From Pot To Medicine: Comprehensive Guide On How THC Is Changing The Medical Landscape

May 19, 2023

The medical landscape is an endless landscape that keeps changing with each passing day.

You can’t imagine it like a regular art depicting a landscape, because the picture is moving. It’s evolving and whenever a question is answered, at least two new questions appear. And the scientific community fights to seek new answers because lives depend on those answers. It is a beautiful evolution, but compared to pure science, it is something that requires speed.

It’s not something that you can stand and admire like you can with pure science. When it comes to medicine, you need to act fast and there is no time to stand around. For example, a lot of people have suffered for no reason until it was proven again that THC can help out with a lot of problems. With this article, let’s take a look at how this very important molecule keeps changing the medical landscape.

1. Normalization

THC is changing the medical landscape by showing that redemption arcs are possible when it comes to drugs. It has gone a long way since being banned until now where it is perfectly normal to get medical cannabis prescribed in the UK and many other countries. Our ancestors knew that cannabis was good for treating a wide array of problems, but something happened along the way.

Propaganda struck and marijuana was associated with satanism and junkie culture. However, the scientific community keeps proving that THC in marijuana has very valuable pharmacological properties. THC got its redemption arc even though it was deemed the devil’s lettuce. Furthermore, there are now cannabis products such as thca concentrate which are non psychoactive and do not have connotations of making the user high and unable to function like cannabis traditionally always had from the public. Now, a lot of people can get the treatment they desperately need because cannabis is mainstream now.

2. More and More Research

As the evidence grows in favor of THC, there are exponentially more papers proving its effects. As something this valuable is under lesser legal protection, everyone wants to chip in. This means that bigger companies can invest in cannabis research which starts a positive competition loop. This is a great example of what positive changes can bring us and how some medical branches can grow quickly.

These examples such as THC are very important for promoting other types of research. Once the snowball starts rolling downhill, it gets bigger and bigger, just like research regarding THC. Many other initiatives seek to prove the medical benefits of other substances regarded as illegal. Of course, you can’t prove that crack is healthy, but why not try safer alternatives to LSD?

3. Difference in Addiction

A great problem with very efficient medicine is that they usually cause addiction, especially the analgesic ones. These drugs can cause both psychological and physical addictions because the body gets used to these metabolites. Once they are removed from the body, it is confused and it seeks the old homeostasis.

However, THC is pretty effective at soothing pain, but it does not cause addiction. We are still trying to understand what kinds of molecules can cause addiction and which ones do not cause it. THC and its receptors are very important model systems for studying these effects. The findings regarding these interactions and how a cell responds are quite precious.

4. Difference in Dosage

You can’t talk about drugs without talking about dosages, it is a crucial parameter. Every medicine can become a poison at certain levels and vice versa. This is where THC comes in and shows us quite interesting facts regarding dosage. When it comes to pharmacologically active substances, we need to take a closer look at their whole journey in the body. THC needs to arrive at endocannabinoid receptors to have its effects.

With some substances, the effects are not linear, and some do not show immediate toxicity. Some substances are also released and absorbed in a very specific manner, THC is one of them. Understanding these processes is very important and again, THC is a very valuable model system for understanding these processes.

5. Personalized Medicine

The peak of modern medicine we strive to achieve is called personalized medicine. All of us are unique in our ways and we have our own unique bodily needs. This is the reason why drugs have different effects on different people and why it is so hard to understand drugs. By understanding how people react to THC and other cannabinoids, we can see bigger patterns in the body.

By understanding these patterns and principles, we are drawing closer to personalized medicine. By knowing how an individual reacts to these types of substances, we may be able to predict how they could react to other substances. Thus, it will be much easier to give more accurate estimates about both the type of drug they need and the dosage.

6. Coupled Therapy

Personalized medicine does not mean getting a pill that will magically fix all of your problems. It means combining different treatments to fit your body the best. THC on its own is good, but when combined with other therapies it becomes much more effective. Think about it as food, you do not eat every ingredient isolated, you eat the entire meal as it is.

By understanding how different therapies can be coupled, we can get a much stronger effect than just the sum of each therapy. The point is to find out which therapies have harmony and synchrony that gives additional benefits to them. For example, THC and counseling for treating mental health problems have proved much more efficient than just taking THC or just counseling.

These are just some of the talking points that can be made regarding the influence of THC on the medical landscape. These are some general talking points that not a lot of people talk about when mentioning this important molecule. All of these talking points can be talked hours on end and entire books can be written about THC in that manner.

It’s important to keep an open mind when it comes to discussing the shifts in the medical landscape. Even when it comes to THC and other useful substances, you need to think critically in every regard. Only through critical thinking can we truly appreciate medical and scientific improvements and their meaning.