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Long-term cannabis use doesn’t increase pain sensitivity: study
Though opioids can be useful medications that provide strong relief, their negative side effects can outweigh their positives, contributing to opioid addiction. Unlike opioids, though, a new study out of B.C. found cannabis doesn’t increase pain sensitivity when used over long periods of time.
The study was conducted by the psychology department of University of British Columbia, Okanagan and sought to highlight the differences in pain tolerance that exist between people who useCannabis has long been used as medicine for pain. In recent years, data has shown that pain management is one of the principal reasons why people consume medicinal cannabis.
“This study should come as good news to patients who are already using cannabis to treat pain,” explains Zach Walsh, a study co-author. “Increases in pain sensitivity with opioids can really complicate an already tough situation; given increasing uptake of cannabis-based pain medications, it’s a relief that we didn’t identify a similar pattern with cannabinoids.”
Authors of the study initially speculated that frequent cannabis users would demonstrate greater pain sensitivity, but this wasn’t the case.
Frequent opioid users run the risk of developing hyperalgesia. / Photo: Igor Vershinsky / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Photo: Igor Vershinsky / iStock / Getty Images Plus
“There is a different effect from opioid users; sustained use of opioids can make people more reactive to pain. We wanted to determine if there was a similar trend for people who use cannabis frequently,” says St. Pierre. “Cannabis and opioids share some of the same pain-relief pathways and have both been associated with increases in pain sensitivity following acute use,” she adds.
Frequent opioid users run the risk of developing hyperalgesia. The condition causes pain tolerance to be lowered and patients need to consume more opioids in response, increasing the risk of developing an addiction.
The opioid pandemic has taken many lives in the U.S., over 450,000 between 1999 and 2018. It’s a serious problem that has grown difficult to manage, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention trying to raise public awareness and minimize the amount of risk to which people are exposed.
While more research is necessary to see how cannabis could impact the opioid addiction, studies like this one show that the plant holds some promise in pain management and that in some cases, it could provide a better option for patients.
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