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Marijuana Cuts Migraine And Headache Pain In Half

Brendan Bures
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Marijuana Cuts Migraine And Headache Pain In Half

Scientists determined inhaled marijuana reduced the severity of self-reported pain 47.3% for headaches and 49.6% for migraines.

Next time you feel the effects of a headache or migraine coming on, you might skip the Tylenol and smoke some cannabis. That’s because inhaling marijuana nearly cuts headache and migraine pain in half, according to a recent study.

Published in The Journal of Pain, this research represents the first study to utilize big data in analyzing the role cannabis plays in managing pain from headaches and migraines. Using archival data from the Strainprint—an app in which patients track their symptoms before and after using medical marijuana—scientists determined inhaled marijuana reduced the severity of self-reported pain 47.3% for headaches and 49.6% for migraines.

“We were motivated to do this study because a substantial number of people say they use cannabis for headache and migraine, but surprisingly few studies had addressed the topic,” said study lead author Carrie Cuttler, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University.

RELATED: What You Need To Know About The Healing Benefits Of Marijuana’s CBG

Instead of documenting the before and after data points in real time, previous research asked patients to recall how marijuana affected the severity of past headaches. A clinical trial, as Science Daily first reported, found that cannabis could be more effective at reducing headache pain than ibuprofen, though the researchers used nabilone, a synthetic cannabinoid drug, in the trial.

Study Finds Cannabis Use Disorder Declining Among Daily Marijuana Users
Photo by gradyreese/Getty Images

 

However, in the Washington State study, 1,300 patients who used the app more than 12,200 times submitted information about their headache before and after marijuana use, while 653 patients used the app over 7,400 times to track their changes in migraine pain.

More conventional treatments can cause an “overuse headache,” which can cause patients’ headaches to worsen over time. But researchers found no such result in patients using cannabis. They did, however, find patients consuming more marijuana over time, indicating they may be developing a tolerance to the plant. In addition, the study reported a difference in headache reduction between genders, with significantly more sessions involving men (90%) than women (89.1%).

RELATED: Consuming Medical Marijuana Is Proven To Help Migraine Sufferers

Patients received no additional benefits when using cannabis strains with higher or lower THC and CBD concentrations. As the plant contains more than 100 cannabinoids outside THC and CBD, researchers believe this indicates other cannabis elements like terpenes could be playing a factor. The study did report that concentrates, like oil, elicited stronger decreases in headache severity than marijuana flower.

“I suspect there are some slight overestimates of effectiveness,” Cuttler said. “My hope is that this research will motivate researchers to take on the difficult work of conducting placebo-controlled trials. In the meantime, this at least gives medical cannabis patients and their doctors a little more information about what they might expect from using cannabis to manage these conditions.”

This Week’s Music: Bad Bunny, Maggie Rogers And The Weeknd

Maria Loreto
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This Week’s Music: Bad Bunny, Maggie Rogers And The Weeknd

This week’s songs feature Bad Bunny’s newest bop, a lovely Maggie Rogers love song and The Weeknd’s latest.

This Week’s Music is a weekly column that discusses the weeks’ best, worst, and most interesting songs. We try to select songs of different artists and genres to keep things interesting and to please a variety of music fans.

This week’s songs feature Bad Bunny’s latest bop, a lovely Maggie Rogers love song and The Weeknd’s last song, which is kind of a snooze. Have a listen:

Reggaeton

Bad Bunny – Vete

After a big year filled with collaborations and beloved solo work comes another probable hit. “Vete” is another Bad Bunny anthem, featuring his standard dose of heartbreak and anger that makes his work all the better and accessible. Aside from his collaborations with all sorts of great musicians, Bad Bunny stands out because there’s something special about his willingness to be emotional and vulnerable, a rarity when compared to his Reggaeton counterparts.

Pop

Maggie Rogers – Love You For A Long Time

RELATED: This Week’s Music: HAIM, Jhené Aiko And Grimes

“Love You For A Long Time” has all the dips and grooves of a good Maggie Rogers song; there’s the catchy chorus and the amazing vocalizations, the careful musical arrangements and then that positivity that makes her music feel so transcendent. It’s also the kind of song that gets better as you listen to it, finding new beats and arrangements to like and to find unique.

The Weeknd – Heartless

Leaning heavily on trap, “Heartless” is filled with anger and destructiveness, a recipe that usually makes for a great The Weeknd song. The end result is kind of hollow and repetitive, hiding the singer’s great voice and showing off an arrangement of beats and sounds that sound like hundreds of other songs.

Cannabis Consumers Are More Politically Active Than Abstainers

Terry Hacienda
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Cannabis Consumers Are More Politically Active Than Abstainers

The more the federal government cracks down on marijuana, the more marijuana consumers will protest.

The next time you attend a political rally or street protest, don’t be too surprised if you smell a wisp of marijuana smoke in the air. Research suggests cannabis consumers are politically active and more willing to protest than Americans who abstain from the herb.

In a 33-page thesis published on BEARdocs, Baylor University’s repository for scholastic projects, author Jake M. Kane finds “marijuana users are more likely to publicly protest as well as attend political rallies than those who abstain from using.” Kane’s research, titled The Politics of Pot: Marijuana Use and the Potential for Collective Action, demonstrates that years of anti-marijuana rhetoric from the science and political communities have spurred a growing skepticism and cynicism regarding cannabis regulations. That skepticism has spread to other political issues.

RELATED: Why Marijuana’s Illegal Classification Is Based On Politics, Not Science

As Kane writes in his abstract:

“Marijuana and its legal status occupy a lengthy and controversial place in United States history. Penalties for marijuana use and distribution have increased in severity alongside the number of individuals who annually consume the drug. This has spurred skepticism regarding the effectiveness of prohibitive drug policy, especially when considering the harsh consequences that penalties place on individuals. To the dismay of the federal government, skepticism has manifested into political action by American state governments that have begun legalizing marijuana use for medicinal and recreational purposes.

“Using nationally representative data from the Baylor Religion Survey, I find marijuana users are more likely to publicly protest as well as attend political rallies than those who abstain from using. These findings hold true for public protest when separating the sample by political party identification. However, political rally attendance only shows significant relationships for marijuana users who describe themselves as politically independent.”

RELATED: Joe Biden Isn’t Sure If Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ — It’s Not

Kane suggests the more the federal government cracks down on the cannabis industry, the more tens of thousands of marijuana consumers will protest. “The repercussions of prohibition and the penalties attributed to it have had an alarming and eye-opening effect on multiple factions of American society over time,” Kane writes. “With continued efforts by the United States federal government to stifle legalization progress at lower levels of government, further research regarding the individual and societal effects of marijuana are needed more than ever to inform a peculiar discrepancy in policy that has the ability to affect a significant number of American citizens.”

5 Basic Tips That’ll Help You Protect Your Online Data

Maria Loreto
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5 Basic Tips That’ll Help You Protect Your Online Data

Most of our important information can be found online. Here are some basic tips to keep your personal data safe.

Long gone are the days when your middle name could be your one and only password. Now, each website comes with a disclaimer of all the rules your passwords must follow and the knowledge that reusing them could make it easier for you to get hacked.

Luckily, most of us are growing more and more tech savvy, learning about safe and unsafe ways to be online. While there are experts out there who know how to download software and apps that make their tech safer, most of us with internet access can still take better care of our online data.

Here are 5 basic tricks that’ll help you protect your data:

Download a password manager

There’s some mixed opinions on password managers, especially since you’re hiding all your passwords in an app that’s protected by yet another password. If someone cracks that code then they have access to all of your data. Still, most people get so confused with their passwords that they choose to repeat them or to use basic ones, exposing their sensitive information to lots of harm. Having a password manager is a good way of keeping your internet records in check.

RELATED: Social Media Is Crazy So Here’s How You Can Download Or Delete Your Online Data

Instagram Is Developing An App Just For Shopping
Photo by rawpixel.com

Eliminate apps you no longer use

Unless you clean your phone periodically, there’s probably dozens of stagnant apps in there that you no longer use. These apps consume your phone’s memory, dry up your battery and, most important, collect a lot of personal data. It’s way too easy for these apps to get access to your camera and other areas of your phone.

Turn off your lock screen notifications

Messaging, email and social media apps can release private information on your phone’s lock screen, so it’s important to disable this feature or at least make it more private. On either Android or iOS, these changes can be made by heading over to the Settings and Notifications section and choosing to hide content on lock-screen.

RELATED: How To Ensure Your Online Passwords Haven’t Been Stolen

online dating
Photo by Adrianna Calvo via Pexels

Turn off your location

For some reason, your smartphone constantly wants to see where you are and what you’re doing, making your life super easy to track. There’s no reason why your phone should act as a 24/7 tracking device, so turn off your location when it’s not necessary. Another perk of having your GPS location turned off is the fact that your battery will last longer.

Watch what you put up online

There’s no need for every one of your posts to show your location or for people to have access to your personal information. Keep your social media profiles as clean as possible, and consider turning your profiles to private.

5 Tips That'll Help You Protect Your Online Data
Photo courtesy of freestocks.org

If you want to have public social media, ensure that private information such as your phone and email are protected and hidden. Another thing that can protect you is to avoid linking accounts together or using Facebook logins when joining a new app. While these practices make it easier for you to create new profiles, they end up exposing your personal information.

Here’s Why You Should Take CBD With Food

Rudy Sanchez
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Here’s Why You Should Take CBD With Food

The type of food you consume can make a large difference in the amount of CBD that gets absorbed into the body. Here’s what works best.

It’s not uncommon to take some medications and supplements with food. Sometimes, certain substances can cause nausea on an empty stomach, in other cases, compounds are more effective when taken at mealtime. With interest in cannabidiol (CBD) growing and legal in Canada and the U.S., consumers interested in trying a product infused with the cannabinoid are asking how best to consume CBD, including whether or not to take it with food.

Research into the compound and how it reacts when taken with a meal has found that cannabidiol is actually much more effective and bioavailable when paired with food, and that the type of food taken with CBD also has an impact on its efficacy.

A recently published medical study conducted by the University of Minnesota looked at a small group of 8 epilepsy patients taking 99% pure CBD capsules. One group took their capsules on an empty stomach, the other took CBD with a high fat breakfast burrito, with researchers then drawing blood and comparing samples. After 2 weeks, the groups switched with researchers continuing to monitor blood. The study found that CBD taken with food, specifically a high fat meal, increased absorption and availability. The team found that there was four times the amount of CBD in patients who ate a burrito versus those who took CBD while fasting.

RELATED: Is Legal Marijuana Creating More Junk Food Junkies?

“The type of food can make a large difference in the amount of CBD that gets absorbed into the body. Although fatty foods can increase the absorption of CBD, it can also increase the variability as not all meals contain the same amount of fat,” said Angela Birnbaum in a press release announcing the study’s publication, a professor in the College of Pharmacy and study co-author.

Here's Why You Should Take CBD With Food
Photo by Dan Gold via Unsplash

For patients with epilepsy, having a consistent supply of CBD in their body is critical, and part of what prompted researchers to conduct this study. Improving the delivery of CBD also helps reduce medication costs, the study’s authors further noted.

RELATED: How Greasy Foods Might Make CBD More Effective

Consumers trying CBD to treat conditions such as inflammation, pain, anxiety, and sleeplessness may benefit from taking CBD with food, specifically those foods higher in fat, like a breakfast burrito. At best, more CBD gets absorbed into the body, making it more effective. At worst, you get to eat a tasty burrito.

Meme Of The Week: ‘Baby Yoda’ Becomes The Internet’s Favorite Source Of Cuteness

Maria Loreto
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Meme Of The Week: ‘Baby Yoda’ Becomes The Internet’s Favorite Source Of Cuteness

The new Disney Plus series, ‘The Mandalorian’,  has already given us a character for the ages.

Despite the fact that Baby Yoda gifs were taken down from the internet for about a day due today’s wild media landscape, there has been no way of controlling the internet’s affection for the small green creature.

Baby Yoda first began to swirl around the internet on November 12, when “The Mandalorian” first aired on Disney Plus. After the much awaited release of the new series, the little guy went viral. Although we all call it Baby Yoda, the character is really called The Child, and it’s not the Yoda of the original films; it’s just a baby that’s the same species as Yoda.

Still, no one cares about technicalities and Baby Yoda is a much more catchier name than The Child.

RELATED: Meme Of The Week: ‘Gonna Tell My Kids’ Revises History In The Funniest Way

Here are some of the best Baby Yoda memes we found online. You’re welcome for all the sweetness:

RELATED: Meme Of The Week: ‘Ok Boomer’ Is The Internet’s New Way Of Dragging Older People

5 Wellness Gift Ideas That Won’t Break The Bank

Maria Loreto
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5 Wellness Gift Ideas That Won’t Break The Bank

The wellness trend is at an all time high, making these presents highly desirable and accessible.

As we enter the holiday season and rejoice over the prospect of winter vacations and traveling, we also start to calculate how much money we’ll be spending. With flight tickets, hotels, presents and social outings, the holidays are a festive time, but they’re also super pricey.

With the current wellness and health trend harassing us from all directions, what’s a better gift than something that’s healthy and that will push someone to lead a cleaner life? These presents are varied in styles and in prices. There’s truly something for everyone out there.

A nice water bottle

Water bottles are important, and there’s hundreds of them out there, ranging in style, price and effects. There’s a water bottle that lights itself up in order to remind you to have a drink, a water bottle that’s become a sort of style icon, and ones with filters on them. Think about your price range and the function that works best for the person you are giving the gift to.

Face masks

Face masks are a good option for stocking fillers or as a part of a larger wellness-themed present. These have an unlimited amount of variety and price ranges, from masks that claim to heal your face in days to others that just have a pug face on them. They’re all great.

A tea set

If the person you are giving a gift to loves tea and cute cups, you can give them a tea set and supplement it with some different flavors of tea. There’s plenty of variety in Amazon, with all sets having distinct looks, materials and prices.

RELATED: 4 Perks Of Adopting A Part-Time Vegetarian Diet

5 Wellness Gift Ideas That Won't Break The Bank
Photo by Brooke Lark via Unsplash

A yoga mat

Although slightly passive aggressive if the person you’re giving a gift to isn’t a yogi, yoga mats are extremely useful. You always want to have one of your own, especially if you like to go to the gym or to the occasional yoga class. If the workout fails, it never hurts to have a mat around the house.

A meal kit subscription

Meal kit subscriptions are on the rise right now, with there being plenty of options in terms of the kind of food you’re looking for and your budget. Most of these sites also provide the opportunity of gifting a meal kit, meaning that you’ll only have to pay once and the receiver will figure out if they want to stick to the plan of if they’d just rather enjoy a week of meals and be done with it.

4 Tips To Avoid Gaining Weight Over The Holidays

Maria Loreto
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4 Tips To Avoid Gaining Weight Over The Holidays

Here we go again. It’s officially that time of year when we’re left with a few extra pounds that will likely follow us into 2020.

Thanksgiving is a time that mostly revolves around food and somehow seems to extend well into December. Sure, there are family reunions and lots of day drinking, but everyone knows that the true star is the copious amounts of turkey and ham you end up eating. It’s also the time of the year when people officially start to gain weight and to spend less and less time working out.

Holiday weight gain is a misunderstood phenomenon. A study found that people don’t gain all that much weight per season, only about a pound or two by the time the New Year rolls around. The problem most face is the fact that this weight is generally never lost, amounting to a significant amount of pounds accumulated over the years.

Here are 5 tips that can help you avoid too much weight gain.

Keep your workout schedule regular

The main issue with holiday eating is the fact that most of us choose to take a break from our workouts and fitness goals. That, paired with an increased amount of food and alcohol intake, results in weight gain and diminished desire to stay active. No matter how busy the holiday season gets, try to maintain a steady number of workouts per week.

Try detoxing after heavy meals

If you’re feeling particularly bloated after a day of heavy eating, try to detox the next day. There’s no need to go crazy; you’ll instantly feel better if you stick to healthy foods, drink more water than usual and try some green juices. You can also go a step further and try cutting caffeine, sugar, gluten, dairy, or any other elements that may contribute to an upset stomach.

RELATED: What To Drink If You’re Feeling Bloated After Thanksgiving

5 tricks to make your treadmill workout less boring
Photo by William Choquette via Pexels

Don’t punish yourself

There’s nothing worse than feeling guilty about eating delicious food and having a good time. Give yourself the freedom to eat what you want and make yourself feel better by staying active and challenging yourself to work out more than in previous holiday seasons. Try to enjoy every aspect of your vacations, moving around and also spending time with your loved ones.

RELATED: Study: Marijuana Users Gain Less Weight Over Time Than Non-Users

the 6 best ways to include marijuana this thanksgiving
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash

Enjoy the holidays

Lastly, it’s important to enjoy the holiday season since its brief (it just seems like forever). Try to forgive yourself for eating and drinking more than usual and for having a less stable schedule. If you plan on working out more during the season, set realistic goals, giving yourself the room to have some lazy days.

Kevin Durant Just Joined One of Marijuana’s Biggest Companies

Brendan Bures
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Kevin Durant Just Joined One of Marijuana’s Biggest Companies

Thirty Five Ventures continues investing in the marijuana industry, with a focus on technology and data enterprises.

NBA superstar Kevin Durant will expand his investments in the cannabis space, as he and his business partner Rick Kleiman announced a partnership with Canopy Rivers this week. The deal will be made through Thirty Five Ventures, the investment firm co-founded by Durant and Kleiman.

The pair will join the strategic advisor board of Canopy Rivers, the publicly traded investment firm associated with Canopy Growth. As Forbes first reported, Canopy Rivers will co-invest in marijuana ventures with Thirty Five, as well as follow Durant and Kleiman’s “experience in brand development, marketing, and the sports and entertainment industry,” a Canopy Rivers spokesperson said.

RELATED: 4 Biggest Former Pro Athletes Involved In The Marijuana Business

Earlier this year, Durant and Kleiman backed Dutchie, an Oregon-based software company that tracks and supplies cannabis products to dispensaries across the country. This follows the investment pattern established by Thirty Five Ventures, which focuses on technology-first companies. Previous businesses in which the company invested includes Postmates, the food delivery app, and stock trading platform Robinhood.

why adults with medical conditions use more marijuana
Photo by Norman Posselt/Getty Images

 

In a release, Kleiman stated they were interested in teaming with Canopy Rivers because of the firm’s tech-focused approach to business.

“We’ve recognized that Canopy Rivers has taken a data-backed approach to map out forward-looking opportunities in the industry,” Kleiman said. “We are looking forward to joining the advisory board, and helping to align with some of the most disruptive founders in the space.”

RELATED: Kevin Durant And Snoop Dogg Invest In New Marijuana Delivery Service

Narbé Alexandrian, president and CEO of Canopy Rivers, told Forbes their interest went deeper than expanding their portfolio to sports and entertainment. Instead, the company was impressed with how Thirty Five Ventures’ “incredible success investing in the tech sector.”

“We wanted to partner with a company that shares this vision for the cannabis sector and that’s how we landed on Thirty Five Ventures,” Alexandrian said. “Their experience in venture capital, particularly investing in specialized companies that are the best at one or two things, knowledge of sports and entertainment, and success in CPG investments were all big factors. We believe that by working together we can achieve more.”

4 Ways Cannabis Can Improve Your Holidays

Rudy Sanchez
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4 Ways Cannabis Can Improve Your Holidays

A light dose of cannabis can make a family visit more tolerable while not inducing a noticeable or obvious high.

Holiday season is a time for festivities and coming together with friends and loved ones, but sometimes the holidays can be a source of stress, anxiety, and loss of sleep.

Cannabis can help ease some of the negative aspects of the festive winter months as well as make some of the positives even better. Here’s how. 

Family Gatherings

Relatives can sometimes be difficult to be around for an extended period of time, especially when they insist on discussing controversial topics or create discomfort in some other way. A light to micro dose of cannabis can make the visit more tolerable while not inducing a noticeable or obvious high. Many edibles are now made in small dose servings, often in mint or chocolate form, that can be discreetly eaten throughout an evening for example, and won’t have your judgy aunt sarcastically asking you if you just got into a fight with a skunk.

Traveling

The days surrounding Thanksgiving are often the heaviest travel days, with Christmas and New Years also seeing lots of folks getting from point A to point B. Sometimes that sojourning means going long distances traversed via airplane, leading to potential jet lag. Marijuana is a popular sleep aid, and a toke session before it’s time to go to bed can provide the much needed slumber sought by weary and time-shifted travelers.

RELATED: How To Have The Marijuana Conversation This Thanksgiving

4 Ways Cannabis Can Improve Your Holidays
Photo by fauxels via pexels

Feasting

Winter season is a time for parties and celebratory spreads of rich, indulgent food and beverages. Marijuana is known to both induce appetite as well as make food taste better. Sativa strains are particularly renowned for bringing on the munchies. A quick sesh before dinner can make your mama’s mac and cheese or your granny’s garlic mashed potatoes even tastier.

Unwinding

It’s important to take a break from the all festivities and the additional stress that they can bring. Taking a momentary time-out with a calming strain of weed can make the most out of brief moments of respite with a bowl, joint, or vape of a calming, relaxing strain of marijuana. 

RELATED: Marijuana Is The Hottest Accessory For These Big Box Retailers This Holiday

Photo by McKinsey via rawpixel.com

Weed isn’t a cure-all however, and if you’re really feeling overwhelmed and like you might be teetering towards self-harm, reach out to a friend or a qualified individual for help.

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