What I Learned About Cannabis & CBD for Managing Chronic Nerve Pain

As a health advocate for a friend managing debilitating nerve pain, this is important wellness information for anyone living with chronic pain.

Imagine suffering for years from an arthritic knee, then getting a total knee replacement, and instead of three-or-so-months of rehab and back to “normal,” you’re 12-months post-op, undergoing a battery of tests, and dependent on anti-epileptic drugs to manage debilitating nerve pain.

The facts are, roughly 600M Americans each year have total knee replacement surgery, and 2% of those replacements fail.

When a dear girlfriend of mine seemed to be one of the unfortunate 2%, I became her health advocate.

That was five months ago, and I’ve learned a boatload about nerve pain, and more so, about how cannabis and CBD offer a safe, super effective, natural alternative for pain management.

In a World of Hurt

According to the CDC, 50-million Americans suffer from chronic pain, and 4-million of those are suffering from neuropathic pain.

If you’ve found yourself in the latter group, you know the tingling, burning, shooting, and intense itching associated with sensory or peripheral nerve pain.

When a series of complications spiraled out following my friend’s surgery, for the non-localized nerve pain, her doctor prescribed Gabapentin, an anti-seizure drug and an allopathic go-to for a grab bag of mystery pain.

As with any pharmaceutical medication, however, the drug comes with a menu of side effects like tremors, depression, behavioral and mood changes, hair and memory loss, and even dementia according to a recent JAMA study.

As it happens, both my friend and I have backgrounds in natural products, specifically herbal medicines, and the fact she owns a certified organic farm in Washington, makes her a card-carrying Earth Mother.

So when I learned she was taking this Big-Pharma drug, I knew she had to be in a world of hurt.

With mine, and her husband’s support, she vowed to get off the meds and having tried cannabis and CBD in the past, she turned in earnest to the natural remedy for relief.

With her medical marijuana card in hand, the journey began by making weekly visits to our rural pot shop.

Each Sunday, we’d show up for CBD Sunday when card-holders receive an extra 10% off… bonus! The place is filled with friendly and ridiculously knowledgeable folks, ready to educate us on cannabis strains and CBD products that could help her manage pain without getting too stoned.

Her goal: relieve pain so she could function during the day, recover lost mobility, and improve her quality of sleep.

Here’s where the learning begins.

A Nervous System Snapshot (For Dummies)

Our central nervous system (CNS) is wired to protect us from harm.

When you suffer an injury, nociceptors, or pain receptors send messages to your CNS that an injury has taken place.

The CNS then relays a message to your brain lickety-split, and the brain then orders-up a complex cascade of biological responses like inflammation, enzymes, it initiates cell-to-cell conversations, and a bunch more stuff that is way above my pay grade, but here’s the gist…

Once the initial insult has passed, and the synchronicity of repair work has begun, under ordinary circumstances, the nervous system chills out, and in time, balance is restored.

Still, you and I… and everyone knows… how excruciating the pain of the initial injury can be, but in relative terms, it’s short-lived.

Short-lived pain is called nociceptive pain or acute pain.

So how does nerve pain differ?

The quick answer is that neuropathic pain a.k.a., nerve pain is, “…when the nerve fibers themselves might be damaged, dysfunctional, or injured,” this according to the American Chronic Pain Association.

It was during a doctor visit with my girlfriend when her neurologist Dr. Carolyn Taylor of Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, helped us understand this in lay terms.

Dr. Taylor explained, “…damaged or destroyed nerves can and do repair themselves, but it’s slow going,” she said, “…about one millimeter per month!”

Whoa, …that’s turtle slow!

Dr. Taylor went on to say, that the very best prescription for nerve repair and regrowth is… sleep!

While we’re sleeping the repairing nerves work to get back in the game, while the healthy nerves compensate, this according to Prof. Sally Lawson at University of Bristol.

This functional imbalance sends wonky signals to the brain, hence the tingling, shooting, burning, debilitating pain that ibuprofen or other standard-issue anti-inflammatory drugs generally can’t touch.

Also, and weirdly, when we sleep, the brain relaxes from its busy day, so with less brain activity, we feel the wonky nerve signals more at night, which may disrupt our sleep.

This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of scenario, and although it sucks, it’s where cannabis and CBD offer help.

Making the Cannabinoid Connections

Like ginger or turmeric, and every botanical for that matter, the cannabis plant has a thousand plant compounds, give-or-take (which together are what make it cannabis). Of those, between 80 and 100 are cannabinoids.

With the legalization of cannabis in 11 states, and the CBD-rich hemp plant now approved for cultivation in the U.S., cannabinoids are a hot topic for scientific research — research for a range of health issues like neurological disorders, pain, sleep, and more.

To date, what has been discovered is the way these cannabinoids interact with our body; through our Endocannabinoid system or ECS.

Wait, …what… Endocannabinoid System?

When seeking answers to how the cannabis plant, and in particular TCH works in the body, researchers stumbled on the Endocannabinoid system of the body.

The role of this is system is quite complex, so here’s my Readers Digest version:

Cell receptors CB-1 and CB-2 and endocannabinoids — which are chemical messengers that our body produces — work with a team of other things like fatty acids, enzymes, and proteins like a team of housekeepers that preform routine functions to support the limbic, metabolic, neuropathic, nociceptive, and immunologic systems in maintaining homeostasis, or balance.

Cannabinoid Attachments

When we consume cannabis, most of the cannabinoids in the family attach to either the CB-1 or CB-2 receptors within the ECS system — a bond that triggers a wide range of balancing effects.

Let’s take the cannabinoid cannabinol, or CBN as an example.

CBN attaches to the CB-2 receptors — which are found throughout the body, but not in the brain.

When CBN attaches to the CB-2 receptor, it can reduce pain, lower inflammation, and also has calming, or sedative effects.

Another example is the cannabinoid of fame, THC.

THC is a psychotropic compound that attaches to the CB-1 receptors found in the brain. This attachment produces an uptick of the neurotransmitters that cause us to feel euphoria. If we get too much THC, an imbalance of these feel-good chemicals occurs and euphoria can become a psychedelic trip.

These examples are only two of the cannabinoids and their known effects, but for a list of others go here.

A Nomadic Influencer Cannabinoid

CBD is another of the cannabinoids that’s non-psychoactive.

Turns out it doesn’t actually bind to either the CB-1 or CB-2 receptors, instead you could think of it as a nomadic cannabinoid.

When we consume cannabis, the CBD roams and mimics our own cannabinoids, while it also influences our ECS to produce more of the cannabinoids we need to restore imbalance wherever it may be — nerves, immune, brain, etc.

So far so good?

Cannabis Varieties Are Not Equal

There are three different species of cannabis with something like a thousand varieties.

Each species has the family of cannabinoids and each has a different profile, or ratio of cannabinoids, which accounts for their differing effects.

If you or someone you know is suffering from nerve pain and would like to know which cannabis or CBD products will help relieve the pain and promote better sleep, my first suggestion is head to your local health food store for CBD from hemp, or, should you live in one of the eleven states where cannabis is legal head to the pot shop.

Your local pot shop is probably as warm and welcoming as ours is here in WA, and the staff is, as I said, ridiculously knowledgeable and able to help you find a strain of cannabis with a higher ratio of CBD to TCH, and in a delivery system that will suit your needs.

A Puff, a Capsule or Cream

For my friend, micro-dosing cannabis has been a gateway to experience the various effects, and a safe way for her to experiment with different varieties to meet her unique needs.

Another route, however, is to use CBD derived from Hemp.

While Hemp is in the cannabis family, it isn’t classified as marijuana due to its trace amounts of THC.

CBD from hemp is an excellent “high-free” entry point for experimentation, and can be found at many natural health food stores throughout the country, or at pot shops, and it comes in a variety of delivery systems; from vape pens, to tinctures, capsules and creams.

An Untroubled Mind is Good Medicine, Too!

To-date, my girlfriend hasn’t gotten to the bottom of why her knee replacement seems to be failing, and the bad news is that she may need to have knee revision surgery.

The good news is that she got off the harsh meds with cannabis, which has more than delivered on the promise of relief from the debilitating effects of nerve pain and it has definitely improved her sleep, which on balance has enabled her to work on mobility, and strength.

As for the occasional bit of “euphoria,” this helps her to laugh more and be present to the moment, relax her sometimes troubled mind, and …hey, enough cannot be said for the medicine of an untroubled mind!