This week I had a patient contact me as a result of experiencing extreme paranoia after vaporizing three doses of medical marijuana using a vaporizer. He explained that within a few minutes he started feeling “not in control of my body.” He said he kept thinking that he was going to swallow his tongue and actually sat for 30 minutes holding the tip of his tongue. He also was fixated on the fact that his heart was beating much faster and he was thinking that he was going to have a heart attack. He said the paranoia laster for a solid hour until he just fell asleep. It is difficult to say exactly what percentage of patients that use medical marijuana experience paranoia but I estimate it at about 6%. READ ON…

If you are not familiar with the various methods of medicating with medical marijuana you are probably reading this thinking that patients must SMOKE it in order to get it’s benefits. Actually a high percentage of my patients who have been using cannabis for quite some time thought they had to smoke it. There are really two ways to medicate:

As a physician who regularly discusses the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes with patients it is my job to make sure patients understand all of the risks of using this medication. In this blog I want to talk about some of the most obvious risks. First and foremost, because cannabis affects a patients mental status, specifically their judgement, coordination, balance, perception and fine motor skills they have to be in a safe environment when medicating.

I recently had a 28 year old pregnant patient ask me about the potential effects of cannabis use on her pregnancy. She had been using cannabis to treat ongoing migraine headaches with great results. Because I very rarely work with pregnant women as part of my professional practice I had to hit the books and look for what research is out there on how cannabis affects the pregnancy, neonatal growth and the future development of the child. Here is a summary of what I found

The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California at San Diego is committed to studying the medical benefits of cannabis. It regularly conducts clinical trials for various medical conditions, most of the centered around pain and muscle spasticity. It findings clearly show that marijuana (cannabis) is effective in treating acute and chronic pain.

What is interesting is that researches found that patients do not have to get high in order to get pain relief. They found that cannabis used in smaller amounts was just as effective as patients who took larger doses.

As medical director for Medical Cannabis of Southern California I evaluate the benefits and risks of using cannabis (marijuana) with patients every day. Interesting many patients are not aware that there are risks associated with using cannabis.