Understanding Epilepsy
The disease of epilepsy is characterized by problems with neuron signaling in a person's brain. It's not as rare as people think, with an estimated one percent of people in the United States population suffering from the effects of epilepsy.
While epilepsy has other side effects, it is a disease that most people rightly associate with seizures. Some of these seizures involve powerful and damaging muscle spasms. Others will tend to be characterized by a more subtle feeling of brain fog. Some of these seizures will be partial seizures and others will be generalized seizures, and these are distinguished by how extensively they will affect the brain. However, both of these seizure types can truly be very severe, so people should not assume that a partial seizure is only a mild one.
A lot of people struggling with epilepsy will have their lives interrupted by these seizures all the time. Some of them will have a hard time getting educated as a result, and many of them will have a hard time holding down regular jobs.
Many epileptics will end up experiencing unusual sensory sensations. They will sometimes suffer from painful muscle spasms. They might end up with the sorts of memory gaps and concentration problems that signify neurological damage. Some people with epilepsy will lose consciousness during their attacks. Other people will tend to stare into space and more or less lose the awareness of what is happening around them.
Being able to manage this condition effectively is a dream for some people with epilepsy, given the severity of the condition and the fact that it is difficult to treat. Medical marijuana might be able to help the people who have it. If people treat epileptic seizure with medical marijuana, they will be able to reduce most of the symptoms associated with epilepsy, which do primarily stem from the seizures.
Medical Marijuana and Epilepsy
There is some research to support the idea that medical marijuana might be able to help people who have epilepsy in a number of ways. It might reduce the frequency of the seizures. It might also reduce the severity of the seizures. Reducing the seizures by a third seems to be a figure that appears in the research. There have been some people in the experimental populations who more or less got over their seizures entirely, and this is a dream for the people who have epilepsy.
Many patients who have epilepsy are not going to be able to get those sorts of benefits, and they will still probably experience some seizures from time to time regardless of what they do or what medication they take. However, just reducing the occurrence of seizures can still make all the difference in the world for the people with epilepsy who are trying to live normal lives.
Some people are already trying a lot of alternative therapies, since many conventional therapies have not really helped the people who have epilepsy. Dietary therapies, such as modified low-carb diets, have actually shown that they have some benefits for the people who have epilepsy. However, it is clear that people need something that is going to act on the brain more directly, since this is a neurological disorder. The CBD of marijuana is able to accomplish that, and that is one of the reasons why people have every reason to believe that it is possible for people to be able to treat epilepsy using medical marijuana.
It appears to be the CBD in medical marijuana that has the effects that people want on epilepsy. It is also true that a lot of people are struggling to determine what the proper dosage is for the patients who want to be able to use CBD in order to treat medical marijuana. However, this is something that is going to vary from individual to individual in the first place, making it even more important to evaluate this on a case-by-case basis.
Coping with Epilepsy
There is currently no cure for epilepsy. People who have this condition must simply learn to live with it, medicating it to the best of their abilities and trying to find a way to cope with the seizures. Children have a lower tolerance level for everything than adults, and this can have an effect on the sorts of medications that they can take.
Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of children using medical marijuana, even in the treatment of epilepsy. However, a 2013 story of an eight-year-old girl who was able to use a treatment for epilepsy that involved medical marijuana might be helping to get a conversation going about whether or not this will work for more people. Given the severity of epilepsy, the potential risks associated with medical marijuana in children might seem to be less important.
Children with Epilepsy
Treating children who have epilepsy is difficult. The fact that it is difficult to find medication that works for them is even tougher. It might be possible to treat epilepsy and similar seizure disorders using medical marijuana. Epilepsy is a severe enough disorder that exploring as many different treatment methods as possible makes sense, especially if these treatments have relatively few side effects.
It is true that further research is needed when it comes to determining the role that CBD might have in reducing the severity and frequency of seizures. It is also always worthwhile to look into the long-term effects of all medication, even if the positive effects strongly outweigh the negative effects. However, there is no doubt about the fact that it is worthwhile for a lot of different epilepsy patients to try to get as many benefits from medical marijuana as they can.
Epilepsy is a severe enough disorder that it is important for people to explore as many treatment options as they can. Some forms of epilepsy are functionally beyond conventional medical treatments. People who are suffering from this terrible disease are risking brain damage and other long-term forms of organ damage, and they are watching their lives change as a result.