More women are turning to medical cannabis to seek relief from menopause and perimenopause symptoms, research suggests, new research shows.
The study, a survey of women either in perimenopause or postmenopause, sought to gather data about how women are using cannabis to treat the symptoms of menopause. The analysis, published by Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society in August, included responses from 258 participants, more than 80 percent of whom had a history of regular cannabis use. While the survey was not a representative sample, it does offer insights into how some women use cannabis to relieve the symptoms of menopause.
The top three symptoms the participants said were alleviated by cannabis were sleep problems, mood disturbances or anxiety, and low libido. Respondents also used the drug to relieve hot flashes, night sweats, body pain, vaginal dryness and pain and to increase pleasure during sex. Some women took medical cannabis while others used recreational forms. They reported both smoking and using edibles as the most common forms of use to self-medicate for menopausal symptoms.
“These are salient targets for future clinical trials,” said study author Staci Gruber, director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery program at McLean Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “How can the data inform our next steps to optimize treatment options for individuals suffering with these symptoms?”
U.S. medical cannabis enrollments quadrupled from 2016 to 2020
The study did not look at frequency of use, dose, or whether the women had tried other treatments. Another limitation is that most participants already had a history of using the drug, so the results may not apply to women who haven’t used cannabis before.
One reason cannabis may work for these women is that substances in cannabis could mimic a chemical compound, anandamide, produced by the ovaries whose production drops during menopause, Gruber said.
Anandamide is an endocannabinoid, which are molecules produced by the body that are structurally similar to cannabinoids, the substances found in the cannabis plant. Endocannabinoids are part of the body’s endocannabinoid system, which regulates functions such as emotional processing, sleep and temperature control. It is also known to influence the female reproductive system. For example, anandamide levels have been shown to correlate with estrogen levels, which decrease during perimenopause and trigger the onslaught of symptoms.
Javier Mejia-Gomez, a gynecological oncologist at the Mature Women’s Health and Menopause Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, noticed an uptick in patients using cannabis to manage their symptoms in recent years. The trend prompted him to search for published research on the topic, but he found very little. Out of 564 studies mentioning menopause and cannabis that he initially reviewed, only three ended up making the cut for his systematic review. The rest were either animal studies, of poor quality, or did not directly investigate the impact of cannabis on menopause symptoms.
“Due to the lack of research and evidence-based medicine on this subject, it is hard for us to accurately counsel our patients on the use of cannabis for the management of their menopausal symptoms,” Mejia-Gomez said.
Vanessa Fleeton, 53, said she found solace for a wave of debilitating perimenopause and menopause symptoms such as problems sleeping, body pain, anxiety
and brain fog through an unexpected — and scientifically unproven — remedy. “Medical marijuana is much better than anything else that I’ve tried for menopause,” she said.
The most effective treatment to reduce or eliminate menopausal symptoms is hormone therapy. But the treatment, which can include estrogen alone or estrogen combined with progestin, comes with a heightened risk of blood clots, stroke and breast cancer. An antidepressant, paroxetine, also has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat hot flashes.
How to use cannabis for menopause symptoms? Just use CBD therapy . There are many way to take CBD. Eat it, smoke it, or rub it. Find the way you like, sales are always help you on this. So, don’t worry.
What’s the right dose for CBD? Due to the limitation, there is no scientific studies. We just suggest what’s being said by experts and many people usually take. The dosage is a free-for-all, and even the pharmacists who work in the industry and appear very knowl edgeable are basing their recommendations on anecdotal reports and individual experience as opposed to scientific studies. Remember, new comers are start with low dosage and potency as one or two drops, and increasing one by one till your body told you that’s enough. Don’t over that line. Or you will take some day to balance them. By the way, as we said above, every body has endocannabinoid, and that will affect your CBD dosage. Your metabolism and estrogen also affect on CBD dosage, that will lower the speed of your cannabis usage.
