Cannabinoids For Autoimmune Disease

Cannabinoids For Autoimmune Disease


This unjustly demonized plant is about to change the scope of medicine and disease management as we know it.

Historical Maligning of Marijuana

Although legalizing recreational marijuana is a polarizing political issue, the ceremonial and medicinal use of this botanical agent dates back thousands of years (1). Paleobotanical, anthropological, and ethnographic records date the first human interactions with marijuana to 11,000 years ago, in the Holocene era, when human groups in the Eurasian continent used the seeds and stalks as sources of food and fiber, and the resin-laden female flowers within spiritual contexts (2, 3, 4). According to Wei and colleagues (2017), the medicinal actions, as well as the heightened euphoria, modified time perception, intensified sensation, and sense of tranquility produced by consuming the flowers or inhaling their smoke was “intimately woven into religious ritual” (p. 1). Marijuana was likewise used to cement social bonding during weddings, funerals, supernatural rites, and festivals, from cultures ranging to the Scythians inhabiting the Eurasian steppe to the Hindus of the Himalayan mountains (5).