Can Cannabis Really Treat Bipolar Disorder?

Can Cannabis Really Treat Bipolar Disorder?

can cannabis treat bipolar

Struggling with emotional highs and lows is difficult for any person. Having to deal with this when you have a Bipolar Disorder, makes it so much harder. As for now, there is no known cure for Bipolar disorder, but there are treatments available that help with the unpredictable and extreme mood swings.

Studies are looking into medical marijuana for the treatment of bipolar disorder apart from traditional treatment with conventional medicine and therapy. The question asked is: is it safe? What are the pros and cons?

Marijuana is being used to treat other health issues

Because of the many benefits found in the marijuana plant, it is used with great success to treat conditions like:

Anxiety
Muscle pains and disorders
Nausea
Inflammation
Loss of appetite

Many studies have found that treating these above-mentioned health issues with cannabis brings definite relief. But when it comes to Bipolar Disorder, it gets a bit more complicated. The disease alone makes it difficult to treat even by using conventional drugs only. For some, meds bring a certain level of relief where they can maintain a comfortable quality of life. For others, even when using loads of different meds, no relief ever comes.

What is Bipolar Disease?

A person struggling with bipolar disease has a hard time to control their emotions. Emotional changes could occur hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. The disorder has not just one, but two variants, namely Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2. To understand it better it is important to analyze both.

Bipolar 1 – This is the more severe of the two, and the person suffering from this could experience full manic episodes. This could be very dangerous for the person and can lead to real harm

Bipolar 2 – This is seen as less severe where the person is considered to have a hypomanic episode with depressive symptoms.

In both, similar things are experienced, but the level of the severity is what counts. The highs and lows are uncontrollable and there are often symptoms of depression, low energy, forgetfulness, decreased activity, and thoughts of suicide and death. Because marijuana is used to treat many of these symptoms, it is useful to look into treating Bipolar Disorder with medical cannabis.

Can Cannabis Help Your Bipolar Disorder?

To recap, let us quickly refresh our minds of what Cannabis is. It can make you high, but it also has medicinal properties.

The difference between CBD and THC

The marijuana plant has more the 480 cannabinoids where THC and CBD are the most known. THC is the psychoactive ingredient that gives you the euphoric feeling and CBD cannot. Both have medicinal properties, but because CBD doesn´t make you high, people tend to lean towards it for medicinal purposes. CBD is used for pain, cancer treatment, anxiety, depression, anti-psychosis, epilepsy, nausea, inflammation, neurological disorders, and many more. For the sake of this article, we will look at the effect of CBD on Bipolar Disorder.

How CBD helps with Bipolar Disorder

While one of the important symptoms of Bipolar disorder is mood swings, CBD can help regulating them. Some studies show that CBD could be very helpful in treating certain symptoms of Bipolar disorders. Results show that the use of marijuana improve moods. People feel overall better afterwards.
Studies are still very much ongoing, and more time is needed to fully understand the effect of CBD in the treatment of Bipolar disorder, but preliminary results are very promising.

Negative Results are also present though

The complexity of Bipolar disease makes it quite hard to have a one-sided opinion. Each person has different experiences and even genetics plays a role. One review showed that marijuana can worsen manic symptoms in a person suffering from bipolar disorder. In some people suicide rates also increased, but it was not certain if it truly was cannabis-related. What was clear was that some people benefited from using cannabis and others not.

Genetics, Bipolar Disorder and Cannabis

Weed can affect a person differently based on their genes. People that carry a certain gene-type are more prone to psychosis. Those that have an unusual variation of the AKT1 gene are more likely to have psychosis and the risk increases when marijuana is used. It is important to talk to your doctor when you suffer from Bipolar disease and are thinking to use cannabis as an alternative treatment. Best is to be tested for genetic variations to ensure the most effective treatment possible.

Closing thoughts

Research is an ongoing process and more needs to be done with regards to Bipolar disorder. There is no clear-cut answer and it is not recommended to let go of your traditional prescription meds. Preferably work with your doctor to find the best way to incorporate cannabis in your treatment. With a condition like Bipolar disorder, it is always wise to keep your doctor in the loop.