Insomnia is a very serious health issue all over the globe. Researchers estimate that as many as one out of every three adults around the world suffers from insomnia. Insomnia is a common sleep disorder in which sufferers have trouble falling and/or staying asleep.
The inability to fall asleep and/or stay asleep can have a dramatically negative impact on a person’s life. A lack of sleep, especially if the lack of sleep is chronic, can result in a person having issues with cognitive functions, including memory loss and the inability to focus. Chronic insomnia can result in major depression in some cases.
Researchers in the United Kingdom recently conducted an analysis in which they examined cannabis use and its impact on sustained improvements in sleep quality. Below is more information about the analysis via a news release from NORML:
London, United Kingdom: Insomnia patients who consume cannabis products report sustained improvements in their sleep quality, according to data published in the journal Brain & Behavior.
British investigators assessed the safety and efficacy of plant-derived cannabis products (either oils, flower, or a combination of both) in over 60 patients enrolled in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Cohort participants possessed a doctor’s authorization to access cannabis products.
(Since 2018, specialists have been permitted to prescribe cannabis-based medicinal products to patients unresponsive to conventional medications.) Authors assessed the efficacy of cannabis at one, three, and six months.
Researchers reported that cannabis products were “well tolerated” and that they were associated with better sleep, reduced anxiety, and greater quality of life.
They concluded: “More than 40 percent of participants who completed each PROM [patient-reported outcome measure] round reported clinically significant improvement in their sleep quality at each time period.
These results show that initiation of CBMP [cannabis-based medicinal products] therapy was associated with improvements in those patients who had previously failed to respond to currently licensed treatments for insomnia.”
Other studies assessing the use of cannabis products in patients enrolled in the UK Cannabis Registry have reported them to be effective for those suffering from chronic pain, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, migraine, inflammatory bowel disease, and other afflictions.
Placebo-controlled clinical trial data has previously affirmed the efficacy of plant-derived cannabis extracts in patients suffering from chronic insomnia.
Full text of the study, “UK Medical Cannabis Registry: Assessment of clinical outcomes in patients with insomnia,” appears inBrain & Behavior.Additional information on cannabis and insomnia is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids. This article first appeared on Internationalcbc.com and is syndicated here with special permission.
