SENIORS + CANNABIS CANNABIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A FIRST-LINE TREATMENT IN SENIORS BY DR. DEBRA KIMLESS I was asked what makes seniors different from any other adult when it comes to medical cannabis? I thought about this for a while. Seniors (not just our children) should be considered our future, especially when it comes to accepting cannabis as medicine. Seniors have the good fortune of having life experiences. Some experiences make them question current thoughts and conventional wisdom. This is especially true when it comes to their health and healthcare. Many seniors have serious repercussions from their past choices, even if they were told by conventional teachings that their choices were good ones. They are now paying a heavy price in the form of poor health. Seniors spend their hard earned and well-deserved time, energy, and money going from doctor to treatment facility to consultant to pharmacy only to continue to experience poor health and a poor quality of life they did not count on. In the US, people over the age of 65 are taking an average of 5 different prescription medications a day. This does not include the over-the-counter medications that are also being used. This is a staggering statistic! These medications are not without risks. Side effects from pharmaceuticals are well-reported, and often, patients are prescribed other medications to counteract the side effect of a medication, only to require another medication to counteract the side effect of the drug used to counteract the side effect of the initial drug. By the way, there are no double blind randomized trials studying the safety or efficacy or dose effects of multiple pharmaceutical drugs taken by a single person. How can this be? The FDA only approves single molecules for single indications. No one has ever questioned or examined what happens when a human body is given a panoply of pharmaceuticals
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SENIORS + CANNABIS
