Medical Proprieties of the Cannabis Sativa

2009.06.28

The historical use of cannabis is associated, principally, with its medical proprieties. Many cultures with no connection between each other, have discovered, each one at each way, the medical effects of this plant. The Chinese have described its medical proprieties before Christ and, more recently, the Assyrians have considered it the most important medicine.

Since the seventies, the medical community has recognized the medical effects of cannabis. Its proprieties assist to strike the nausea and vomits that happen because of chemotherapy. Even though cannabis cannot cure diseases like cancer and SIDA, its effects decrease the suffering of the patients. Some of those benefices are symptoms like hunger and sleepiness, what comes stronger on the organism of the unhealthy and contributes that way with the treatment. Furthermore, the scientific community have discovered in the nineties that this plant have a substance capable of assuage the pain that is more powerful than morphine, like the Chinese have registered two thousand years ago.

Other diseases that can receive treatments based on the proprieties of cannabis are, for example, the Touraine Syndrome, that leads the patient to present involuntary movements, like the multiple sclerosis, because it provides the relaxing of the muscles, giving back the control of arms and legs. There is also the glaucoma, a disease that reaches the eye, considering that the THC controls the action of the liquids of the corneas and soften the pressure of the glaucoma on the eyes. The asthma can also be treated with cannabis because, even if to smoke is prejudice to the health, the THC cause the dilatation of the alveolar of the lung, which makes more easier the breathing of the unhealthy.

The medical effects of this plant today are in contrast with the prohibition of the cultivation and consume with recreational purposes. In some parts of the world, the cultivation of cannabis was permitted with strong control only for medical purposes, and it can only be consumed through medical prescription and a rigorous supervision of the laboratories. In the year of 1992, the United States (country that started the prohibition of cannabis existence), have suspended the authorization of the use of natural cannabis in medical treatments. The plant had its proprieties reproduced in laboratories and the material created has replaced it on the scientific community.

All those contradictions about the benefits and harms of cannabis entail discussions between the doctors, including ethical debates. The most part of doctors assume that if the plant was legalized they would indicate it for many treatments and that the effects of the substances produced in laboratories cannot reach the same effects of natural cannabis on the treatments. Countries like Belgium, Holland and United States, have permitted on the last years, the use of natural cannabis with medical purposes.

The potentialities of cannabis are in the cannabinoids, the principal class of chemical substances found on the cannabis plant. The cannabinoid is a composition of twenty-one atoms of carbon found together with carbolic acids found on the cannabis sativa plant.