A cancer diagnosis can be devastating, even with great odds and effective treatments available. That’s because cancer treatment is rarely easy, with a long list of side effects often accompanying the medications and therapies meant to get patients well.
It’s no secret that cannabis can help to minimize the various side effects of cancer treatments, and now we have more side effects marijuana may help with. Â
Night sweats can make going to bed especially frustrating for cancer patients, impacting their ability to get comfortable and achieve the sleep they need. But new research has found that taking dronabinol, an oral cannabinoid, along with cancer treatments can help patients to successfully manage their night sweats.
Reported on in the journal Palliative Medicine, five cancer patients were followed and their night sweats monitored between the years of 2013 and 2016. The use of synthetic dronabinol helped to reduce their night sweats, with researchers concluding that medicinal cannabis is a promising therapy for the treatment of night sweats in cancer patients.
Scientists are still studying the potential benefits of medicinal marijuana use in the treatment of cancer, but there’s reason to believe those benefits may extend beyond just symptom management, with some research even suggesting cannabis could potentially kill off certain cancer cells.
Making marijuana the alternative treatment cancer patients should be discussing with their doctors today.
