Life is full of headaches, right? Whether from staring at screens all day or just daily stress.

But a new study published in the Journal of Pain showed that cannabis helps to reduce headaches and the severity of migraines.

Conducted by Washington State University, this was the first study to use big data in real-time from headache and migraine patients using cannabis.

Researchers were quick to note that the use of cannabis for such purposes is common.

“We were motivated to do this study because a substantial number of people say they use cannabis for headache and migraine, but surprisingly few studies had addressed the topic,” said Carrie Cuttler who is an Assistant Professor Psychology at WSU.

“We wanted to approach this in an ecologically valid way, which is to look at actual patients using whole-plant cannabis to medicate in their own homes and environments,” said Assistant Professor Cuttler. “These are also very big data, so we can more appropriately and accurately generalize to the greater population of patients using cannabis to manage these conditions.”

Despite the positive news, there is still room for scepticism which even Cuttler agrees must be dealt with in future.

“I suspect there are some slight overestimates of effectiveness,” said Cuttler. “My hope is that this research will motivate researchers to take on the difficult work of conducting placebo-controlled trials.

“In the meantime, this at least gives medical cannabis patients and their doctors a little more information about what they might expect from using cannabis to manage these conditions.”

Source: TheExtract