Marijuana might be linked to cancer cures, nausea relief and loss of appetite reversal, but not enough is said about its everyday pain relieving abilities.  However, doctors are becoming bolder about giving credit to this plant/drug that has been demonized by the media for far too long.  An article in Psychology Today revealed a link between cannabis use and migraine pain relief.

Most doctors recommend triptans drugs for pain relief, including migraines, and direct users to take them at the first sign of a headache.  However, these drugs were said to have painful or unpleasant side effects.  Later, the medical community believed that triptans were effective in treating headaches because of their interaction with serotonin receptors, which caused a constriction of cerebral blood vessels.  For a time, much of the industry also believed that the interruption of marijuana use could trigger migraines.  However, a cannabis study in 1987 revealed that it was also possible marijuana was merely preventing migraines from ordinarily occurring because of its analgesic effects.

Recently, The Journal of Neuroscience out of the University of California, San Francisco directed attention to cannabis treatment once again, comparing it to triptan medications for migraine relief.  The report stated that the human brain already has marijuana-like chemicals that produce analgesia, similar to the way cannabis affects the brain, through the mechanism of modulating the entry of pain signals into the brain at the level of our spinal cord.  It also said that medical cannabis could be used instead of triptans, and without the side effects associated with them.

It’s very possible that marijuana is purest treatment available for headaches and migraines, because it mimics natural human defenses in response to pain.  The evidence suggests that it is one of the safest selections a person can take, especially when compared to habit forming prescription pain relievers and OTC drugs, which contain warnings about possible liver affectation.