Can CBD oil help with headaches & migraines?

Head aches or the medical term migraine is one of the most common illnesses in the world for humans with nearly 38 million suffering in the US alone on a sliding scale this equates to almost half of the worlds population suffering from headaches at some point in their life time most often between the ages of 33 and 47.

Humans have used many treatments over the years including aspirin (willow bark) and paracetamol, it also widely unknown that some sufferers of migraines have even turned to LSD was first developed as a vasoconstrictor, a class of drugs used to treat migraines strangely enough.

CBD and it’s extracts and many of the compounds found in cannabis can also be an effective treatment from migraines and other headaches the evidence in a new study based in Florida states that cannabis use “decreases migraine duration and frequency” through glutamine, opiate, inflammatory and serotonin pathways.

If you wish to leave deeper into they study it can be found in this article.

In two the 34 points of the research suggest that terpenes the compounds that give cannabis its strong smell could have something to do with the migrant relieving qualities of cannabis.

So which is best CBD oil or Flower?

So research carried out at Washington State University (WSU) that looked at data collected form an app called called Strainprint which is a medical research app that tracks medical symptoms and the advancement of the scientific befits of cannabis.

The study looked at the impact of inhaled cannabis and concentrated cannabis on headaches and migraine pain, in this research they assessed the impact and of type of cannabis (flower or concentrate), gender, dose, and concentration of THC and CBD.

The conclusions of the compiled data from thousands of sessions by hundreds of app users by the researchers concluded that inhaling cannabis reduced reported headache and migraine pain by about half.

CBD concentrates also showed that that larger reductions in pain were associated with concentrates than with inhaling flower, further to this men were reporting better benefits than women but higher tolerances reduced the effect on both types of cannabis (flowers & concentrate ) use on the treatments of migraines.

Is it the THC or CBD or both that improve migraines?

Is CBD the primary driver of the pain relief or is it the THC or is it both in conjunction with the terpenes which is a natural antioxidant. Lets look further into the study and the combination of the compounds that give the pain relief, terpenes and two of the main groupings of these along with limonene,  terpinolene.

This research has shown that in a study that botanicals that contain these compounds show evidence for benefits relevant to neurological and psychiatric disorders associated with terpenes, conditions along with heart conditions, stroke, ischemia, and other forms of neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain.

Can terpenes neutralise inflammatory neurological pain?

Terpenes have been known to reduce inflammation in the body and skin but could the terpenes also be helping with the inflammation in the brain that causes headaches and neurological disorders that can over long term cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and  Alzheimer’s disease and can we use precursors to stop the inflammation by using CBD oils or cannabis.

Limonene a terpene present in numerous cannabis extracts that appeared to be mediated through inhibition off neuroinflammation in a study by Iranian scientists on mice which also acted as an ani depressant .

So what conclusions can we draw from this brief but enlightening post well suppression of neurological inflammation can be achieved with THC,CBD and terpenes but which dose and what is best for each gender needs much more study but as an alternative medicine cannabis and its derivatives look like a good place to start.

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