Could cannabis oil help cure liver disease ?
Liver cancer is a potentially fatal disease characterized by aggressive liver tumor growth. The 5-year survival rate for liver cancer is about 30% at early diagnosis.
If feasible, treatment usually involves surgery, local treatment, or chemo / radiotherapy. Now, new research indicates that cannabis oil to cure liver cancer can also help treat liver tumors.
Are you possibly one who needs another reason to swap the alcohol for cannabis? Research shows that weed could have a profound impact in the treatment of liver disease.
To date in 2019, approximately 28 million Americans have some type of liver illness. In fact, liver disease was ranked at the tenth most collective cause of death in the United States.
And the U.S. is far from alone.
Around the world, liver disease impacts millions of people’s lives which is not widely known.
Meanwhile, research shows cannabis not only alleviates pain and inflammation but also restores liver functioning.
This is huge! If a person’s liver gets brutally damaged e.g. (alcohol / sugar) it then will lose the ability to repair its cells and the entire organ will remain impaired.
So in a nut shell, this is what you need to know about the benefits of
cannabis and liver disease.
What is liver cancer?
Liver cancer is a type of cancer that forms in the liver. There are many different types of liver cancer. However, the most common is hepatocellular carcinoma, which affects the main type of liver cells (hepatocytes).
Nutrients, medicines or substances such as alcohol pass through the blood into the liver, where they are processed, stored, modified and detoxified.
Then these substances are returned to the bloodstream so that the body can either use them or release them into the intestine, where they are excreted.
Liver cancer is caused by abnormal cell growth in the liver. These cells eventually adhere together and form a tumor.
As the tumor grows larger, it begins to affect the proper functioning of the liver. Because the liver is so vital to us, a tumor can be a potentially life-threatening hazard.
The most common cause of liver cancer is cirrhosis of the liver, which is caused by hepatitis or alcohol consumption.
Other factors that increase the risk of liver cancer are hepatitis B or C, diabetes, and other hereditary or non-alcoholic liver disease.
The Progression of Liver Disease
To better understand how the benefits of how
cannabis can treat liver diseases, it will be beneficial to first look into how the liver functions.
The liver is the largest internal organ in the body and is extremely important for a variety of metabolic processes and different roles in the body including:
1. Processing, delivering and storing food
2. It plays an important role in detoxifying the body eg.
cleaning the blood
3. Detoxifying harmful substances
4. It helps to extract nutrients from food (stores them and, if necessary)
5. It delivers nutrients to the cells if need be.
6. Producing of vital nutrients such as bile and much more!
A healthy liver is vital to human life.
However it is a fact that the liver also has an amazing ability to restore itself.
A healthy liver can regenerate cells even if it's been damaged.
When an injury occurs to the liver which is too severe or has taken place over an extended period of time, it leads to the loss of this extra ordinary capability.
The liver goes on to eventually create scar tissue.
The first stage of this scarring is fibrosis. The last stage is cirrhosis.
What Causes liver Cirrhosis?
Cirrhosis may happen when the liver produces excess scar tissue from long-term damage.
A healthy liver will regenerate healthy cells. A liver that is unhealthy that over a long time has developed into cirrhosis will automatically regenerate scar tissue.
This scar tissue replaces the healthy cells. This indirectly results in the liver not being able to perform its daily functioning properly.
The longer this cycle continues, the more vicious it becomes. When the cirrhosis has gone to an advanced stage, the scar tissue will start to outnumber the good and healthy tissue.
This process in turn will make it increasingly tougher for the liver to perform its even most basic functions.
Cirrhosis may follow onto a large sum of incapacitating side effects including the following: fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, itching, and even yellowing of the skin.
However, research indicates
cannabis can cure liver cirrhosis. In fact, it may even treat the root cause of the condition.
The Role of the Endocannabinoid System
Pic: Your cannabinoid receptors are embedded on the surface of your cells.
Why is cannabis effective for treating liver disease?
This is due to the endocannabinoid system, or ECS.
The ECS, present in both humans and animals, is one of the most important systems in the body.
First discovered in the late 1980s and early 90s, researchers found that the ECS is an expansive network of chemical compounds and receptors.
These receptors,
CB1 and CB2, are located throughout the brain, body, organs, and central nervous system.
When working in unison, the receptors in the liver work together to form a signaling system that helps to sustain health & balance among nearly all metabolic processes.
A certain measure of this signaling involves the CB receptors working in conjunction with chemicals produced by the body called endocannabinoids.
When there is a dysfunction in this system, the cannabinoids in cannabis (like THC and CBD) happen to be nature's perfect supplement for the ECS.
Have a look the the following video and how it shows a cirrhosis damaged liver that has been hammered over a period of many years mainly by alcohol abuse and repairs itself from the use of
medicinal cannabis oil for liver cancer whereby cells that are damaged heal themselves
Cannabinoids and the Liver
In 2005, researchers from Hebrew University Medical School found that endocannabinoids help modulate inflammatory responses along with vascular changes.
The study revealed endocannabinoids are crucial to neurological functioning and beneficial for people suffering from liver diseases such as cirrhosis and fibrosis.
The researchers from the study concluded:
“Endocannabinoids seem to be involved in numerous aspects of acute & chronic liver disease, as well as vascular changes, modulation of inflammatory process and neurological function.”
In 2012, a study published in cell death and disease revealed CBD (one of several cannabinoids present in cannabis) plays a critical part in the treatment of
marijuana oil for liver disease.
During the 10 month course, mice were fed growing amounts various concentrations of different cannabinoids.
Astonishingly, the researchers found that CBD induced apoptosis in HSCs, or hepatic stellate cells. These HCSs responsible in part for the development of scar tissue in the liver are vital.
In other words, the CBD properties from cannabis killed off the harmful cells that lead to the progression of liver disease.
Granted, this study did not involve human subjects. Nevertheless, the results are telling, especially when we look at the research as a whole.
Just take the study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology, for example.
In the study, researchers examined the effects of CBD on hepatic encephalopathy, a neuropsychiatric disorder caused by acute or chronic liver failure.
Mice were injected with both thioacetamide and saline in the study. Thioacetamide is a substance that encourages liver fibrosis in mice.
The experimental mice were then treated with one of two possible options - CBD or a vehicle (a substance comparable to that of CBD properties, minus the active element)
During the experiment, researchers discovered that CBD only had the ability to restore neurological & cognitive functioning impaired in thioacetamide-treated mice.
As a matter of fact, CBD alone restored normal liver functioning completely in the mice that were experiencing liver failure.
Upon finishing the study, the researchers concluded:
“Cannabidiol can fully restore liver function, and at the same time, normalizes the 5-HT levels & also relates to improving brain pathology in accordance with the normalization of brain function capacity.
We can then conclude, the effects of cannabidiol may result from an arrangement of its actions in the liver & the brain.”
Imagine for a moment if this same study had been performed on humans. Medicinal companies would likely be very much further in our understanding of
medical cannabis oil to be used as a treatment for liver disease.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government still classifies pot as a Schedule I drug with zero medicinal properties. Clearly, the above research reveals the facts to be otherwise.
Medical marijuana oil is life-changing after taken for 4 months in order to cure liver cancer
Many people across the globe are suffering from liver disease right now and
medicinal cannabis oil for liver cancer could potentially be the cure doctors cannot prescribe.
Medical cannabis: A new alternative?
Medical cannabis and cancer is a topic that attracts much attention in the medical community. Cannabinoids such as THC and CBD have already received much praise from patients and physicians for the effective treatment of side effects such as nausea, vomiting and pain.
However, research shows that these cannabinoids hide much more power in themselves.
Research into the effects of cannabinoids on cancer dates back to the late 1980s, with some studies showing that THC is able to stop the maturation process of damaged cultured liver cells. Since then, an increasing number of studies are trying to capture how cannabinoids can help cure liver cancer with cannabis oil.
Share this article if you are of the belief cannabis contains valuable medicinal properties.
