The Releaf Center Blog Informing & Entertaining Since 2009

According to the National MS Society’s website, approximately 400,000 Americans have Multiple Sclerosis (and 2.5 million persons worldwide); equally, if not more, depressing is their claim that 200 people per week in this country are diagnosed with the disease.

MS is the most common neurological disease in younger folks, and affects women more so than it does men for some yet-to-be-determined reason.

Potentially fatal in nature, MS is a disorder of the human nervous system and can be excruciatingly painful. Spasticity and muscle spasms are quite common – imagine your muscles wanting to constantly tighten up without intervals of being loose for more than a few seconds time – not fun, so imagine what it would be like to have to live your entire life with such a condition…. and to make things even worse if such an idea is conceivable, says Professor Doina Ganea, Chair in Microbiology and Immunology at Temple University in Philly, ”… the more rapidly it progresses, the sooner it disables its victims”; in the same article, Dr. Ganea follows by referencing the concept of making a great [positive] impact on a patient’s life if you could somehow slow down the degeneration.

Enter Cannabis (yielding Axe, Jack Torrance-style)…

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=pot-shows-promise-for-reducing-mult-2009-12-02

(Observation: the marijuana picture shown in this blog doesn’t exactly look very medicinal, does it?)

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Americans for Safe Access is a massive group of medical professionals who support cannabis for both its therapeutic use and its research potential [ie: smart mo' fo's who also happen to be very hip people trying to change the world for the better]. According to their reference page, MS often begins as relapsing and remitting (the symptoms appear, then go away, then return again, lessen again, etc.) and that current treatments are symptomatic – focusing on pain, spasticity, depression, et al.

They go on to say that many MS patients claim that MMJ helps with the Fundamental sense of sight, speech, walking/ equilibrium, spasms, tremors, and bladder control. Seems like it’s worth a shot to me…

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Brain is a journal for neurologists which is published out of Oxford University… thank God for abstracts… the research contained in this paper give hope to those whom are unfortunate victims to this horrible disease. In conclusion, the scientists state that:

“… in addition to symptom management, cannabis may also slow the neurodegenerative processes that ultimately lead to chronic disability in multiple sclerosis and probably other diseases”.

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So WHY NOT, Modern Compassionate Society?

This ain’t the University of Phoenix blowin’ smoke… it’s Oxford, Harvard, Medical Boards of entire NATIONS – why do I have the inclination that those who oppose allowing any MS patient from accessing and using medicinal marijuana do not have a perplexing disease of their own to struggle and suffer with?

-Jason