Chief Medical Officer of Canna-Centers Dr. Bonni Goldstein joins The Doctors to discuss how seniors are using marijuana and the potential concerns of mixing marijuana with other prescriptions.
I do want to quickly bring into the conversation the chief medical director of a medical marijuana clinic dr. bonnie goldstein you prescribed medical marijuana and dr. ordon raised some really interesting points of when might you be able to substitute a more dangerous medication with one if appropriately prescribed marijuana could provides benefits how often are
You seeing this in your clinic so in my practice i’m absolutely seeing patients get off of prescription medications opioids is the number one their pain medications like non-steroidal anti-inflammatories anxiety medications sleeping pills for sure also other things that for some patients they’re on multiple medications for certain conditions and what’s happening
Is they’re able to at least back down to maybe one or two instead of three or four one of my patients even called cannabis the one-stop shop because she was on pain medicine anxiety medication depression medication and sleeping pills and she was able at the age of 27 she was on all of those medications and was able to get off specifically in the elderly i’m just
Curious are there more concerns about say side-effects or do you have to think about the dosing differently if this is something a senior is truly considering we have to be very careful with dosing and the general rule from in the cannabis industry is start low and go slow start very low dose and titrate up but what i also recommend which many people don’t realize
Is that there’s a lot of combination products out there that have both cbd and thc and studies show that they work better when they’re together so not all of one or all of the other and what happened in california is we kind of went one way towards the thc as medical cannabis moved on and now in cbd is being reintroduced combination products allow the cbd to buffer
A lot of the unwanted side effects of thc but still help with the underlying medical condition should seniors who are already on other medications out there specific interactions they should be aware of yes there can be interactions and certainly so things like blood pressure medication if you take too much cannabis on top of your blood pressure medication your
Blood pressure can go down and you are at a risk of fall especially if you’re getting up out of bed to use the restroom or something like that we also know that blood thinners can interact with some of these medications and many elderly are on those and so it’s always good if you’re on other medication to have a physician who understands cannabis to at least go
Over medications with you so that you can make sure you can avoid those kinds of interaction raise that red flag because that is the one concern i had watching this segment and my one concern as i’ve seen the evolution of the marijuana industry rapidly growing over the last few years it’s that i do believe that marijuana has a valid place in medical treatment we
Will only learn more and more about how to dose more doctors will specialize as you do but then there’s this other side of it where it’s just one big party how do we bridge that gap where people all of us take marijuana seriously as a medical treatment well i think for most people you know if you overdose on cannabis it’s very psychologically uncomfortable it’s
It’s trippy what i call it and i tell people once you do that you’re never going to go back there again most people know how much is too much and they usually figure it out but in general i think that some of the new regulations coming out are good regulations edibles should not have a thousand milligrams in them it should be limited to a smaller amount because
Some people see a candy bar package and you even showed it up on your screen 180 milligrams that’s many many doses for most people that is not and most people see a candy bar and say oh i’ll eat the whole thing so unfortunately without regulations it got a little bit crazy but i think the regulations are going to help especially with the edibles in general with
The other types of property of compounds that are out there like topicals or inhaling most people are able to regulate it and figure out what works best and i’m glad with kids and adults to adults like their sweets because you both seem concerned that they were lowering the dosage now but 10 milligrams of thc is a significant dose for someone who’s naive to it i
Mean i would argue that that’s maybe too much if you’re trying you know that’s a big dose of sort of me that’s a good development and i could tell you you express some concerns from the elderly that they were putting that requirement in place it sounds like the seniors you were discussing know how to they do and a lot of it very trial and error themselves so for
You how did they find like how do your patients find you where do they go for resources on this so they can safely think about incorporating this if this is something they’re open to well most people are going online and looking to see who might specialize in this there’s just about a medical cannabis conference almost every week somewhere in the united states
Where you’re going to find doctors that are learning about this it needs to be in the toolbox of every doctor now because if you’re practicing you know family practice and you’re writing prescriptions for all kinds of different medications this is just another tool in the toolbox to be able to talk to your patients about and again doctors are free to talk to their
Patients about medical cannabis as long as they don’t misrepresent anything i think many doctors think they’ll put their license at risk if they talk to their patients about this but they will not we are free to speak about it with our patients i will say leslie you’ve outdone yourself of all the investigations you’ve done this was the high you
Transcribed from video
Does Marijuana Interact with Prescription Drugs? By The Doctors
