For some, sweet relief from chronic pain may be here now.

Doctors demonstrated improvements in pain reduction, quality of life, social life, activity levels, and concentration, and few negative side effects from using cannabis one year.

They showed that "whole, natural Cannabis sativa and extracts made from the plant may serve as an alternative to opioid-based medications for treating chronic pain."

"34 percent…ceased the use of all scheduled prescription medications by the last six months of the observation period."

“The economic impact of cannabis treatment should also be considered given the current burden of opioid prescriptions on healthcare systems, which have been forced to implement costly modifications to general patient care practices, including prescription monitoring programs, drug screening, more frequent doctor-patient interactions, treatment of drug abuse and dependence, and legal products and services associated with limiting opioid-related liability.”

“Our current opioid epidemic is the leading preventable form of death in the United States, killing more people than car accidents and gun violence.”

“No one has ever died from smoking too much cannabis. Therefore, the relative safety and efficacy of using cannabis in comparison to that of the other scheduled medications should be taken by the health providers and legislators, and may very well to have been considered by the patients in our study.”

"We discovered a significant proportion of chronic pain patients reporting to have substituted their opioid prescriptions with cannabis for treating their chronic pain."

“If cannabis can serve as an alternative to prescription opioids for at least some patients, legislators and the medical community may want to consider medical cannabis programs as a potential tool for combating the current opioid epidemic.”

Study:   http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187795

Meditation can ease chronic low back pain.  Back pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide and the second most common cause of disability for American adults.  “The mind and the body are intimately intertwined, including in how they sense and respond to pain.” Mindfulness is “as helpful for people with chronic back pain as are other effective treatments for back pain." “They also had longer-lasting benefits and were safer than many other treatment options.”  “This new study is exciting, because here’s a technique that doesn’t involve taking any pharmaceutical agents, and doesn’t involve the side effects of pharmaceutical agents.”  “That suggests that training the mind has potential to change people on a more lasting basis than doing a manipulation of the spine or massage of the back,” techniques that may be “effective in the short term but lose effects over time.” "We were struck by how durable the effects were.”  “You can practice it by waiting at the bus stop and just breathing.”  “For people who want to do something where they’re using their own mind to help themselves, it can feel very empowering.”

0source:  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2504811