For a while now, it hasn’t been a matter of whether you’ll feel pain on any given day, but how much. This constant state of discomfort can cast a long shadow over your life, leaving you trapped in a world of hurt that you’re trying to escape.
While it may be of some comfort to know that you're not alone in your struggle — nearly one-quarter of Americans report chronic pain — it certainly doesn’t bring you relief.
For that, we turn to musculoskeletal specialist Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román, who offers medical cannabis evaluations to patients at No Mercy Sports Medicine. If you’re looking for effective but safer pain-relief solutions, low-THC cannabis certainly fits the bill.
Chronic pain, which is pain that lasts for 3-6 months or more, can take on a life of its own as your body’s pain-signaling processes become overactive and your perception of pain becomes more sensitive. In fact, many people start out with an acute injury or initial damage that heals, yet the pain continues thanks to well-worn pain signaling pathways.
Some of the more common drivers of chronic pain include:
This list is far from complete, but most of the people we see for chronic pain have one of these issues.
Thanks to the nature of pain and your nervous system, chronic pain can become its own central disease, which means pain management is the only way to respond because there’s nothing to heal.
One reason we offer medical cannabis evaluations is that Dr. Irizarry-Román recognizes that certain pain management practices are potentially problematic.
For example, fighting chronic pain with opioids isn’t the best solution given the risks for addiction — between 3% and 12% of patients who use opioids for chronic pain develop an addiction or misuse the drugs. In 2023 alone, about 8.6 million Americans misused prescription opioids.
Outside of opioids, Dr. Irizarry-Román also wants to offer patients an alternative to invasive surgical solutions, which can pile onto your already high level of discomfort.
Cannabis offers a good alternative for managing chronic pain because it’s effective and is less problematic than other solutions. To start, the cannabinoids in cannabis work very well within your body’s own endocannabinoid system.
When it comes to pain relief, a recent study by researchers at Yale University found that certain cannabinoids can block a protein (Nav1.8) in sensory cells in your spine. In blocking this protein, cannabis can mute the pain signaling to bring you much-needed relief without all of the risk.
If you’re worried about the “high” associated with cannabis, we’ve found that low-THC (THC is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis) works well — you get the pain relief with minimal psychoactive effects.
If you’re tired of risky medications and inefficient pain relief, now is a great time to explore low-THC cannabis for your chronic pain.
To get that ball rolling, contact No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida, today. Call 305-614-6757 or send a message via our online form.
