Medical marijuana has in recent years been discovered to be used in the treatment of various diseases and symptoms. This plant contains chemicals called cannabinoids which are extracted used in the treatment of various diseases.
After using it on several patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, bone fractures and many others and proving to produce positive results, scientists are still conducting the scope of its cure and side effects.
EFFECT ON IQ
Although it’s administered to all age groups, some recent studies show that it could be harmful to children and adolescents in the long run. A study shows that if a child started smoking marijuana at an early age, chances are that they will have a low IQ in childhood and also early adulthood until the age of 38. Apart from affecting their IQ, it will also alter their cognitive performance.
This same study also shows that the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 24 to 26. So the definition of the term “child” in this case may not exactly be used in one’s conventional terms of a person below the age of eighteen.
“There is growing evidence that repeated exposure to cannabis that repeated exposure to cannabis that begins during adolescence is associated with a decline in IQ of about 10 points when subjects are tested in adulthood,” says Sanity Kumra, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “This affect is not seen in adult users of cannabis,” she added.
However, there are also contradicting reports according to studies conducted by Science Daily, a child who has been treated with marijuana proves to have a high IQ at 5. This child will grow up to be more intelligent than any of her or his age-mates.
MISCONCEPTION ON TREATMENT METHODS
Besides most of the feared symptoms of marijuana overuse are brought about if one smokes the herb, this is clearly not the way marijuana is administered in children. For successful treatments in children, the strain used usually is low in tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the compound in marijuana that’s psychoactive. It was also high in cannabidiol, or CBD, which has medicinal properties but no psychoactivity.
CNN recently featured a story of a California boy with Dravet was being successfully treated with cannabis.Scientists believe the CBD quiets the excessive electrical and chemical activity in the brain that causes seizures. It had worked in this boy; his parents saw a major reduction in the boy’s seizures.
Contrary to many people fears and bias, when a child is on a dosage of medical marijuana she or he are not getting high or stoned. The oils they ingest are low on THC which is the component that makes one high.
INFORMED CONCLUSION
In light of these findings here is my conclusion. As a last alternative medical marijuana should not be ruled out as a treatment. This is because like many parents whose children have undergone medical marijuana will tell you, their children at this stage have tried everything else by then and worst case scenario is death of their child which is pretty eminent considering all other treatments have failed.
A mother who has been advised to sign a “do not resuscitate order” to allow her child’s disease battered body to go into an induced coma will not have much reservations to trying cannabis as a means of treatment. You know how the saying goes……”what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Many parents who have witnessed remarkable recoveries in their children’s health due to cannabis treatment will totally agree.
