Learn more about Marijuana and its many Medical Uses

The number of States that have either already legalized marijuana or plan to do so continues to grow all the time. This reflects how perceptions and attitudes towards the cannabis plant are changing, and it’s been proven that marijuana is not overly harmful AND has a lot of potential for therapeutic purposes. While some States have legalized marijuana for both medicinal and recreational usage, some of them have only legalized medical marijuana.

The abbreviation MMJ is often used for medical marijuana, and it’s very likely that over the course of the next few years that medical marijuana becomes even more of a legitimate and mainstream choice for people suffering from chronic poor-health conditions.

Why this shift in opinions, and why is it that medical marijuana is as highly regarded as it is by many in the medical community? Let’s take a look at that.

Cannabis and Marijuana

Understanding the distinction between these two is a good place to start. Cannabis is a type of plant, and the plant from which marijuana is produced. Marijuana is the name for the dried flowers of the female cannabis plant. Marijuana is the drug that’s understood to have psychoactive and mind-altering properties, while the cannabis plant itself contains only traces of the psychoactive ingredient (THC) that marijuana does.

Other cannabinoids are also found in marijuana. While THC is the psychoactive cannabinoid and featured prominently in most strains of recreational marijuana, medical marijuana usually has more of CBD and / or CBN cannabinoids to make it so that it provides therapeutic benefits and does NOT intoxicate the user in any way. Strains of marijuana can be engineered to have more of one or more types of cannabinoids and fewer or none of other ones.

The MMJ – that is accessible to patients with a medical marijuana user card as issued by their State will give them access to marijuana that has not been grown to get users ‘high’. The marijuana that is made available to these patients has been engineered to provide them with the inherent benefits of CBD, CBN and other cannabinoids and they will not experience any sort of intoxication.

Some medical marijuana will feature THC in higher quantities to go along with higher levels of the more therapeutic cannabinoids, and usually based on the type of ailment being treated. Users must be aware of the possibility of mind-altering effects if using this variety of the product.

MMJ Uses

Medical Marijuana can be option for relief from symptoms of a whole host of different conditions. Using medical marijuana for chronic pain is the most common, but there are others including:

• Relief from chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting
• Pain and other symptoms related to HIV / AIDS
• Neurological problems stemming from diseases like MS and Epilepsy
• Mitigating PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms
• Overcoming insomnia
• Treating high blood pressure
• Aiding with substance abuse recovery

And more.