How Senior Citizens Can Benefit From Marijuana Use

How Senior Citizens Can Benefit From Marijuana Use

Medical marijuana is a very popular treatment option nowadays, with millions of people regularly using the product. Among all of the people that use medical marijuana, seniors are one of the largest age groups. This is because senior citizens often suffer from a wide range of both physical and mental diseases, which can all be treated or improved to some degree by using marijuana. Here are the various diseases that senior citizens can improve with the regular use of medical marijuana.

Alzheimer’s Disease

One of the most common mental diseases among senior citizens is Alzheimer’s disease, which is known to affect approximately ten percent of all seniors. This debilitating disease significantly impairs a person’s ability to retain memories or other cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, as a side effect of experiencing Alzheimer’s disease, many seniors will feel a variety of symptoms including a reduction in appetite as well as a tendency to experience depression.

In order to try and repair some of the damage done by Alzheimer’s disease, many seniors will turn towards medical marijuana use, which has been shown to provide therapeutic effects to fight the symptoms of the disease. When someone uses marijuana, they often experience a sudden craving to consume food afterward. Therefore, this can help someone who is dealing with a severe loss of appetite as a result of Alzheimer’s disease.

Marijuana is also able to help fight off depression thanks to its effects on things like anxiety and stress levels. As soon as someone uses marijuana, their anxiety levels tend to experience a significant drop, which can put someone into a much more calm state. When someone is feeling calm, they are far less likely to go through any significant depression.

Marijuana is also able to fight some of the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease as well, one of which is a build-up of beta-amyloid in the brain. These proteins are able to experience significantly slowed growth when exposed to the THC present in marijuana. Therefore, when seniors with Alzheimer’s disease regularly use medical marijuana, it will likely cause these beta-amyloids to progress at a much slower rate, which helps minimize the progression of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.

Multiple Sclerosis

Although multiple sclerosis (MS) is not a disease that is significantly more common in seniors, there are quite a few of them that are experiencing this disease. Therefore, a lot of seniors are looking for ways to help minimize the negative effects of dealing with this disease, many of which can be at least partially solved by using marijuana.

Since MS is constantly attacking a person’s spinal cord, brain, and nerves, the significant effects of marijuana on the entire body can be a really big benefit. The main way that it has been shown to help with MS is through the reduction of muscle spasms and overall body stiffness.

When someone consumes marijuana, it tends to loosen up their entire body, which is largely a result of the reduced stress levels. Therefore, once the body is feeling much looser, a senior citizen is far less likely to experience nearly as traumatic muscle spasms or body stiffness as a result of their MS. So while it will not be able to cure the disease in any way, medical marijuana can certainly help someone more easily live with the pain and suffering of having multiple sclerosis in Pekin.

Chronic Pain

It is incredibly common for senior citizens to experience a fair amount of pain. After all, during the later years of someone’s life, many body parts begin to experience a significant amount of wear and tear that can lead to more frequent pain. In fact, there are quite a few senior citizens who are dealing with enough pain that it classifies as chronic pain in Pekin. This is something that can not only limit the activities that they can do, but it also makes them far less likely to be satisfied in life.

Luckily, there are multiple studies that have shown that cannabis has the ability to help with pain management. It is able to do this by targeting the cannabinoid receptors within a person’s body, which have been known to significantly reduce the constant pain associated with things like arthritis, cancer, and nerve damage.

Medical marijuana also makes a great alternative to prescription drugs, which are something that seniors consume more than any other age group. A big portion of the prescription drugs that seniors regularly take is for fighting some type of pain. Unfortunately, they can often have unpleasant side effects that can do almost as much damage as the drugs cure. However, when it comes to marijuana, there are almost no unpleasant side effects as a result of using the product.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Unlike people who are in their early 20s, senior citizens have experienced a lot more events throughout their life, many of which have likely been pretty traumatic. This is especially true for any seniors who were enlisted in military service or any law enforcement role at any point in their life. Therefore, it is much more common for seniors to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than young adults.

Thankfully, medical marijuana is something that can assist seniors in dealing with the unfortunate effects of having PTSD in Pekin. It is largely able to do this thanks to its ability to stimulate the serotonin receptors located throughout the brain. This is the exact same process that the vast majority of anti-anxiety medications do as well.

However, what makes medical marijuana a better option is the previously mentioned benefit that it has virtually no unfortunate side effects to it. This is vastly different than drugs like Zoloft, which are known to cause a variety of unfortunate side effects such as trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, and much more. Therefore, a senior can begin to use medical marijuana to help treat their PTSD without worrying about it making any other areas of their life even worse.