Restlessness. Night sweats. Anxiety. Irritability. Discomfort and pain.
Would Smoking A Small Pot Help Women Cope With These Common Menopause Symptoms?
A good number of middle-aged women seem to think so because they turn to marijuana to manage the change in their lives, reports a new study.
“Midlife women in the transition phase of their life through menopause are consuming cannabis and using it for symptoms that overlap with menopause,” said lead researcher Katherine Babyn, a graduate student at the University of Alberta in Canada.
There’s only one downside – little to no research has shown cannabis can effectively treat symptoms associated with menopause, said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the North American Menopause Society.
“This has not been officially researched in menopausal women, so we don’t know what the potential benefits or risks are,” Faubion said. “That’s the danger here, we’re using a drug that hasn’t been studied.”
For this study, Babyn and her colleagues surveyed nearly 1,500 middle-aged women in the Canadian province of Alberta.
Two-thirds of women said they had used cannabis before and one-third said they had done so within the last month.
Of the current users, 75% said they used cannabis for medicinal purposes, even though only 23% had medically prescribed it to them.
They used cannabis in a number of forms including 52% who used edibles, 47% who used oils, 41% who smoked flowers, and 26% who used a vape.
The products they used combined cannabidiol, or CBD and THC, the chemical in the pot that causes poisoning. About 58% reported using CBD / THC blends, while 36% used high THC products and 35% used high CBD products.
Some of the most common menopausal issues that they tried to address with cannabis included:
- Worrying at 74%
- Fear, at 59%
- Difficulty concentrating, in 58%
- Irritability, at 55%
- Muscle and joint pain, in 53%
Across the board, women who used cannabis reported more menopausal symptoms than those who did not use cannabis, “but we cannot tell where that relationship is going,” Babyn said.
Faubion said the results told her that women who use cannabis have worse symptoms.
“Is it you that have worse symptoms that drive you to cannabis, or is the cannabis making your symptoms worse?” She said. “We cannot really draw any conclusions from this article.”
Up to 74% of women reported an improvement in their symptoms after consuming cannabis, said lead researcher Nese Yuksel, a professor of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Alberta.
Since this is a general question that applies to all symptoms, “we can’t really make a connection with it,” said Yuksel. “We have a feeling that women feel that they have some benefit, but we cannot finalize that.”
Faubion, Yuksel, and Babyn agreed that it is better for women to rely on tried and tested treatments for menopause until there is more medical evidence of the benefits of cannabis.
“Future research is needed to really examine whether cannabis would be effective and safe in treating menopausal symptoms,” said Babyn.
Faubion agreed.
“We have safe and effective therapies for menopausal symptoms,” she said. “I wouldn’t point them to anything that hasn’t been investigated.”
Doctors should reach out to patients to assess their symptoms and guide them to effective treatments, Yuksel said.
“It’s a wake-up call to say we need to have these conversations with our patients,” she said. “Many women fall through the cracks when they even have their symptoms assessed and what different approaches there are for treatment.”
The study was presented on Wednesday at the North American Menopause Society’s annual meeting in Washington, DC. Results presented at medical meetings are tentative until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
Harvard Medical School has more about dealing with menopause symptoms.
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source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/22/study-more-women-using-marijuana-to-help-ease-menopause-symptoms/
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