Is Cannabis Beneficial In The Fight Against Breast Cancer?

2009.05.03

A non- psychoactive chemical that occurs naturally in marijuana may prevent breast cancer from spreading, according to a study published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics journal.

Researchers found that a chemical called cannabidiol, or CBD affects the activity of a gene called Id-1 in patients with hormone dependent breast cancer. In embryos, Id-1 is responsible for helping cells grow and spread, but its is supposed to remain inactive in adults. In human adults, it is found only in metastasis cancer cells, which are the cancer cells that are spreading throughout the body.

The fear is when those Id-1 cells wake up, because they push the cells to behave like embryonic cells, and they go crazy and multiply at an alarming rate, and then they migrate.

The object of the exercise, when it comes to these Od-1 cells is to shut off the activity of the Id-1 cells, so that they become far less lethal, and that means that they can be removed by surgery. As the analogy goes, “if you shoot the violinist, the orchestra continues to play, but if you shoot the conductor, the whole orchestra is going to stop”.

Because the chemical CBD occurs in only very small quantities in the cannabis plant, researchers don’t recommend smoking marijuana to treat the cancer. Instead, what they offer is that they will have to synthesize the CBD. They say it’s worth using this chemical because of its non-toxicity.

Researchers are hopeful that CBD will be useful in other forms of Id-1 reliant cancer, such as brain, colon, and prostate cancer. They also say that they have a limited range of options in treating aggressive forms of cancer. The researchers go on to say that, treatments such as chemotherapy can be effective but also very toxic and difficult for the patients afterwards, but the CBD offers a hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results of the chemotherapy without any of the harmful side effects.

Throughout all of this discussion, the chemical CBD has been cited as being one possible way to treat cancer in a non-toxic, and non-invasive manner, and that it may be some time before its use for those treatments will be implemented, but one thing sticks out in my mind, and that is that marijuana has also been proven to help cancer patients who have had chemotherapy.

Marijuana’ s properties are being discovered further, but why can’t the benefits of marijuana be more explored to relieve the patients of the suffering they go through when they get chemotherapy? Chemotherapy seems a big expense of both money and of health, much in the same way that nuclear power is being used over the more natural energy solutions.

New hope is always offered in the age old battle with cancer, and this CBD chemical is the latest with the breast cancer, but after all these years, why has there not been a better way?