Approximately 15-20% of inflammatory bowel disease patients in the United States and Canada are using cannabis to treat their symptoms.
What is Crohn’s disease?
Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation in your digestive system. It usually affects the small intestine or colon, but it can affect other parts as well.
There is no cure for Crohn’s disease, but treatment can provide relief from symptoms and even long-term remission of the disease.
Typical symptoms of Crohn’s disease include:
- Chronic diarrhea
- Weight loss
- Fever
- Abdominal pain and tenderness
- The feeling of a mass or fullness in the abdomen
- Rectal bleeding
Treating Crohn’s disease with cannabis
Why does cannabis seem to be an effective treatment for Crohn’s disease? Cannabis is known for its anti-inflammatory properties and cannabinoid receptors are found throughout the digestive tract, nervous system, brain, and immune system. Each of these areas affect inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease.
A clinical study in 2013 showed 5 of the 11 patients taking cannabis reporting complete remission of the disease. Nearly all (10 of 11) experienced improvement (Naftali et al. 2013).
Another study was done in 2018 using cannabis oil as a treatment. 65% of the treatment group met the standard for complete remission. Interestingly, they did not measure a decrease in inflammation as a result of using cannabis oil.
We have previously demonstrated that cannabis can produce measurable improvements in Crohn’s disease symptoms but, to our surprise, we saw no statistically significant improvements in endoscopic scores or in the inflammatory markers we measured in the cannabis oil group compared with the placebo group. We know that cannabinoids can have profound anti-inflammatory effects but this study indicates that the improvement in symptoms may not be related to these anti-inflammatory properties.”
Dr. Timna Naftali
Gastroenterologist at the University of Tel Aviv
Contact Canada House
Are you interested in using cannabis to treat Crohn’s? Let’s discuss options. Call 1-844-852-0020 or email info@canadahouse.ca.