they don’t tell us much about how the various compounds interact with each other. This makes cannabis extremely challenging to study.
The authors of this study, however, decided to take a different route: They studied …