Top 3 Reasons to Get Cannabis from a Medical Source
If you have a gastrointestinal disease or disorder, and you’ve tried several treatment options without achieving the symptom relief you are looking for, you might be interested in trying medical cannabis. As we’ve mentioned before, the area of cannabis for medical purposes is complex. There is some evidence that it can help with symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, and reduced appetite, but not enough definition in the literature on dosage, long-term efficacy, safety, and other aspects. Now that recreational cannabis is legal in Canada, you might be tempted to go to a recreational shop and just purchase some to try and treat your condition. However, if you want to use cannabis medically, it is best to consult healthcare experts instead. Healthcare experts who are licensed practitioners such as nurses, pharmacists, and physicians must follow strict rules to provide accurate and evidence-based information to help you. Unregulated representatives may not have rules they must follow in providing information. Below, we’ve listed our top three reasons to talk to your doctor before trying medical cannabis.
1. Better Information
When you buy cannabis from recreational sources, you are just purchasing a product, and getting no medical information or guidance. The retail staff are not medical experts and it is their job to sell product, predominantly for a recreational purpose, not look out for your medical issues. This means you won’t get the detailed, evidence-based information and advice you would get for the type of medications you pick up from a pharmacy. However, if you speak with your healthcare team, they can help figure out the best cannabis products for your unique medical situation. This can include assistance managing various factors, such as when and how to start treatment with cannabis, what type of cannabis, dosage, frequency, and method of administration are ideal for you, and whether there are any risks of interactions with cannabis and other medications you use. Your healthcare team can monitor your symptoms and ensure that cannabis is working for you, and make changes to the strain or dose as necessary, including any change in ratio of THC to CBD. You might even be able to stop taking other medications you had been taking and only your healthcare professional can assist with this deprescribing.
2. Access to Federally Licensed Producers
If your physician (or nurse practitioner, in certain provinces) decides that medical cannabis is a good choice for you, they will complete a Medical Document and submit it directly to a federally licensed producer. You can also transfer this document to other federally licensed producers. Purchasing through these channels ensures that you are getting good quality product, and that you know the amount of different compounds, such as cannabinoids (including THC and CBD) and terpenes, in each strain. Federally licensed producers have products which are better standardized and more reliable than other sources.
3. Increased Access
If your healthcare provider authorizes medical cannabis for you, then you can access it by buying directly from a federally licensed seller, but you can also register with Health Canada to produce your own cannabis for medical use. This allows you to grow a larger amount than is available to those who use cannabis recreationally, based on your recommended cannabis dosage. In addition, you are allowed to designate someone else to produce it for you. There are no limits on the amount of cannabis you can store in your home, as long as it is away from children, when you are using licensed medical cannabis. You can also carry more cannabis in public, with a limit of the lesser of 30-day treatment supply or 150 grams of dried equivalent (in addition to the 30 grams non-medicinal cannabis allowed).
Note: Not all physicians are supportive of medical cannabis, often due to the lack of clinical study and evidence. Since there is still a lot we don’t know about proper medical use, some refuse to recommend it for their patients. In this case, if you are interested in cannabis, we recommend speaking with other members of your healthcare team, such as a pharmacist or nurse practitioner for advice. It might be that cannabis isn’t a good idea for you. If this isn’t the case, then you can consider contacting a physician who is comfortable prescribing cannabis, or seek out a Medical Cannabis Clinic online.