What about CBD oil like cannadiol? Has anyone tried that? Another PsA sufferer on another page said he put it directly on his hands and found relief. Any experience? I found some online that you ingest and a balm product for topical use. It’s not cheap so I’m hoping someone else has experience with it. I’ve read a lot about CBD being the more valuable anti-pain and anti-inflammatory compound in pot.
Andy said:
I would like to try a pill form. I have a tracheotomy, so smoking would be difficult.
Dini said:Let it be noted that medical marijuana is not always "smoked" but taken as a vapour with a particular hand held unit that creates the vapour. I have a friend that has a prescription for it for his chronic back pain. I really don't think anything should be ruled out until all the facts are in. It's only meant to be temporary relief. I think many factors on its effects will depend on how and how often it is used. Smoking pot will not get the chemical out that you may need for the relief of inflammation.
That being said, it is still relatively new as treatment and many people including doctors don't know much about it. Docs just don't like to admit that.
You can't smoke eat or absorb enough pot to be as effective as a couple of advil for inflammation. It has been sudied to death. You spend days on the intrnt and not find any actual pot research because the net is so full of 60 year old hippies rationalizing pot use as being mdical not what it really is.
I have a green card and have since day one. (I think mine is number 2) I rarely use it as frankly its to damned expensive. You can get black market for 50% the price of medical grade. There are better medications fo far less money. keep in mind I seldom use narcotics or analgesics as they can make pain worse and I don' t want to go there (again.) Latley I was using patches because for nausea control becase they are more level than the stuff they were giving me at the infusion center. If I do another roind I'll use again. Edibles were too unpredictable. Make no mistake there is nothing "medical" about it. There is not one darn thing wrong with that. As n adult, away from children no effect on anyone else., you have the right to do anything you want. You can choose to some degree the "effect" but that will vary. I have 3 vintages of reislings from the same grapes that have nothing in common. Also you don't need a 300 buck handblown vaporizer if you smoke it. There is a difference, so make sure you deal with a good glass shop.
The mail order creme is crap certainly not worth the price in my experience
I haven't tried it yet, but I probably will soon. I have a friend who does. It is legal here in Seattle. The medical type doesn't have the same effect as the recreational type. My friend gets it in a "butter" to use in cooking. Also uses a tincture. Allergies to anti-inflammatory drugs made this the best option for her.
I use it to manage my pain, especially when I want to go to sleep. My flare ups can be so painful, especially in my feet that even the sheets resting on my toes causes me pain that will keep me awake. I first tried eating cookies but I prefer smoking a puff or two. I now fall asleep relatively quick and sleep well throughout the night. I do worry about the effects of smoking and need to try the vaporizer.
Im, to the point of no return. Lost my bladder, prostate, and pelvic lympnodes! Chems don’t work well with me. Pot is the only thing that helps. The pill form is the best way to take it. Have smoked it for 45 yrs. Lungs are clear. Blood pressure 120 over 80 area all the time. Better than sleeping pills. Better than opioids.
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@tnt lamb, your vast amount of experience shines through the smoke again!
Got given years ago when in great pain for chemotherapy for cancer on one or two occasions some marIjuana as a tea, I remember getting some relief on that occasion. The problem with medication and marIjuana both are effects on mental clarity. Am withour methotrexate at the moment due to vaccine instructions and feel mind clarity improved perhaps, as well as lung capacity. I do not know to what degree this can be due to interruption of the medication, to a temporary remission to some degree, to an improvement in inflammation levels due to carnivore diet. Certainly mental clarity is an issue and marIjuana s mental effects did not make it a popular choice for me .
I’ve used cannabis for 20 years. It’s one of the few drugs that have helped me with the both the disease and the side effects of the drugs. Like EVERYTHING else we can use, it’s not a cure, but a bandaid. It’s not without risk, but those risks see much lower than most other things, including NSAIDS.
After using it for 20 years I have been unable to track any significant side effects or problems linked to near daily use. For me it’s much like a glass of wine at the end of day. Alcohol makes me feel like garbage. Pot makes me feel the opposite. This is my experience.
Most doctors I’ve talked to have been inadequately trained to talk about it. Most never even wanted to until it became legal in my home state. It was literally night and day. It went from being “oh, i can’t recommend it” to “it’s a great drug” pretty much overnight. Laws are laws and doctors are scared of malpractice suits but the fact is people have been consuming cannabis across the globe for millennia to treat a whole host of issues. Nowadays you can get all different types of products, no need to smoke. But sourcing it is important. And that’s up to you to do your homework. Of course something that’s vetted by your state’s health dept is probably going to be better than some crap on the street you can’t trace. And remember, a lot of the advice you have received over the years is based on decades of fear caused by dumb stuff like Reefer Madness or whatever racist and cold war propoganda came to damage the industry. Much of our past societal aversion to the drug is actually based on political and fiduciary fears, not medical ones. There’s a very interesting history about it, and very clear connections to its prohibition in the US and
Legalization is helping with quality control and education and perhaps issues related to black market. There are many different types of strains that can be used for different purposes. I use one type for the daytime, and another one for evening. There are different derivatives that do different things that researchers are only now starting to get a solid handle on. If you’re fortunate enough to live somewhere with legalized cannabis, talk to a budtender. People are literally being trained in how to talk about this stuff, just not your doctor. In more enlightened places you can get a prescription for it, just like anything else.
Mental clarity is kind of the point of why a chronic pain patient might want it. For example opioids etc don’t treat pain, just the sensation of it. But opioids are a lot more dangerous. That being said you can find stuff nowadays that is less “mind-altering.”
My 93 year old grandmother just started using it for her issues. She’s like a new person. It doesn’t take away her issues, just lets her live with them more comfortably. As is the point for the drug.
Remember everybody is different. What makes you feel like a zombie might make someone else feel better. I personally feel like more of a zombie when I have no energy, no appetite, and little drive to work or exercise. Pot helps me sleep, helps me eat better, helps me workout and engage with life just a bit more. I don’t drink and it allows me to socialize in much the same way. It helps with anxiety and depression.
It’s important to “dose” it out according to your very specific needs, the goal is to find a good balance between feeling decent and feeling productive.
Feel free to message me privately. I am passionate about the potential benefits, and am clear about the potential risks. Like every drug or treatment, we must assess the risk/benefit profile, and cannabis is no different. Just because it works for me, doesn’t mean it will for somebody else in the same way.
Also collectively, we might start using the term “cannabis” instead of of “marijuana”. For the same reason we might say psoriatic arthropathy instead of psoriatic arthritis, or reasons related to the racist history of the drug prohibition in the US. I’m not trying to start a political discussion but we know that words matter a ton when it comes to dealing with our disease and i find that using the most dispassionate language possible is often most useful when discussing PsA
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Thank you for your output. A couple days ago in Italy a court issued a first time ruling on a patient suffering from arthritis who had been growing cannabis in his back yard to use for pain, as government allotted quantities had not been sufficient, and after being indicted for illicit substance production for sales purposes due to the quantity, the court ruled for the first time that the user was innocent.
This could be an important step towards permission to grow cannabis for personal use as a pain reliever in our country. It is not simple to deal with pain and inflammation with our diseases, and progress in the treatment of symptoms with less harmful effects are always to be looked for and used in combination with any medication which must be taken, diet, fasting, exercise where possible, are also powerful tools.
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Hi, I agree with all the advice you’ve been given to make sure you are talking it over with your doctor and finding the right method for yourself. We are all different. I wish I’d seen this topic a couple of months ago when I went off my methotrexate due to several mildly elevated liver enzyme tests and decided to try something different. Marijuana is legal where I live, so I experimented a bit, and started with just using CBD oil twice a day - it has no or trace THC levels in it. That seems to help me with inflammation and keeps the pain down. I’m a former smoker, so decided to see if edibles would help, and went for the 10mg snicker doodle cookies for evening and night. The downside of the edibles is that it take 1-2 hours to kick in, but I still prefer that to smoking anything.
So my routine that seems to work pretty well for now is to do CBC for morning and noon so I’m still alert and functional, then maybe 1/2 a snicker doodle in the evening and the other half before going to bed. That keeps me functional during the day and sleeping rather well without other sleep aids. Since I was on Ambien for a number of years and have now stopped it completely, I think it’s a good trade for me. The snicker doodles I get are a hybrid of the Indica and Sativa strains. Makes me feel mellow in the evening, and helps a lot with the sleeping.
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I would be in so much trouble with edibles (especially snickerdoodles. Bravo on your self control.
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You made me giggle! 
Oh god me too, it wouldn’t be the MM, but the availability of snickerdoodle cookies that would be my downfall
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I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and I am an ACMPR patient in Canada. I started cannabis in 2016 and had some success here and there but really couldn’t find a method that was appropriate for me initially. This is how I use cannabis to help me. I eat decarbed cannabis on my morning buttered toast daily. I use a type III chemovar(high CBD, low THC) and use approx 30mg. I use a modified pepper shaker to dispense 3 turns which delivers 30mg approx:) This helps with inflammation and gets me through my day. Be very careful with eating decarbed cannabis!! I wouldn’t recommend this to start with at all until you are comfortable with this and use type III (high CBD to low THC ratios)… What I find that is even more helpful though is the acidic forms of cannabis specifically THCa and CBDa prepared in a tea format using your favorite tea. I drink cannabis tea in raw format(rotation of all chemovar types going after the acidic forms (approx 400mg-500mg daily raw). It has to be raw to get the acidic forms. I find this really helps with pain and inflammation and THCa here reduces TNF-a and CBD inhibits COX2. Reducing TNF-a is my goal here as well as COX2 because it works like some of the rheumatology drugs do…Celebrex for instance and Humira targets TNF-a. I also apply cannabis infused coconut oil type II chemovar extremely high in beta caryophyllene topically which helps with plaques(smooths the skins cells and promotes healing). Terpenes actually do make a difference and I use this to my advantage with the teas. I drink cannabis tea prepared from high pinene content that makes me feel alert and focused when working. I have seen if I take same cannabis different ways I can get different effects. Method matters as well and is just as important. I rarely vape anymore but would to deal with breakout pain and I would choose a type I (high THC, low CBD). I hope that this can help someone out there find a way that works for them as I have. This has been a crazy journey over the years since like 2012 when I was first diagnosed and it took me a while to figure this out with help from lots of doctors along the way.
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I’ve tried smoking the snickerdoodles but they are so hard to keep lit. And like smoking fish, I never know which end to light!!
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I’m sorry for emoticoning, but; 
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oops. I hit the wrong button
@Jen75 you are way too generous! When cannabis use gets too complicated for my brain I ponder, “what would historical experts like Cheech and Chong or Bob Marley have to say?” I’ll ask my rheumy from the '60’s what he would recommend and if cannabis, MTX and Rinvoq snickering-doodles are even possible. My wife and I were hiking in a remote forest area yesterday and I lost my drivers license on the path. I’m ok hiking about 3 km…we did 11k trying to find it. Can hardly walk today. There I go finding my limits by crossing them again!
Doesn’t the heat of the tea change the THCa to Delta 9?