Yes, I Tried That.

I know you’re trying to be helpful but your suggestions of yoga or CBD or massage or med XYZ, but I’ve tried it all already..

Medications.

In my case, I have tried all the meds. The only one I haven’t tried is one that’s available in the States but not in approved for use here in Canada. It’s called Sabella.. Specific medications for fibro include lyrica and gabapentin did not help and in fact, the gabapentin made me significantly worse – not good

I’ve been on any number of narcotic medications, starting at 20 Tylenol 3’s a month (that was a joke, way too insignificant) to high dosages of codeine contin & Fentanyl.. Fortunately, those were not at the same time.

I’ve also been on several muscle relaxing medications. Unfortunately, the one that works the absolute best is not covered my government benefits, but the one that is covered is adequate unlike many others.

i have been on anti-inflammatoriez for many many years due to Endo then the arthritis. Unfortunately, it seems to have started causing increased bruising in the last year or longer. As a result, my GP has taken me off my regular double daily dose. I now take an otc anti-inflammatory “as needed. “

I have actually been on various forms of medical marijuana and just as I’m finding the perfect balance to help, I start having issues, problems that might be due to cannabis products. We are still trying to figure out the cause because even tho I’m off *all* marijuana products, synthetics oils and otherwise, I’m still having regular issues. So the docs got no idea what’s going on. Read more here.

Exercise!

You’re kidding me, right? Do you know how hard it is to exercise when your body is screaming at you? Even Yoga.. Or swimming.. Or walking.. Even these simple every day activities, when you have severe Fibromyalgia can be unbelievably difficult. While it can help some it does impact others in a negative way, deteriorating their health.. I am lucky. I made a decision 10 years ago when I hit 303lbs on the scale at my doctor’s office. So I did start the long and painful, excruciating process of doing a smidge more activity, very slowly increasing what I was doing.

So yes, now I can go swimming.. well, walk in the pool, lol.. Before COVID I could participate in an aquafit class, but sometimes no more than bobbing in the water but I made the effort to be there.

Yes I can walk further, but that happened with great encouragement from my sister. Over the last six years, we would get together weekly to walk. On some days I can’t walk very far, but I try. This encouragement has led us to talking and we have become very good friends now. An excellent side bonus!

Yoga can still be very painful, depending on the speed, the instructor, the modifications, the positions we use and the flows (God I hate flows). I do have favourite positions like bridge & pidgeon that surprise people. But it took me 10 years to get to this point and it can still very much hurt.

Was at the gym, stepping around in an Arriba class earlier this week and crashed out that night… Barely made it to the time I take my night meds. Even took extra early pain meds to help dampen the pain so I could sleep.

The advantage of me having the gym membership at my local YMCA is the plus membership I fork out the extra for the plus membership because it includes additional99lounge, steam room & the infamous hot tub. The hot tub is my life saver. Can’t wait for my tat to finish healing so I can send all the way in to my neck

Diet.

These include gluten free, Keto, vegetarian, vegan, anti-inflammatory, Noom, high protein, Mediterranean, Weight watchers, diabetic, South Beach, intermittent fasting, paleo, raw foods, Aktins, etc… While some of these would works for some, none of these really helped me or could help me. Between complexity, my will power (or lack thereof), cravings and food sensitivities, none of these actually worked for me. My choice of “diet” is moderation and avoiding a lot of prepackaged foods. The closest to this would probably be the weight watchers program but I found their point system to be complicated especially with the cognitive issues with my Fibro. This adaptation has also helped me lose weight. So I still do drink Coke, probably still too much, but significantly less. I’ve almost 100% restricted out the xanthan gum, guar gum and carrageenan additives as they typically cause my IBS to flare which would start putting me in starvation mode, which makes maintaining, let alone losing weight even more difficult. Not to mention get some of these diets require me to eat foods with these additives in them.

I do treat myself every once in a while with a bowl of sorbet. Very infrequent use of these chemicals it is permitted because my body can tolerate them in very very small doses.

Alternative treatments

We’re talking massage, acupuncture, physio, osteopathy, chiro, etc. Physiotherapy does not really help the fibro other than adjusting exercises that could be beneficial to help increase strength, endurance or flexibility. In many cases this does not improve the pain due to fiibro in patients.

While chiropractic medicine helps some with fibro, it actually made my situation significantly worse.

Osteopath does help but it mostly treats my other conditions like post concussion syndrome, migraines or endometriosis and general health and wellness. Does not help fibromyalgia specifically that I know of.

Acupuncture does absolutely nothing for me or any of my medical conditions. I have tried it a number of occasions and hasn’t worked with any of the practitioners. One lady treated my Endo & gave me migraines. Any further attempts for any other issues have resulted in absolutely not relief

Massage can wonderful. If you get an appropriate RMT who understands fibromyalgia and will listen to you & adjust when you say “Ow!” it can help. Unfortunately it also tends to be very short-term

Injections.

For 15 years now, give or take, I have been getting injections of a medication called Marcaine which is a sibling medication to lidocaine. These I get with my pain physician who was initially in Scarborough and is now in Oshawa. These shots have helped over the years for anywhere between 4 days and 4+ weeks depending on the level of my pain

In the winter I also get epidurals up to three times each winter depending on my pain levels at that time. This tends to treat my osteoarthritis in my lower back, not the fibro pain. In doing that however, it reduces the OA pain, making the fibro pain more manageable.

lidocaine infusion. This is the one last treatment I know of. This is when they attach an IV and add lidocaine to your blood system. This is my next course of action for treatment. I have an ECG scheduled for next week so that I can access this treatment. Once it’s been verified that my heart is ok, I can and will book the treatment. I will let you know how it went.

Thank You, But..

Thank you for your concern for me and your helpful intentions, I’ve been dealing with this a long. Thank you for your pearls of wisdom persistent unsolicited advice is actually inconsiderate & thoughtless. I *do* know my body & I do know what works for me. It comes across to those of use dealing with these issues like we don’t know anything about my fibro and that you know more than me & my doctor. Honestly, in most cases, I do know more than my doctor. So please stop making suggestions cuz what worked for your friend’s cousin, Sally, I have already tried. or that your Dad’s friend’s daughter was cured, because it can’t be. I don’t need anyone telling me how other people’s treatment going to work for me because her fibro is not my fibro.

So stop I don’t need or want to hear it.

Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways

Medical Evidence On Marijuana Blows Both Ways
Legalization debate is waging in America once again, but what does the research say?

By Sam McManis

+ Enlarge This image A customer holds up marijuana bought from a San Francisco, California medical marijuana dispensary in this February 2006 file photo. –McClatchy Newspapers + Enlarge This image Medical evidence on marijuana blows both ways –Bloomberg

Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.Such recitation of conflicting marijuana studies can be manipulated and selected buffet-style to serve whatever political and health agenda is being touted.

Even governmental findings can be contradictory. In 1999, for instance, the Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine to review evidence. The institute found that, “except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications.”

Yet in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that marijuana has no health benefits and has known and proven harms. It is classified a Schedule 1 drug – the highest risk of addiction – in the Controlled Substances Act.

Wading through the medical literature, though, makes those conclusions less cut and dried.

“When I was a resident in Kaiser in San Francisco in 1978, I gave a lecture to physicians on marijuana, and I remember my conclusion at that time was that you can find in the literature whatever you were looking for,” says Dr. Donald Abrams, a University of California, San Francisco, oncologist and leading medical marijuana researcher. “‘Marijuana is good for asthma.”Marijuana’s bad for asthma.”Marijuana causes schizophrenia.”Marijuana (decreases) schizophrenia.’ And, the evidence is still like that.”

There are many factors, of course. As noted by UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana’s effects on the lungs for three decades, “That’s just the nature of medical science. You have to deal with variability. The population studied may be different or the methods used to study may differ.”

Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.

“Although we like to say we separate politics from science, with medical marijuana, that’s really difficult,” Abrams says. “It depends on who does the study, where it’s published and their agenda.”

Bearing in mind those caveats, here is a look at the research on marijuana’s effect in areas critical to health.

Lungs

UCLA’s Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, but the results proved otherwise.

“What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect,” says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function.

Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an “anti-tumoral effect” in which “cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer.”

However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.

“Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects,” Tashkin says. “But at this point, I’d be in favor of legalization. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don’t think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm.”

Cognitive function

A 2006 study in the journal Neurology found that speed of thinking, attention and verbal fluency were affected as much as 70 percent by long-term heavy use (four or more joints per week).

But a 2003 review of literature in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society found that marijuana smoking had a “small effect” on memory in longtime users.

However, users had no lasting effects in reaction time, attention or verbal function. “Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects,” Dr. Igor Grant, researcher at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, said in a statement.

A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heavy users did worse on recall memory tests. A 2006 study in Greece showed users had slower mental-processing speed than the control group. Then again, a 2007 study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that students who smoked marijuana had better grades than those who used only tobacco or those who did not smoke any substance.

In terms of brain development, a 2000 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found changes in brain structure in those who started using marijuana before age 17 but not in those who started at an older age. A 2009 Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia study used brain imaging to show that heavy adolescent users are more likely to have disrupted brain development in regions involving memory, attention, decision making and language. But a 2008 Ohio State University study found that marijuana can reduce brain inflammation and perhaps reduce memory impairment that could delay Alzheimer’s disease.

Psychosis

Yes, there is an increased risk in psychotic behaviour and long-term risk of mental illness from marijuana use, according to a 2007 review of literature commissioned by Great Britain’s Department of Health and published in the Lancet.

But the risk is small, because the risk of developing psychosis in the general population is 3 percent over a lifetime and rises to 5 percent for marijuana users, lead researcher Stanley Zammit told the Los Angeles Times. “So 95 percent of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis,” he told the paper.

In 2005, New Zealand researchers studied a group of people with a gene variant the researchers believe predisposes that group to developing psychosis. Those in the group who smoked marijuana as teens had a tenfold increase in risk of psychosis than those who abstained.

Depression

A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed nearly 2,000 adults over 15 years. It found that marijuana users who had no symptoms of depression at the start were four times more likely than non-users of developing symptoms during that time frame.

In 2008, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that early marijuana use could increase the likelihood of mental illness by as much as 40 percent later in life.

However, researchers at McGill University in Montreal in 2007 reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that THC in low doses actually serves as an antidepressant similar to Prozac, producing serotonin. But at higher doses, they found it could lead to depression and psychotic episodes.

Source: Taiwan News

Top Anti-Drug Researcher Changes His Mind, Says Legalize Marijuana

Top Anti-Drug Researcher Changes His Mind, Says Legalize Marijuana

Posted in Chronicle Blog by Scott Morgan on Wed, 06/03/2009 – 9:52pm

For 30 years, Donald Tashkin has studied the effects of marijuana on lung function. His work has been funded by the vehemently anti-marijuana National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has long sought to demonstrate that marijuana causes lung cancer. After 3 decades of anti-drug research, here’s what Tashkin has to say about marijuana laws:

“Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects,” Tashkin says. “But at this point, I’d be in favor of legalization. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don’t think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm.” [McClatchy]

We’ve been told a thousand times that marijuana destroys your lungs, that it’s 5 times worse than cigarettes, and on and on. Yet here is Donald Tashkin, literally the top expert in the world when it comes to marijuana and lung health, telling us it’s time to legalize marijuana. His views are shaped not by ideology, but rather by the 30 years he spent studying the issue. He didn’t expect the science to come out in favor of marijuana, but that’s what happened and he’s willing to admit it.

Here’s the study that really turned things around:

UCLA’s Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, but the results proved otherwise.”What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect,” says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted.

Prejudice against marijuana and smoking in general runs so deep for many people that it just seems inconceivable that marijuana could actually reduce the risk of lung cancer. But that’s what the data shows and it not only demolishes a major tenet of popular anti-pot propaganda, but also points towards a potentially groundbreaking opportunity to develop cancer cures through marijuana research.

Over and over again, all the bad things we’ve been told about marijuana are revealed to be not only false, but often the precise opposite of the truth. So the next time someone tells you that marijuana is worse for your lungs than cigarettes, you might want to mention that the world’s leading expert on that subject happens to be a supporter of legalization.